At the end of parashat Vayishlach, the Torah describes the annals of Esau, also known as Edom. In 13 verses, we read of 8 Edomite kings who reigned before the first king of Israel as well as of 11 champions from Esau’s lineage.
We may comfortably argue that most of the Arizal’s novel understanding of the Torah are concentrated into these 13 verses. This is a “short parashah” into which the Arizal invested all his intellectual effort. He identified these kings of Edom with the so-called World of Chaos (לַםֹעו הוֹּהַ תּ) that shattered and fell and the reason he expended so much effort into working out its details is because the Mashiach, i.e., the redemption, will come when we successfully take the lights, or revelations, from the World of Chaos and invest them into the vessels of the World of Rectification (i.e., the world of the Kings of Israel), that was rebuilt from the lost energy of the World of Chaos. The Arizal explains that the light, i.e., the revelation of God, in the World of Chaos was too much for the vessels to contain and that caused them to shatter. In other words, though it seems dark and ominous, the World of Chaos associated with Esau is actually the source of powerful and brazen energy, while the World of Rectification, associated with Jacob contains less intense energy, but has wide and strong vessels that do have the power to contain the bold revelations of Godliness that shattered the World of Chaos.
The notion that chaos precedes rectification (and order) is captured in many different statements made by the sages, but its clearest source can be found in the following passage in the Talmud, which describes Creation using the idiom, “first darkness, then light” (רָאֹנְ הו וַהֲ דַר כָאֹוׁחֲשָׁבְ רֵיש):
Rabbi Zeira found Rav Yehudah who was standing at the entrance of his father-in-law’s house and observed that he was in a cheerful mood, and he understood that were he to ask him about anything in the world, he would respond. He asked him, “why do goats walk in front and ewes follow?” He answered, “Just as when the world was created: First there was darkness, then there was light.”
Interestingly, the darkness is likened to the goat (זֵע), whose Hebrew name literally means “brazen” (זָע), another allusion to the brazen and intense light found in the World of Chaos. It follows then that the white-colored ewes that follow the goat allude to the softer, calmer spirit of the vessels of the World of Rectification.
Indeed, the ultimate coming together of Esau and Jacob occurs when Esau’s chaotic, powerful, and brazen energy finds its way into the calm, stable, and fixed vessels of the vessels made by Jacob and his offspring.
Let’s take a moment to consider what we have seen so far. We tend to think of Creation as having started out on a “right foot,” with everything running perfectly. How else should it be? God created a perfect world, which then fell into disarray because of the choices made by Creation. Indeed, the Torah’s first verse seems pleasant enough, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” But then, the second verse seems to already describe some shattering, “And the earth was chaotic and a void and darkness over the abyss....” The order thus seems to be first order and then chaos. True, as the Talmud stated, that first there was darkness (in the second verse) and only in the third verse is light created, “God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” But what do we do about the first verse, which seems to describe a stable state of affairs?
If we carefully read Rashi, we see that he treats the first verse as a type of heading for the account of Creation. In his words, “if you wish to explain it [the first verse] in its plain sense, explain it thus, ‘At the beginning of the Creation of heaven and earth, when the earth was chaotic and void and there was darkness, God said, “Let there be light.”’” Another way to think about this is to look at the life of a newborn. In the beginning, right after birth, everything seems to be going well, except that the newborn is not yet interacting with reality. The moment he or she begins to interact, the result is a shattering of the pristine state they are in. This is because the newborn’s faculties, or vessels, are not yet robust enough to contain the tremendous energy (read: stimuli) its surroundings are bombarding it with.
We can think about a first visit to a new country. From our first visit, we may be very impressed by what we see and hear, but we find it difficult to integrate these sounds and sights into our mind and self exactly because we are so stimulated. Instead, we are left with an impression of what we experienced, which later needs to be processed upon subsequent visits. Likewise, as firstborn, Esau was broken and shattered, unable to contain the tremendous revelations of Godliness that he was privileged to. Eventually, he preferred to sell his firstborn rights to Jacob, who meticulously explored his inheritance and the covenant his grandfather Abraham made with God, creating vessels that could contain the Godliness he was privileged to experience.
In fact, the Kabbalistic take on Jacob sending messengers to Esau at the beginning of this week’s parashah is that Jacob was signaling to Esau that he had constructed enough resilient vessels to contain his brother’s “chaotic energy” and that together they could bring the redemption. But Esau was still not ready. He was still broken or shattered if you will from his inability to contain the infinite Divine energy cast upon him—he was still in a state of chaos—unable and unwilling to cooperate with Jacob.
