• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Daniel, Thou shalt go towards the end, and will rest (Dan 12:13). Daniel asked: “Rest in this world or in the next world?” “Rest in the next world,” was the answer (cf. “They will rest in their beds” Isa 57:2), “and thou shalt stand up to thy lot at the end of days.” Daniel asked, “Shall I be among the resurrected or not?” God answered, “And thou wilt stand up.” Daniel then said, “I know full well that the dead will rise up in various classes, some righteous and some wicked, but I do not know among whom I shall be found.” God answered, “To thy lot.” Daniel then said, “As there is a right end and a left end, I do not know whether I shall go to the right end (l’qets hayamin) or to the end of days (l’qets hayamim).” The answer was, “To the end of the right (l’qets hayamin).” Similarly, David said to the Holy One, blessed be He, “Make me to know my end,” that is, he wished to know to which end he was allotted, and his mind was not at rest ’til the good tidings reached him, “Sit at my right hand” (Ps 110:1). (Zohar Bereshith, 1.63a)

The exegetical subject of this passage is Noah’s flood. The Biblical phrase “the end of all things” summons up the final apocalypse. The Zohar then surveys other places where “the end” is mentioned, including the important passage in Daniel. It can interweave the two passages, gleaning what it can for its depiction of the end of days. It derives two choices-resurrection or not-and Daniel asks: “Will I arise?” The answer is “Yes.”

The next question follows logically: What will his fate be in the resurrection? Two choices are again derived: “to the right,” to a good end, or “to the end of days,” for destruction. Daniel asks again what his final reward will be and is told that his end will be good. The passage depends on a pun between the word for “days” in Hebrew (yamim) and the word for “right” (yamin). “Right” in this case refers to the direction right not vindication. But a good implication derives from the arrangement of the good sepherot (divine spheres) on the right. The categories of this passage are derived from Daniel 12:2, supplemented with the kabbalistic apparatus of the emanations of the spheroth.

Then a conversation between God and David is narrated. David essentially asks the same question, based on Psalm 39:5: “Lord, let me know my end, and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is!” (Ps 39:4; MT Ps 39:5). The answer, the kabbalist says, is to be found in Psalm 110, which narrates that David will be translated to heaven for his final reward, to be enthroned next to God, essentially what Daniel sees in 7:13-14.

The Zohar also equates the stars with the angels on the basis of Job 38:7, “The morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for Joy,” as well as Psalm 148:3, “Praise him, all ye stars of light.” The praises that are sung are the same songs which Israel used in its liturgy, as Israel sings antiphonally with the angels in its services (see Zohar Bereshit I, 231b). The Zohar also mentions the image of the righteous (both Ṣelem [image] and demut [likeness] are used), which have a complicated and difficult relationship with the neshamah. Like the Rabbis, the Zohar describes dying as a kind of atoning sacrifice:

The soul ascends to her place, and the body is given over to its place, in the same way as in an offering the devotion of him who offers ascends to one place, and the flesh to another. Hence, the righteous man is, of a truth, himself an offering of atonement. But he who is not righteous is disqualified as an offering, for the reason that he suffers from a blemish, and is therefore like the defective animals of which it is written, “They shall not be accepted for you” (Lev 22:25). Hence it is said, ‘The righteous are an atonement and a sacrifice for the world.’ (Bereishit I, 65b)

It was for the sake of the righteous that the world was created. The kabbalists considered themselves to be the enlightened of the prophecy