GUIDE 1:65
THE WORD OF GOD
This chapter, like the last, is a late lexical chapter. The terms under consideration are “saying” and “speaking,”
omer and dibbur. The terms are synonymous and homonymous, since they are interchangeable, and since both
possess the same set of three entirely different meanings. Michael Friedlander explains the purpose of this lexical
chapter in the current sequence of Guide chapters:
“That is, if a person is convinced that even the attributes of existence and unity are not predicated of God,
in the ordinary sense of these terms, because every notion of a real attribute is inadmissible in reference to
Him, he need not be told that speech, as an attribute, is inadmissible; for many would admit the attribute
of existence and unity, and would still reject that of speech. Some of the Mohammedan Theologians
considered the Word of God as an attribute co-existing with Him from eternity to eternity. According to
the theory of some Jewish philosophers, [by contrast] the Word of God emanated from Him, as all His
other acts, and on that account it cannot be considered as an [eternal] attribute of God. Although the
Divine Word, or the Torah, is said in the Talmud and the Midrash to have existed two thousand years
anterior to the creation of the universe, it was believed to be a thing created and limited in time.” (note 1,
ad loc.)
The Arabic for “word” or “speech” is kalam. Kalam came to be the name generally applied to Muslim theology.
In the last six chapters of this section of the Guide, Maimonides systematically attacks Kalam theology. It is
precisely on the issue of the word of God, and how the Kalam understood it, that Maimonides directed his
strongest criticism. This issue is also the target of his attribution chapters (Guide 1:51-60. See my notes below
on Wolfson and on The Uncreated Qur’an).
SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER
Since, in the chapters devoted to the rejection of the divine attributes, we had gone so far as to reject existence and
unity as eternal attributes of God in their ordinary significations, it is no stretch to realize that the divine word
cannot be an eternal Logos. That is to say, the divine word does not exist as an eternal separate soul imbued with
the forms of all things, which God needs as an instrument to effectuate creation (See my essay on Logos, Guide
1:21). Maimonides then shows that the words for speech, amar and dibbur, both carry three meanings: verbal
speech, thought, and will. Only the two latter meanings apply when amar and dibbur occur in the divine context
in scripture. He then produces a plethora of proof-texts for these definitions, more than would be needed to
support them. He employs these citations to show us the difference between Mosaic prophecy and the prophecies
of other seers, and to show how divine thought differs from human thought. The point is that we ascribe thought
and will to God only because we borrow them from human experience. We have no experience of direct
unmediated creation by our thoughts and volitions alone, and so we say that God “commands” these things, in the
same way that a person commands an action. Conversely, from our vantage, it is through such “words” that the
divine “voice” inspires us. Nonetheless, ultimately, it does not matter whether this inspiration comes from a voice
that we actually heard or from a sound that emerged in our prophetic dreams and trances.
* * *
See explanation of my methodology in Chapter 1:1, “Introduction to the Lexical Chapters of the Guide”.
OMER, DIBBUR (SAYING, SPEAKING) HOMONYM
1. Verbal speech
2. Thought
3. Will
Of these three definitions, only the last is attributable to God in any sense. I come to this because only the last
two citations for “will” relate to God. All the rest of Maimonides’ proof-tests relate to human speech, thought or
will. Whenever the Bible says that God “speaks,” we must discover the metaphorical meaning for that term. That
meaning is will. God wills things to exist, but in doing so, His will is only Himself, not a separate entity. Even
when dibbur is supposed to represent divine thought, Definition 2, Maimonides frequently maintains that for God,
thought and will are synonyms (See, A. Ivry, “Providence, Divine Omniscience, and Possibility,” 184, note 32, in
Maimonides, a Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Buijs, 1998).
When revelation brings speech to the prophets, God creates this utterance. This is the dibbur ha-nivra, the
counterpart to the created light, the or ha-nivra (See my comments to the last chapter). Maimonides shares this
notion of a created utterance with Saadia Gaon (Book of Knowledge and Belief, 2:12). It is their version of the
Logos, except that God creates it. This created utterance is the intermediary, the active intellect, which brings
revelation to the prophets. The active intellect as created emanation is the unique doctrine of medieval neo-
Platonized Aristotelianism. This created word is the Torah. Since God creates the revelation (haskama umateinu
sh’hatora brua, ha-kavana b’kakh ki divaro ha-myukhas lo nivra), it follows that the prophecy is not merely from
the prophet’s own imagination (m’et ha-shem hem, lo m’hekra daatam v’raionam), but has a peculiar existence of
its own.