The Partzuf of the Kings of Edom
Let us now present the partzuf of the kings of Edom and note some of its most important properties. To do this we will need to quote the 9 verses describing them:
These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the Israelites. Bela son of Beor reigned in Edom, and the name of his city was Dinhabah. Bela died and Jobab son of Zerah, from Bozrah, reigned in his stead. Jobab died and Husham of the land of the Teimanites reigned in his stead. Husham died and Hadad son of Bedad, who defeated the Midianites in the country of Moab, reigned in his stead; the name of his city was Avith. Hadad died and Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his stead. Samlah died and Saul of Rehoboth-on-the-river reigned in his stead. Saul died and Ba’al-hanan son of Achbor reigned in his stead. Ba’al-hanan son of Achbor died and Hadar reigned in his stead; the name of his city was Pa’u, and his wife’s name was Meheitabel daughter of Matred daughter of Meizahab.
The first thing to note is the formula, “x reigned... x died” (ְךִֹמְלוַי ... ָמׇתוַי). The understanding is that each of these “kings” represents one of the sefirot—the conduits of Divine revelation—in the World of Chaos and that each reigns, i.e., receives the Divine light of revelation, and then dies, i.e., shatters. The only king whose death is not documented is the eighth, Hadar and so he is not counted among the sefirot of the World of Chaos. We will return to him later.
Another point that is worth mentioning already is that the word “instead of” (תַּחְתָּיו), describing how each king replaced the previous one, indicates that in the World of Chaos, the sefirot are organized one on top of the other. In the World of Rectification, they are organized along three axes. This indicates that the World of Chaos is not balanced as is the World of Rectification. It would therefore follow that in depicting the partzuf of the Kings of Edom, we should use a different structure than the one we usually do:
- knowledge-da’at דַּעַת: Bela
- loving-kindness-chessed חֶסֶד: Jobab
- might-gevurah גְּבוּרָה: Husham
- beauty-tiferet תִּפְאֶרֶת: Hadad son of Bedad
- victory-netzach and acknowledgment-hod נֶצַח-דֹהו: Samlah
- foundation-yesod דֹיְסו: Saul
- kingdom-malchut מַלְכוּת: Ba’al-hanan
The next thing that we notice is that this partzuf begins with the sefirah of knowledge (da’at), not a very common phenomenon. In other words, even though the World of Chaos contains sefirot of crown, wisdom, and understanding, the shattering of the vessels began with the sefirah of knowledge. This parallels Adam and Eve’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge causing the shattering in a sense of their life in the Garden of Eden.
What we can learn from this parallel is that both the World of Chaos and the reality of the Garden of Eden are lost when consciousness begins. In the World of Chaos, this sense of self-consciousness is described as the kingly will to rule alone, captured in the phrase, “I will reign” (אָנָּאְךֹאֶמְלו) which each of the sefirot from knowledge and down is said to have “felt.” In the Garden of Eden self-consciousness translated into the hubris of being like God, knowing good and evil. In both accounts, an unrectified state of self-consciousness brought about the shattering of reality.
Another interesting feature of this partzuf is that the two sefirot victory and acknowledgment are one. These two sefirot correspond to the right and left legs in the abstract form of man. In Chasidic thought, these two sefirot’s inner experience is described as active confidence (in victory-netzach) and passive confidence (in acknowledgment-hod). With regard to our trust and confidence in God, active confidence means trusting that God has given me the necessary abilities to solve a problem. Passive confidence means trusting that what I do not have the ability to bring about a certain outcome, God will ensure that what is needed will indeed come about. Active confidence means that God gives me the power to bring about an outcome while passive confidence means placing trust in God, that indeed the outcome will take place.
Normally, in our present reality in the World of Rectification, these two forms of trust, though similar, correspond to two separate body parts, the right leg and the left leg. Both are needed to make progress (i.e., walking requires both feet working together) because in a rectified reality progress depends on achieving cooperation. But in the World of Chaos, both forms of confidence came as one and the all-important lesson of cooperation was lost thus reflecting the sentiment felt by each of the kings/sefirot of Edom/chaos, “I will reign.” In other words, I will be the sole ruler, not needing anyone else to work and cooperate with. In the World of Rectification, we all learn the most important lesson that “every person is completed or rectified by others.”
Marriage and Rectification
Let us return to the last eighth king of Edom, Hadar. Even though he is one of the kings, his death is not related. Why is this? How is he different?
We notice that Hadar is the only king whose wife is mentioned by name: Meheitavel. In the World of Chaos, the kings do not wed. To marry is a sign of rectification as forging a covenant between a husband and wife requires a sense of self-nullification, the most important ingredient missing from the World of Chaos.
When a person has no ability to nullify themselves, which means that they feel they deserve all the credit for what they have achieved, they are on a path to self-destruction, on the path to being shattered. The ability to cooperate and self-nullification are two of the traits that make the World of Rectification stable and resilient. When Esau is eventually ready to cooperate and nullify to Jacob, we will see how his chaotically powerful energy is harnessed into the stable and robust vessels of Torah life, bringing about the redemption.
(based on Chasdei David HaNe’emanim, vol 8)
