"Sefer Yesirah" and Its Contexts. Tzahi Weiss
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who made the heaven and the earth, with all their embellishment/He who bound the sea and established it by the command of his word, he who closed the bottomless pit, and sealed it by his powerful and glorious name.”8
Rather than the name of God creating the world, here it is a guarantee for its existence. It should be noted that creation through speech, familiar from Genesis, is described in the Prayer of Manasseh as an act of restraining the sea—“who bound the sea and established it by the command of His word,” while the name of God is the sealer of the abyss: “who closed the bottomless pit, and sealed it by His powerful and glorious name.” As noted above, it seems that there is no real difference between the creation of the world and sealing the primordial chaos.
Another testimonial to the role of the name of God in creation is to be found in a few verses of the Book of Parables in 1 Enoch. In this account, the creation of the world and the sealing of the abyss are indistinguishable: “he spoke to Michael to disclose him his secret name so that he would memorize this secret name of his so that he would call it up in an oath…. These are the secrets of this oath—and they are sustained by the oath: The heaven was suspended before the creation of the world; and forever! By it the earth is founded upon the water…. By that oath the sea was created.”9 In this text, the mysteries of the ineffable name active in creation include the hanging of the heaven and the creation of the sea.
These three sources offer evidence that the tradition concerning the creation of the world from the name of God, which is not mentioned in the biblical literature, was, in fact, well known in the last centuries BCE. Yet it is only in later sources, from the first or the second century CE onward, that a shift in this tradition can be discerned such that the meaning of the creation of the world by the name of God refers not to the name but to the letters of the name, and thereby to the idea of the creation of the world by the letters of the name of God.
From the Name of God to Its Letters
The Rabbinic Literature
Among a variety of myths about the creation of the world, or ma’aseh bereishit,10 rabbinic literature contains several midrashim about creation from the letters of the name of God11 or sealing the abyss with them.12 The aggadic sources, especially Palestinian ones, contain a number of cosmogenic midrashim that discuss the role of the letters he or yod in the process of creation. From the two midrashim presented by R. Abbahu, one in his own name and the other in the name of R. Yoḥanan, it emerges that the world was created from the letter he.13 So, for example, Genesis Rabbah, as well as other sources, contains a midrash on the word behibram (בהבראם), which means “when they were created”: “When they were created (בהבראם), R. Abbahu said in R. Yoḥanan’s name: ‘He created them with the letter he.’”14
A comparable midrash, also from Genesis Rabbah, arrives at the same conclusion based on the word hashmaima (השמימה), which means “toward heaven”: “R. Abbahu commented thereon: ‘It is not written look at heaven (הבט נא שמים) but toward heaven (השמימה) (Gen 15:5): with this he, I created the world.’”15 Other sources in Genesis Rabbah as well as other rabbinic writings assert a connection between the ineffable name and the letters he and waw. The sages differ as to how to think about this connection:
R. Judah ha-Nasi asked R. Shmuel b. Naḥman: As I have heard that you are a master of haggadah, tell me the meaning of “lift up a song to him who rides upon the arabot, b-YH is His name” (שמו ביה בערבות לרוכב סולו) (Ps. 68:5)…. I asked R. Eleazar, and he did not explain it thus. But the verse trust ye in the Lord forever, for with YH YHWH created the worlds16 (עד עדי ביהוה בטחו עולמים צור יהוה ביה כי) (Isa. 26:4) means: By these two letters did the Lord create His world. Now we do not know whether this world was created with a he or the next world with a yod, but from what R. Abbahu said in R. Yoḥanan’s name, namely, be-hibbaraam (בהבראם) means, with a he created He them, it follows that this world was created by means of a he.17
This midrash, whose subject is the word b-YH (ביה), claims that this world and the world to come were created from the letters he and yod, which make up the word in question. The doubling of God’s name in the verse—YH YHWH—leads R. Eleazar to say that the supposedly abbreviated name YH together with the letter bet (here an ablative indication) does not refer to God but rather to the letters from which the world was created.
In Midrash Tanḥuma to Leviticus, we find a more explicit claim concerning the connection between the creation of the world, the letters he and yod, and the ineffable name, which prompts the question: Why did God create the worlds from the abbreviation of His name and not from the whole name?
When any of you sin in that you have heard a public adjuration, etc. (וגו' אלה קול ושמעה תחטא כי ונפש) (Lev. 5:1). This text is related: Never be rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God (האלהים לפני דבר להוציא ימהר אל ולבך פיך על תבהל אל) (Eccles. 5:1). These [words refer to] human beings who vilify the name of the Holy One, blessed be He. Come and see: when the celestial beings were created, those below were created with half of the name, as stated: for with YH YHWH created worlds (עולמים צור יהוה ביה כי) (Isa. 26:4). But why were they not created with all of it? So that none of them would repeat the full name of the Holy One, blessed be He. Woe to those creatures who vilify the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, in vain.18
This midrash teaches the great importance of the ineffable name; both worlds were created from only two of its letters and not from all four. As a moral lesson, the midrash points to the transgression of invoking the full name of God to no use, the very name, only half of which was employed in the creation of the world.
In a paper dedicated to the sealing of the primeval abyss in texts dating from the first century CE forward, David Sperber points to accounts of this sealing by the engraving of the ineffable name. We learn about the existence of this tradition in an early period from the Prayer of Manasseh, quoted above,19 and similar elements emerge from a Syriac version of the Psalms of Solomon.20 Sperber adds to these some early Christian sources giving variants of the legend.21 The importance of sources is compounded by the light they shed on three rabbinic midrashim concerning the digging of the shittin (pits by the side of the altar)22 by David: the midrashim are in b. Sukkah and Makkot and y. Sanhedrin.23 According to the Babylonian version, it seems that after David dug the shittin, the abyss threatened to wash away the world, to bind it in place, Aḥitophel had to write the ineffable name and throw it inside. Taking into account other Jewish and Christian sources of late antiquity that allude to this matter, we might interpret this midrash as follows: in the process of digging the shittin, David struck the ineffable name, which was a seal on the abyss and therefore had to seal it anew with the name that Aḥitophel wrote.
According to the second version of the midrash, in y. Sanhedrin, in the process of digging, David moved a piece of earthenware that had been thrown into the abyss, an act that almost caused the destruction of the world: “When he removed the clay pot, the great deep surged upward to flood the world.”24 It can be assumed, in this case as well, that the presence of the dislodged rock on which the ineffable name had been engraved was a magical way to avert the eruption of the abyss. If this interpretation is correct, it would seem that there are narratives about the sealing of the abyss with the ineffable name in the rabbinic literature as well—and that the story of the digging of the shittin by David evokes that story.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explicitly connects the ineffable name and the foundation stone. Though this is a relatively late text, it is probable that it preserves early sources. Pseudo-Jonathan recounts that the ineffable name, from which the 310 worlds were created, was engraved on the foundation stone: “And thou shalt put upon the breastplate of judgment the Uraia, which illuminate