Maimonides contrasts his Logos with the Logos of Islam, which is the Qur’an. The Qur’an is the “inlibrated”
eternal uncreated word of God (See my comments on 1:21. “Inlibrated” is Wolfson’s coinage meant to contrast
with the incarnated Logos of Christianity in John 1:1). Even though God expresses his will in the Torah, the
Torah, by contrast, is not eternal. It is a divine creation.
When God creates anything, whether it is the world, or man, or the created word, He does it by “willing” it. Thus,
if God wants something it automatically exists. The “wanting” part of the sentence is merely a verbal concession
to human experience, for God does not change as man does when He wants to make something. We understand
this by saying that God commands something to exist. Maimonides demonstrates that when God “commands”
there really is no speech or command involved. His proof is that when God said, “Let there be light,” He said
nothing, because speech must have an audience and none had been created yet. “God said, Let there be light”
really means, “God willed, Let there be light.” Indeed, as Pirkei Avot 5:1 already pointed out, the ten utterances
of creation are really just one divine will (which, according to Avot, the Torah divides into ten to create a system
of reward and punishment). Unlike human will, divine will is itself the divine action.
Instances of Definition 1 Contextualized:
Maimonides usually does not quote just for his ostensible point. These quotes tell a more complex story. Thus,
the first two quotes tell us more than that omer and dibbur mean verbal speech. They intimate the difference
between the prophecy of Moses and that of other prophets.
“And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake
(yedabber), and God answered him by a voice (kol).” (Exodus 19:19)
In Guide 2:33, Maimonides says that at Sinai, “Moses alone was addressed by God.” According to him, the kol
contained the undifferentiated noise that the people at Sinai heard, as well as the clear message to Moses from
God Himself. Moses, the one who carries the word, is the intermediary. By contrast, Maimonides’ second quote
is about all the other prophets:
“And Pharaoh said (va-yomer) unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and [there is] none that can interpret
it: and I have heard say of thee, [that] thou canst understand a dream (ti’shma khalom) to interpret it.”
(Genesis 41:15)
(Pines, Friedlander and Schwarz all say that “And Pharaoh said” refers to Exodus 5:5, but I follow Kafiḥ who
says the proof-text is Genesis 41:15, which is the prior, and therefore preferable quotation.) The KJV has Pharaoh
saying to Joseph “thou canst understand a dream.” The KJV is already an elucidation, since the word translated
as “understand” is ti’shma, meaning, “you can hear” a dream to interpret it. The point is that what is “spoken”
and “heard” is the prophetic “communication,” the dibbur ha-shem, not a corporeal utterance that men can hear.
Non-Mosaic prophets all require an intermediary to transmit the divine revelation to them. In this case, Pharaoh’s
dream is the intermediary between God and Joseph, once it had passed through Joseph’s mind. It is a created
“word,” not something Pharoah dreamed up himself. His revelation came via the active intellect, which
sometimes favors far lesser men with the lowest level of inspiration (Guide 2:45). This intermediary is the same
notion as the sefira malchut in Jewish esotericism, i.e. the tenth emanation. Maimonides calls this intermediary
the “created voice,” “created light,” “angel,” “ishim,” etc. He says that “there is no difference” whether man
learns of that will by one of these means or another (beyn sh’noda b’kol nivra o sh’noda b’derekh m’darkhei ha-
navua asher n’varam).
Instances of Definition 2 Contextualized:
Definition 2 is thought in the mind of man. Maimonides subtly sends a negative message through the next four
proof-texts. The train of ideas in these passages is that human thought begins as “vanity,” which leads to
“perversity,” resulting in God’s abandonment, and, ultimately, to thoughts of murder. I recall the Yom Kippur
prayer Maaseh Eloheinu, which contrasts the will of God with the thought of man: “The work of God! He saves
from the grave, those borne by him;....The work of man! His thoughts are of mischief (m’zima).”
“Then said (v’amarti) I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was
I then more wise? Then I said (v’dibbarti) in my heart, that this also [is] vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 2:15)
Maimonides begins with two quotations from the same verse in Ecclesiastes. The ostensible point is that “I said”
means “I thought.” This passage employs forms of both omer and dibbur to mean thought. Such thought of men,
when devoid of God, is pointless vanity.
