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93) It is more convenient for the Sitra Achra to control the righteous more than anyone, for then he does not regard the whole world. How do we know that he regards controlling the righteous more than controlling the entire world? From Job, because the Creator saw that the generation deserved to be annihilated, and Satan came to slander, so the Creator told him, “Have you noticed My servant Job?” There was no one like him in the whole earth by whom to save the generation.
There is an allegory about a shepherd that a wolf came to prey on his flock and destroy them. What did that shepherd, who was wise, do? He gave him a strong lamb, fatter and bigger than all of them, the one who led everyone. By his desire to control that good lamb, the wolf left everyone else. What did that shepherd do? While the wolf was busy with that lamb, the shepherd fled with the flock and put them in their place, then returned to the lamb and saved him from the wolf.
94) So does the Creator do with the generation. He places the righteous in the hands of the slanderer in order to save the generation through him. If the righteous is as strong as Jacob, it is said about him, “And a man wrestled with him.” It is even more so when he defeats the slanderer until he says, “Let me go.”
Happy is that righteous who is strong to endure suffering, and especially one who defeats his slanderer—who has cast his governance over the whole generation—through the suffering. It is regarded for him as though he saved them, and the Creator makes him their shepherd instead of the slanderer. This is why Moses was rewarded with being Israel’s shepherd. Moreover, He enthroned him over them in the next world because he saved them so they would not be lost from the next world, as he led them with Torah and good deeds.
95) Moses said, “Why has the right arm been afflicted?” It is the conduct of all healers to draw blood from the right arm first, but the left arm is closer to the heart, so why is blood not drawn from it? That is, he is asking, “Why do we see that one righteous is afflicted and the other is not?” It is because the Creator does not wish to afflict more, for one righteous is enough. If the illness is hard on the organs of the body, blood is drawn from the left arm, too, meaning that then other righteous are afflicted, too.
96) If the two of them had not been at the same time, fine. But there is a righteous here and there is a righteous here; one has illnesses and afflictions, and one has Hesed. If the illness is grave, meaning the iniquities of the generation, why would He not draw blood from two righteous, two arms, to heal all the organs of the body, the whole generation? And if the illness is not hard on all the organs, why does he draw more from the right than from the left?
97) Indeed, the body and the two arms correspond to the patriarchs. The head corresponds to Adam HaRishon. The right arm corresponds to Abraham, the left arm corresponds to Isaac, and the body corresponds to Jacob. Inside the body, the liver is on the right, and the spleen is on the left, the two Klipot of Esau and Ishmael. The heart is Jacob, between them. The lobes of the lung and the kidneys correspond to Abraham and Isaac. The lung is water, implying Hesed, since the lung draws all kinds of drinks. The kidneys are fire, cooking the seed that descends from the brain.
Each generation has the level of Adam as a whole, corresponding to the spiritual level of above. It regards the heads of the generation, who are drawn from Adam HaRishon, GAR. The rest of the righteous are extended from the patriarchs. Some of them extend from Abraham, Hesed, called “the right arm,” who is the lung inside the body. Some of them extend from Isaac, Gevura, called “the left arm,” who is the kidneys inside the body. Some of them extend from Jacob, who is the body, including the two arms, and who is the heart, inside the body. Esau is the liver, which is all blood, and the spleen is Ishmael. They are the heads of the nations on the right and on the left. But why was the order reversed—that Esau is on the right and Ishmael is on the left?
98) Because Abraham is water, Hesed, if his seed blemishes Hesed, he places his seed in exile in Edom, which is waste of the Gevura from the left. There they suffer their punishment because they are the opposite of their quality. For this reason, the liver, as well as the gall-bladder in the liver are at Abraham’s right, to the right of the body. This sword, which is Malchut of the Klipa of Esau, is bitter [Marah means both “bitter” and “gall”], of which it is written, “Her end is as bitter as wormwood.”
If the iniquities proliferate in Abraham’s children, who extend from the side of Hesed, which are placed in the exile of Edom, and the illness troubles them from the side of the liver, blood must be drawn from the right arm, from the righteous who extend from the side of Hesed, and not from those who extend from the side of Gevura. It is so because the flaw is in those who extend from Hesed, and one whose funds have been taken, it is as though his blood was spilled, for he remains poor, and a poor is as good as dead.
99) If the iniquities proliferate from the side of Isaac’s children, and those who extend from him blemish the quality of Gevura, they are placed in exile among Ishmael, the Klipa of the right, the opposite of the quality of Isaac’s children, so as to increase their punishment.
The illness is troubling from the side of the spleen, on the left of the body, which governs Isaac’s children, who blemished the quality of the left. Hence, blood must be drawn from the left arm, from righteous who extend from the side of Gevura, but only that, since those who extend from Abraham, the right arm, were not flawed, but rather those who extend from Isaac, the left arm.
100) If the iniquities proliferate in Jacob’s children, and those who extend from him blemish his quality, which includes both sides, HG, and are scattered in exile among the children of Esau and Ishmael—in the Klipot of the right and the left—the illness troubles the whole body, which is regarded as Jacob. Then blood must be drawn from both arms.
If all three who extend from Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham are ill together, having all blemished their roots, the illness goes up to the head, and the veins in the head must be drawn out. These three righteous, who extend from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob became a Merkava for Adam HaRishon and the patriarchs, and in them one strengthens to endure suffering and protect the generation to the four directions of the world.
101) Woe to a generation that causes the patriarchs and Adam, and the righteous between them to be struck. There is no difference between those righteous and the patriarchs and Adam HaRishon, since those righteous are their souls, which extend from them. And their stress, sorrow, and grief reach the patriarchs and Adam HaRishon.
Like the sea, if those streams that come out of it return to it murky and dirty, the sea takes their murkiness and dirt. And because the power of the sea is strong, it does not tolerate their filth and throws it out, and the streams remain clear and pure of that dirt.
102) Like a mother cleansing the dirt from her little children, the patriarchs purify the iniquities and dirt from their children, Israel, while among them there are righteous in their deeds who are strong enough to endure the suffering for the generation. At that time there is no difference between them and the patriarchs. They purify the iniquities of the generation like the patriarchs.
Everyone came and blessed Moses. They said to him, “Sinai, Sinai, from whose mouth and the Creator and His Shechina speak, who can stand up to him in anything? Happy are we that we have been rewarded with renewing that first connection in you, to illuminate the Shechina in exile.”
103) He told them: “Do not give the Creator rest in the Torah until He pours upon us the spirit of holiness.”
It is forbidden to use Matat, the minister of the face, except for Moses, since his letters are implied in the name, Moses, for the initials of Matat, the Minister of the Face are Moses [in Hebrew].
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