Pity in the Torah
Two of the angels God sent to meet Abraham continued to Sodom where one was tasked with destroying the five cities of the plain and the other was entrusted with Lot and his family’s survival. As they were departing the city, the Torah tells us that Lot, “Lingered and out of God’s pity on him, the men grasped him and his wife and two daughters by the hand, they led them out and left them on the outskirts of the city” (ִתְ מַ הְ מָ הּ וַי ַחֲזִקוּ וַי ִ ים הָ אֲנָש בְּיָדו וּבְיַד אִ ש וּבְיַד ש תָ יו בְ נ בְּ חֶ מְ לַ ת ־יהוה עָלָיו הוּ צִא וַי הוּ ַנִּח וַי מִ חו ּץ לָעִ יר).
Though translated as “pity,” the adjective describing God’s manner with Lot is not the usual Hebrew word רחמים. Rather, it is the word חמלה, a very rare root in the Pentateuch. In fact, this root appears only two more times in the entire Torah. To understand how it is different from compassion, let us quote the two other instances it appears. The first appears when Bityah, Pharaoh’s daughter, sees Moses in his basket on the Nile, “Opening it, she saw the child crying, so she had pity on him...” (וְהִנֵּה ֶלֶד הַ י אֶ ת וַתִּרְאֵהוּ וַתִּ פְ תּ ַ ח נַעַ ר כֶה בּ ל וַתּ ַ חְ מ עָלָיו). The second is in the Torah’s treatment of a Jew who incites others to worship a false deity. The Torah warns us, “you must not love him nor hearken to him; you eye should not have mercy on him, nor should you pity him; you must not cover up for him” (עָלָיו תְ כַ סּ ֶ ה א וְל ל תַ חְ מ א וְל עָלָיו עֵינְך ס תָ חו וְל אֵ לָיו ְ מַ ע תִ ש וְל לו אבֶה ת א ל).
How Pity is Different from Compassion
What then is the difference between compassion (רַ חֲ מִ ים) and the words we have translated as “pity” (חֶ מְ לָ ה)? Compassion is considered the inner aspect of the sefirah of beauty (tiferet). As such, it lies on the middle axis between love and might (or judgment). In fact, compassion is considered the source of both love and judgment—the opposite pair of emotive faculties that lie on the right and left axes of the sefirot, just above beauty. So, though it would be an over-simplification to say that compassion is a composite of loving-kindness and might, it does include both. One of the ways in which compassion is described in Chasidic writings is that it represents the willingness of a judge to act with leniency because of compassion. In a sense, when an individual acts with compassion, he is trying to include both judgment and love simultaneously in his approach.
Pity (חֶ מְ לָ ה) is different because it tends to flip the verdict entirely—it takes the judgment and completely transforms it into loving-kindness. For example, in Bityah’s case, when she found the baby Moses, he was under the decree made by Pharaoh that all male boys should be drowned in the Nile. Yet, her pity completely reversed the judgment as it were and not only did she save Moses, but she raised him in Pharaoh’s palace. Likewise, the Torah warns us not to let our emotions and care for an inciter get the better of us and convince us to simply cover-up his machinations. Likewise, Lot was guilty of colluding with and enabling the people of Sodom. Thus, the pity that God had on him transformed his verdict from being guilty to being saved.
What we would like to do now is to place the word “pity” in the context of the model of the ten sefirot. To do so, we will now present one of the most important methods of analyzing words using the sefirot.
Permutations and Combinatorics
When constructing partzufim, models based on the Torah’s inner dimension, one of the techniques we often make use of is permutations. The topic of permutations begins with the simple question of how many combinations of n number of things can be made. This is known as the study of Combinatorics in mathematics and its first instance in Torah can be found in Sefer Yetzirah (the Book of Formation) whose contents are attributed to Abraham:
Two stones build two houses; three build six; four build twenty-four; five build one hundred and twenty; six build seven hundred and twenty; seven build five thousand and forty; and beyond this their numbers increase so that the mouth can hardly utter them, nor the ear hear the number of them.