“Thine eyes shall behold strange women (zarot), and thine heart shall utter (v’livekh ydabber) perverse
things (tahpukhot).” (Proverbs 23:33)
Rashi explains, “When you will become drunk, it will burn in you and entice you to ogle harlots.” Zarot is the
feminine plural of “strange” or “stranger,” but rabbinic tradition took it as synonymous with zonot, the usual word
for harlots in Proverbs. Prurient references in Maimonides support his understanding that we cannot express
creation ex nihilo except through the metaphor of procreation. It is also possible to understand zarot as a
reference to idolatry, avoda zara, i.e., “strange service.” Maimonides quotes this passage to show that our
reliance on the creative power of our unaided thought leads us to deify our imaginings.
“[When thou saidst], Seek ye My face; my heart said (amar) unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek. Hide
not Thy face (al ta’ster panekha) [far] from me; put not Thy servant away in anger: Thou hast been my
help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation.” (Psalms 27:8-9)
The Psalmist refers back to Sinaitic revelation, when the people, terrified by what they saw and heard, begged
Moses to receive the revelation in their stead. The Psalmist also recalls that Moses sought God’s face, “Thy face,
Lord, will I seek,” but was only given the revelation of the “back” (cf. my comments on Guide 1:21). Thus, even
Moses only learns of the work of God—He cannot achieve knowledge of or unity with the essence of God. What
troubles the Psalmist is the irresistable desire of the human heart for the essence of God, which it can never know.
This desire leads (in verse 9) to hester panim, the “hiding of the face,” which is the abandonment of man by God
(al ta’ster panekha). The message, once again, is that unaided human thought displaces God.
“And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said (va-
yomer) in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob:
And these words of Esau her elder son were told to Rebecca….” (Genesis 27:41-42)
Since Esau only thought about killing Jacob, the Rabbis ask who told Rebecca his plans. Rashi, following the
Midrash, Genesis Rabbah 67:9, explains that divine inspiration told her what Esau was thinking “in his heart,”
i.e., she got the information through prophecy. Nevertheless, this prophecy was “told” to her, which means that it
came to her through an intermediary, the active intellect. What Esau “said in his heart” connects to the previous
proof-texts. The vain perversity of man’s unaided thought leads to God hiding His face when man plots murder.
This bridges to the next group of three proof-texts for Definition 3, where the human will leads in each case to
thoughts of murder:
Instances of Definition 3 Contextualized:
“And Ishbibenob, which [was] of the sons of the giant, the weight of whose spear [weighed] three
hundred [shekels] of brass in weight, he being girded with a new [sword], thought (lit., said— va-yomer)
to have slain David.” (2 Samuel 21:16)
The Bible never again mentions Ishbibenob. He was Goliath’s brother (Talmud, Sanhedrin 95b). The quote
shows that “saying” sometimes means “willing.” His will is to murder David. Similarly:
“And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest (sayest—omer) thou to kill me, as
thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said (va-omar), Surely this thing is known.” (Exodus
2:14)
Rashi thinks “sayest thou,” implies that Moses slew by speech, that is, by verbally invoking the Tetragrammaton
(Midrash Tanchuma, Shemoth 10). Maimonides would not favor this interpretation since we do not invoke the
name for our own purposes. Rather, “saying” means intending, willing. “Sayest thou to kill me” means: is it
Moses’ will to kill the Jew? Note also that when Moses “said, Surely this thing is known,” he is really only
thinking, not speaking.
“But all the congregation bade (said—va-yomru) stone them with stones. And the glory of the Lord
appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel.” (Numbers 14:10)
This comes after the spies have returned with their terrifying report of giants in the land of Israel. “Said” to stone
them, means intended to stone them. They would have stoned the spies Joshua and Caleb had the glory of the
Lord not appeared in the Tabernacle before all of the Jews. The appearance of the glory of the Lord alerts us to
the question of whether this was a physical manifestation (see last essay, below).
At the end of the chapter, there are two more proof-texts for Definition 3, “will,” but now they concern the
“speech” of God, not of man. Note that no proof-text for “thought” is about divine thought.
