Sapphiric God: - Dr. Wesley Muhammad

Moshe Idel has pointed out, “An entire myth of the passage of Israel from slavery to freedom is here
attributed analogically to God himself, described in highly anthropomorphic terms.” 135
While the sapphire is associated with the divine throne, a number of considerations make it clear that it
is God’s own being that is afflicted here. R. Eleazar ha-Darshan in his Sefer ha-Gematriyot reports the
following tradition from the lost Midrash Abkir: “The likeness of a pavement of sapphire – this alludes [to
the fact that] just as Israel were treading the mortar with their feet to make bricks, so it was, as it were,
above, ‘in all their troubles he was troubled’.” 136 One of the implications of this tradition is that, as the feet
of the Israelites were soiled by an overlay of mortar during their labor, so too were the feet of the
Shekhinah (ragle Shekhinah) covered with sapphire. The significance of this can be fully appreciated only
when we consider the fact that ragle Shekhinah is rabbinic idiom denoting the anthropomorphic, terrestrial
Presence of God, the lower Glory, if you will, cognate with pene ha-Shekhinah, the Face of the Presence,
the fiery kābôd or upper Glory. 137 The further implication is that this anthropomorphic Glory is covered
with sapphires like the feet of the Israelites. 138 This association of the biblical ‘pavement under God’s feet’
with a sapphiric ‘soil’ covering the ragle Shekhinah illuminates a midrash that seems to allude to the
somatic transformation of the divine.
‘But they had no comforter.’ Says the Holy One, blessed be He: ‘It shall be My task to comfort them.’ For in this world
there is dross in them, but in the World to Come, says Zechariah, I have seen them all gold, all of them pure gold: hence it
is written, ‘I have seen, and behold a candlestick all of gold, with a gulah (bowl) upon the top of it-roshah (Zech. IV, 2).
Two amoraim differ on the meaning of ‘gulah’. One reads golah and the other reads go’alah. He who reads ‘golah’
explains it to mean that they had been exiled (gulah) to Babylon and the Shekhinah had accompanied them into exile; as it
says, ‘For your sake I have been sent to Babylon (Isa. XLIII, 14)’. He who reads go’alah renders ‘redeemer’, as it says,
‘Our Redeemer (go’alenu), the Lord of hosts is His name (ib. XLVII, 4),’ and it is written, ‘The breaker is gone up before
them; they have broken forth and passed on, by the gate, and are gone out thereat; and their king is passed on before them,
and the Lord at the head of them-berosham (Micah II, 13).’ 139
We first notice that our midrashist draws an analogy between the eschatological Israel and the golden
menorah seen by Zechariah. Underlying this analogy is the widespread motif of the eschatological somatic
135 Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988) 226.
136 Cited by Idel, Kabbalah, 382, n. 101.
137 As demonstrated by Wolfson, “Images of God’s Feet,” 143-181.
138 The idea that the sapphiric pavement of Exodus 24:10 symbolized the lower, anthropomorphic Glory through which the upper,
luminous Glory is made visually manifest was the esoteric doctrine of the 10 th century philosopher, scientists, and Jewish mystic of
southern Italy Shabbetai Donnolo. See Wolfson, “Images of God’s Feet,” 155-156; idem, “The Theosophy of Shabbetai Donnolo, with
Special Emphasis on the Doctrine of Sefirot in His Sefer \akhmoni,” Jewish History 6 (1992): 281-316; idem, Through a
Speculum, 127-144.
139 Lev. R. 32.8, Soncino translation.
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