Yet, these five acquisitions that G-d acquired in this world have no identity separate from Him. Rather, their existence from the onset is to express the Almighty.
This idea can be observed within each of the five items:
Torah is the wisdom and will of the Almighty and is therefore completely one with him. This idea is discussed in Chassidic thought as follows:
Text 3
...The Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are one. The meaning of this is that the Torah—which is the wisdom and will of the Holy One, blessed be He—and His glorious Essence are one, since He is the Knower and Knowledge, and so on...
Tanya, Chapter 4
The Jewish people (and Avraham) as well, are considered a second acquisition. Being that the souls of the Jewish people are a piece of G-dliness, therefore a Jewish person’s essence is to be expressive of G-d:
Text 4
The second soul of a Jew is truly a part of G-d above, as it is written, "And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," and "You blew it into me." And it is written in the Zohar, "He who exhales, exhales from within him," that is to say, from his inwardness and his innermost, for it is something of his internal and innermost vitality that man emits through exhaling with force.
Tanya, Chapter 2
The Beis Hamikdash, too, serves as the place where G-d resides and therefore has no separate identity of its own, as is articulated in the commandment to erect the temple:
Text 5
And they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst.
Shemos 25:8
Heaven and earth are expressive of the Almighty, in the sense that they serve as a conduit to reveal G-dliness in the world. For this reason they are called His chair and His footstool. This does not mean that the earth in its entirety is an acquisition of G-d in this manner, rather, the aspect of heaven and earth which serves to express G-dliness is an acquisition of the Almighty.
Based on the above, we can resolve four out of the six above-mentioned questions:
- Although usually heaven and earth are all-inclusive of creation, in this illustration where only one trait of heaven and earth is discussed, they are not.
- Heaven and earth are considered one entity, for they are likened to a chair and a footstool that is expressive of a singular concept.
- The verse, “The heavens are My throne...” is used as a proof for heaven and earth being G-d’s acquisition, and not the verse which states that G-d “acquires heaven and earth.” The reason being, that when the bereisa says that heaven and earth are G-d’s acquisition, it is only referring to the specific aspect that they possess with which they reveal G-dliness, and is not referring to heaven and earth in general.
- The above also explains why the tana (Mishnaic sage) refers to each of the five entities as, “one acquisition,” expressing that their purpose is to reveal the Almighty’s oneness.