“By the word (bidvar) of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His
mouth (u’v’ruakh piv).” (Psalms 33:6)
Maimonides quotes the entire verse but breaks it into two quote-shards by inserting the word kmo, i.e., “like” in
the middle, meaning that the first clause of the verse is “like” the second clause. He explains:
“‘His mouth,’ and ‘the breath of his mouth,’ are undoubtedly figurative expressions, and the same is the
case with ‘His word’ and ‘His speech.’ The meaning of the verse is therefore that they [the heavens and
all their host] exist through His will and desire.”
The point is that God does not require a creative word or any other intermediary to effectuate His creative will.
See my note below, Wolfson on the Word of God.
“And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there
under an oak, that [was] by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said unto all the people, Behold, this
stone shall be a witness unto us; for it hath heard all the words (imrei) of the Lord which He spake
(dibber) unto us: it shall be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God.” (Joshua 24:26-27)
These are Joshua’s last words. Since the verse uses both the words (imrei) and the speech (dibber) of God in the
same context, they are synonymous. The word of God that Joshua refers to is the actual revelation given to
Moses at Sinai. There were no verbalized words since God willed the prophecy in thought to Moses. Moreover,
that part which Joshua wrote was “witnessed” by a stone that “heard” the words. Obviously, no stone witnesses
or hears a speech. The passage means that God communicated His will as a command to the people so clearly
that even a stone “understands” it. This command is God’s created communicative word. See note below.
In summary, we learn from these quotes that the words “speaking” and “saying” mean intending and willing,
especially when used by God. Additionally, we learn that Moses prophesied without mediation, while all other
prophets received their revelation from an intermediary. Sometimes the prophet’s intermediary is in the form of a
created voice. Whatever the form, it is the active intellect emanated from God. This same emanation is the
ongoing source of the creation of souls and the emanation of forms into unformed matter, and the Bible represents
this process by images of procreation. We do not explain this publicly due to the law of Mishnah Hagiga. One
reason for this law is that our unaided thought leads to “perverse things.”
WOLFSON ON THE WORD OF GOD
In the following compressed sentence, Harry Austryn Wolfson sums up a thousand years of lore on the dibbur
hashem, but it needs to be unpacked:
“A view like that of Saadia and Halevi, consisting of a denial of an uncreated word, an affirmation of a
created communicative word, and a denial of created creative word, is to be found in Maimonides.”
(Repercussions of the Kalam in Jewish Philosophy, Harvard, 1979, p. 111, my emph.)
What he means is that the main tradition in Jewish philosophy had a unified view of the meaning of divine speech
in its threefold manifestation in medieval thought.
The problem, he explains, arose when Jews in the Middle East learned that the Christians and the Muslims
entertained the concept of an eternal word, and that this word manifested itself as the pre-existent uncreated Christ
or Qur’an, respectively. This reminded them of their rabbinic tradition that the word of God, in the sense of the
Torah, was also pre-existent, but, by contrast, God created this word. According to Wolfson, Midrash Konen, a
late minor Midrash, (cited in Repercussions, p. 86 from Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash) expresses the concept of a
Torah that precedes the world, in terms that could be a repercussion of a contemporary Muslim account. The
Midrash (elaborating on Jerusalem Talmud Shekalim 6:1 49d) states:
“Should you say it (the Torah) was written down on a book, the answer is: no animal and beast were as
yet created from whose skin a parchment could be made upon which to write. Should you say it was
written on silver or gold or any other metals, the answer is: none of these was yet created or smelted or
mined. Should you say it was written on wood, the answer is: no trees were yet created in the world. On
what, then, was it written? It was written with black fire upon white fire and it was tied to the arm of
God, for it is said, ‘At His right hand was a fiery law unto them’ (Deuteronomy 32:2).”
Wolfson says, “If we assume that the Midrash Konen was composed in Palestine when it was already under
Muslim rule, then its elaboration on what the pre-existent Torah could not be may taken to be aimed at a
conception of the pre-existent Qur’an...held by a certain Muslim sect.” That Muslim sect’s commentary stated,
“the separate letters, and the bodies written upon, and the colors in which the writing is executed, and everything
between the two covers, are pre-existently eternal.” (Repercussions, p.86)
With this background in mind, Wolfson says that when Saadia, Ha-Levi and Maimonides agreed on the “denial of
an uncreated word,” it meant that the Torah is not a Logos pre-existently eternal with God, like this concept of the
existence of the Qur’an. They denied this because it would have meant that God was in partnership with another
power worthy of worship. As for the appearance of an eternal uncreated Torah in Midrash Konen and a few other
places, Wolfson reviews the outstanding Jewish spokesmen of the early middle ages up through Maimonides and
finds that none of them take this assertion literally.