The way to calculate the number of possible combinations of n objects is given by the factorial function, which is written as n! (read: n factorial). The factorial function is defined as the product of all the integers up to and including n. Translating the contents of the text from Sefer Yetzirah above, stones refer to letters and houses to words and thus:
- 2 letters can form 2 words because 2! = 1 ∙ 2 = 2
- 3 letters can form 6 words because 3! = 1 ∙ 2 ∙ 3 = 6
- 7 letters can form 5040 words because 7! = 1 ∙ 2 ∙ 3 ∙ 4 ∙ 5 ∙ 6 ∙ 7 = 5040
Our second step in understanding permutations is based on the well-known fact that most words in Hebrew stem from a three-letter root (there are exceptions). It follows then that a three-letter root can be permuted in 6 different ways, provided that the three letters are different. If two letters are identical there will only be 3 significant permutations.
Three-Letter Roots and the Sefirot
To illustrate how all this connect with the construction of a partzuf/model based on a three-letter root, let us consider the three root letters of God’s essential Name, Havayah, the Tetragrammaton. These are yud-hei-vav (יהו). The 6 possible permutations are: yud-hei-vav, yud-vav-hei, hei-yud-vav, hei-vav-yud, vav-yud-hei, and vav-hei-yud. Since there are six, we would naturally like to correspond them with the six emotive faculties from loving-kindness to foundation. How to go about this? We turn to our sources. We find that both in the Zohar and in the writings of the Arizal, the order of the permutations appears in various contexts. The predominant model used is:
- loving-kindness-chessed חֶ סֶ ד יהו
- might-gevurah גְּ בו ּרָ ה הוי
- beauty-tiferet תִּ פְ אֶ רֶ ת ויה
- victory-netzach נֶצַ ח יוה
- acknowledgment-hod ד הו היו
- foundation-yesod ד יְסו והי
What is the logic behind this model? It is actually quite simple. In Havayah, the letter yud corresponds with the sefirah of wisdom, the letter hei with the sefirah of understanding, and the letter vav with the sefirah of knowledge, as follows:
- wisdom-chochmah חָ כְ מָ ה י
- understanding-binah בִּינָה ה
- knowledge-da’at דַּ עַת ו
The permutations under each letter are the two that begin with that letter. There are slight variations in the order of the two permutations under the hei (ה) and under the vav (ו), but as noted, we present the order that is most ubiquitous in Kabbalah and Chasidic writings.
The next step is to identify which letter of the three-letter root of “pity,” which is חמל, corresponds to which letter of יהו. This requires some knowledge and experience. In our case, the letter corresponding to wisdom is the מ, the letter corresponding to understanding is the ל, and the ח corresponds to knowledge.
- wisdom-chochmah חָ כְ מָ ה מ
- understanding-binah בִּינָה ל
- knowledge-da’at דַּ עַת ח
All that is left now is to substitute the letters of our root חמל, according to the mapping we have found into the partzuf of permutations, and we get:
- loving-kindness-chessed חֶ סֶ ד מלח
- might-gevurah גְּ בו ּרָ ה לחמ
- beauty-tiferet תִּ פְ אֶ רֶ ת חמל
- victory-netzach נֶצַ ח מחל
- acknowledgment-hod ד הו למח
- foundation-yesod ד יְסו חלמ
What we notice immediately is that our root, חמל, the three-letter root of “pity,” appears in the location of the sefirah of beauty (tiferet). Every one of the sefirot has an inner experience and that of beauty is compassion (רַ חֲ מִ ים)! Let us explore the rest of the roots in this partzuf in short:
מלח means salt and represents the might within loving-kindness, alluding to the lower waters (separated from the higher waters by the firmament on the second day of Creation), who love and therefore yearn to rejoin the higher waters.
לחמ means bread and war, alluding to the verse, “Go and make war with my bread [i.e., with Torah].” The next permutation, מחל, means to forgive and it corresponds with victory or eternity, the emotive source of forgiveness. The permutation that corresponds with acknowledgment, למח, does not have a meaning (not every permutation does; there are only 7 three-letter roots in Hebrew all of whose 6 permutations have meaning). This is in keeping with the statement that, “My vigor [i.e., acknowledgment] has turned against me.” Finally, the permutation corresponding with foundation, חלמ, means a dream, which is clearly related to Joseph the tzaddik—the archetypal soul of foundation—who was an expert dream interpreter.
This is a very strong example of how the meaning of words in Hebrew perfectly corresponds with the sefirot.
(from Amudeha Shivah, Vayeira, pp. 95-96 and Sod HaShem LiYerei’av, pp. 102-103)
