A complete AI translation of the the Maharal of Prague’s Gevurot Ha’Shem, a table of contents, and my commentary. The translation and toc both include my annotations.
Gevurot Ha’Shem is a grand and peculiar 16th century commentary on Exodus + Haggadah. I am dividing it into four parts: [1] The Exodus narrative is completed in chapter 42 with the splitting of the Red Sea (Israel emerging and becoming holy) and war with Amalek (Israel becoming supreme, but not yet completely). [2] After the historical-metaphysical gloss, the Gevurot Ha’Shem assumes a different register, slipping into ritual, chapters on Passover related to mitzvot and commentary on the Haggadah: bread of affliction, matzah, and 4 cups [3] Then, thick readings of Hallel-Psalms that magnify the glory and mercy of God in praise and song. [4] Final chapters on place and the Temple in Jerusalem. The Maharal places Exodus and Passover in a rich frame that is both worldly and metaphysical. Exodus is Physics, coming into existence/actuality of perfected form in a material world, volatile, which has no actuality.
Intellect/Torah/Israel/Temple/God are in the middle and separate (nivdal) from matter, the world of extension and multiplicity. The world of nature is determined by opposites. Form, matter, chaos, potential –God is separate from all existents, Israel separate from nations. The primary miracle is sustenance, the sustaining power of God in a volatile existence. The physical world is potential, not really actual (only God is complete actuality) (chapters 41, 52). Matter has three dimensions—length, width, and height—has six faces: the upper face, the lower face, the right face, the left face, the front face, and the back face. These are the six faces of the world. These six faces are opposite each other; the middle, which is not a face, stands in the center, is considered a separate entity. (chapter70).
The world is composed of polar opposites: absence and existents, existence and non-existence: “Although opposites are opposed by their nature, nevertheless, in that opposites together complete the whole, for this reason, they join together to complete the whole. Therefore, Israel and Egypt, although they are opposites by their nature, nevertheless, the thing and its opposite complete the whole, and they have a connection together. Therefore, Israel dwelled in Egypt, and Abraham in Ur of the Chaldeans, because the two opposites together are the whole” (chapter 5). Absence clings to existences, and because of the absence that clings to existences, another form occurs. It turns out that the form that occurs follows the thing in which the absence is, for the absence that is in the existence itself brings about another form. This is the Physics that explain the place of Moses in the palace of Pharaoh, the Messiah at the gate of Rome. The holy kingdom of Israel, which has an inner divine rank, grows out of an unholy kingdom (chapter 18).
Water is the exemplar of nature-materiality, constantly and continuously operating but with no actual existence (chapter 41). Without enduring stable form, water throughout the Gevurot Ha’Shem is a force of primal destruction. For its part, the faith of Abraham is a standing in one’s place in the wave of the world; withstanding the wave, sustained in the face of opposing nations, sustaining existence in the middle of non-existence and absence (chapter 8, see also chapter 17 and throughout under “water”). Moses is the perfect separate form drawn from the waters (chapter 18). So conceived, matter is not in actuality, for all matter is in potential, to change its state by moving from place to place (chapter 46).
In the strange Physics of Exodus, humans have the advantage of form (unlike formless water). Because water is the removal of the form of existence, and when there is sin in the world, the Holy One, blessed be He, removes the form (chapter 14). The form of human essence includes body and soul (chapter 43). Exodus from the house of bondage indicates separation and distinction from the material, subjugated and passive. The separation of the Hebrew slaves from the material indicates a level distinct from the physical (chapter 46). Exodus is the power of movement manifest in the mitzvah Tefillin, the tefillin of the head and of the arm, which together are the power of life. The beginning of the power of movement is from the brain, the power of movement in the forehead. Therefore, when a person desires to move, he first moves his face, for there is the power of movement which completes itself in the arm. Movement is the life of the living being (chapter 39). The human person (Adam-Jacob) receive the image of God. Adam nullifies form in the material, whereas Jacob nullifies the material in form (chapter 66).
God is YHWH, the Unique name, the beginning and cause of existents, order and arranges and destroys, separate from the world, separate power attached to Israel. God’s lovingkindness lies in sustaining all beings in the world with sustenance. The very essence of creation, being an effect, is lacking and needs sustenance.
The Physics of Exodus from Egypt is strange-worldly. Exodus/Passover/spring is the volatile power of the virtual, the beginning of existence (chapter 46) or the coming into existence and stable actuality. The Maharal calls this a deep matter. “Only God can overcome nature and remove Israel from Egypt. Anything that is in potential and comes into actuality can only come into actuality through the Lord, who alone is in complete actuality. This is because He is separate from matter, as all matter is in potential, and anything with a material component cannot be in complete actuality.” The metaphysics of Exodus is the perfection-actualization of Israel: “When Israel was in Egypt, and the Lord brought them into actuality to be brought out from their domain, they were certainly like a fetus being born” (chapter 52). Before Israel left Egypt, they had no existence at all, “like a fetus swallowed in its mother’s womb, so they were swallowed in Egypt under their authority. When they left Egypt, it was as if they came into existence, and for this, it was established to say (Pesachim 116b), “from darkness to light.” (chapter 59).
In this meta-physical cosmos, redemption is separation from connection. Redemption only happens when one is separated from others and stands on one’s own. Our world is a world of composition, redemption is simplicity, from a separate simple world [chapter 51, bread of affliction]. The Gevurot Ha’Shem revolves around place, domain (reshut), and the Temple. God removing Israel from foreign domains of the nations in which they suffer distress. The final word is on place and non-connection and Temple (chapters 69-72). At the center of extension, “the Temple is the whole, for the Temple is not a part, as you do not find anything joined to it, like you find with the heavens and the earth” (chapter 47). All matter has the extension of sides. The nature of matter is the extension of dimensions (front-back, up-down, right-left). The middle, which stands in the center, relates to something non-material, having no dimension, and is therefore called “the holy palace,” sanctified or separate from the material into which it is embedded, connected to God and prepared to receive the impression of God’s image.