When Wolfson says that they agreed on “an affirmation of a created communicative word,” this means that God
created a supernal Torah that communicates law to the prophets in their prophetic state. This supernal Torah is
the active intellect. Later, Maimonides will explain this process of prophecy (Guide 2:36). This created
communicative word may also be the created emanation that “communicates,” so to speak, souls into ensouled
beings.
When Wolfson says that they agreed on the “denial of a created creative word,” he refers to the belief of some
Muslims in “the word of God in the sense of the word ‘Be’ (Ar.: kun) with which God created the world”
(Repercussions, 91; Kalam, 145; Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, trans., L.E. Goodman, 134). The supposition of a
“created creative word” was their answer to how the completely incorporeal God created a corporeal world. By
contrast, the Jewish philosophers all held to the miracle of ex nihilo creation, dispensing with the need for any
other power. Instead of the creative word “Be,” they posited the divine will, understanding that the will could not
be a separately subsisting entity from God.
Thus, in our chapter, Maimonides explains that God did not utter such a creative word since speech requires an
audience, and there was none at the time of creation. Apparently, even the creative word “Be” would have
required an audience to hear it.
Still, we fail to understand how just wanting something could bring it to be without some intermediate action or
command. But this is just a shortcoming of our corporealized imaginations. God has the power to create just by
wanting something to occur. His will is itself His action.
THE UNCREATED WORD IN THE QUR’AN
The notion of the Qur’an as the uncreated word of God was controversial in early Islam. The controversy began
as an academic dispute but became a violent political struggle (Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy,
Columbia Univ., 1970, 78-79, and see Schwarz, footnotes 3, 4 and 15 ad loc.). Both sides thought of the Qur’an
as the “preserved tablet” (al-lawh 'l-mahfuz) kept in heaven before its revelation to Muhammad (see next chapter,
Guide 1:66). The dispute turned on whether the theologians took the divine attribute of speech as an “essential”
attribute or merely an “action” attribute. The essentialist theologians understood the divine word to be eternal
with God, while their opponents took it as a non-eternal creation. The Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma’mūn, who was part
of the latter group, made the doctrine of created Qur’an the law for his empire. In 833, he instituted an
inquisition, the Miḥnah, to enforce that law. The violence of this inquisition led to a reaction. Ahmad ibn Hanbal
(780 – 855), who suffered physically under this inquisition, led this reaction. He opposed every attempt to make
intellectual sense of Islamic dogma. Majid Fakhry tells of one unsuccessful but paradigmatic attempt to introduce
a moderate approach to ibn Hanbal:
“Ibn Hanbal’s stand on this question is illustrated by his reaction to the otherwise moderate approach to
the question of the creation of the Koran of a leading theologian of the period, al-Hussain al-Karābīsī
(d. 859), who, despite his accredited sound learning, we are significantly told, inclined toward scholastic
theology. Having declared on one occasion that whereas the Koran, as the speech of God, is uncreated,
its words, as recited by readers, are created, he submitted his view to Ibn Hanbal for his verdict. Ibn
Hanbal declared it to be a heresy (bid’ah). Perfectly willing to modify his stand, al-Karābīsī then
declared both the Koran and its written and spoken words uncreated. Incapable of being appeased by
such latitude, Ibn Hanbal declared the latter view equally heretical, thereby underscoring the futility and
perniciousness of the very inquiry into the nature of the Koran, that the ancients, he maintained, had so
piously avoided.” (p. 79)
In our chapter, Maimonides makes an important statement about God relative to this Muslim controversy. While
explaining that God does not employ voice or sound, he proceeds to elaborate that neither does He have:
“...a soul in which the thoughts reside, and that these thoughts are things superadded to His essence (v’lo
sh’hu italei baal nefesh sh’khakako ha-inyanim b’nafsho); but we ascribe and attribute to Him thoughts in
the same manner as we ascribe to Him any other attributes.”
Schwarz, note 15, explains this statement as a denial of one theory of the uncreated Qur’an as “intellectual
speech” subsisting in the mind of God:
“Perhaps Maimonides’ purpose here is to deny the position of the Muslim theologian Al-Baqillani
(d. 1013). The Mutazila (the sect of theologians who accepted the Qur’an as created) was opposed by
those who held that it was eternal and uncreated (the Ashariya). Some of them exaggerated to the point of
absurdity that the voice of the Muslim reading the Qur’an was also uncreated, and even the paper and the
ink on which it was written were eternal and uncreated. To resolve the apparent absurdity, Al-Baqillani
produced the Asharite solution that the Qur’an was the “intellectual speech” (dibbur ha-nefesh) of God
which was eternal, and these thoughts were conceived (hitgalmutam) in the created form of the actual
book of the Qur’an.” (My trans.)
This view of the Qur’an as an eternal “intellectual speech,” is just a camouflaged version of the eternal Logos as
partner with God. That is why Maimonides so strongly opposed the concept, denying that God had such a “soul”
in which “thoughts reside.”
IS THERE A PHYSICAL “CREATED VOICE” OR A “CREATED LIGHT”?
The major Jewish intellectual leaders rejected this attributist notion of an eternal word of God inlibrated in the
Torah, since they understood that God has no partners.
However, the prophetic works frequently feature what seems like a real word or a real light, and these statements
could neither be ignored nor explained away as metaphors. (On all of this, including most of the quoted material
below, see Wolfson, Kalam, 274-276, and Repercussions, 87-113.)
This interpretive tradition goes back, at least, to Philo, who read the statement in Exodus 19:19 about God’s
“voice” to mean that “At that time God wrought a miracle of a truly holy kind by bidding an invisible sound to be
created in the air,” by which he meant an audible, articulate voice. But by “invisible” he meant that this voice was
incorporeal. Nonetheless, the Mutazilites of the early Kalam, like Nazzam (c. 775 – c. 845), who were, perhaps
influenced by Philo, made his incorporeal “voice” into a physical body. As a Mutazilite, Nazzam argued that this
voice was created rather than eternal, thereby distinguishing it from the incarnated “Word” of the Christians. He
wrote, stressing both the physicality and the createdness of this voice, that “The Word of the Creator is a body,
and this body is a sound which is articulate, composite, audible, and it is the work of God and His creation”
(Kalam, 274).
This was precisely the view of Saadia Gaon (882-942), who said, “The real meaning of the term ‘speech’
(al kaul : ha-dibbur) implied in this expression (‘The Lord spoke’) is that God created a word (kalām : dibbur)
which he conveyed through the medium of the air to the hearing of the prophet and the people” (Emunot v’Deot,
2:12, 128, Rosenblatt, Yale 1976, cf., Comm. on Sefer Yetzira, 4:1). Saadia claimed that when this voice is
created, a corporeal light is also created:
“God has a special light which He creates and makes manifest to the prophets in order that they may infer
therefrom that it is a prophetic communication emanating from God that they hear. When one of them
sees this light he says, ‘I have seen the Glory of the Lord’...When they beheld this light they were unable
to look upon it on account of its power and brilliance...”
Moses asked for divine aid to see this light (“the Glory”), but God covered him “until the first rays of this light
had passed, because the greatest strength of every radiant body is contained in its initial approach.” After that,
according to Saadia, God removed the covering so that Moses could see “the back of the light” (Rosenblatt, 130).
Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141) agreed, though he entertained a slight reservation. Still, he refused to make the
“word” a symbol for will or intention, but accepted that it was a real word or sound. “We do not know how the
[divine] intention became corporealized so that it became a word which struck our ear....so that the air which
touched the prophet’s ear assumed the form of sounds which conveyed the matters to be communicated by God to
the prophet and the people.” He immediately covers himself by making this reservation, “I do not maintain that
this is exactly how these things occurred; the problem is, no doubt, too deep for me to fathom” (Kuzari, 1:89 and
1:91, p. 63, Hirschfeld trans., Schocken 1971). But this reservation did not stop him from saying that God
“adapted the air to giving the sound of the Ten Commandments and formed the writing engraved on the tables”
(2:6, p. 87). He even dresses it in scientific language, “The Glory of God is that fine substance (ha-guf ha-dak)
which follows the will of God, assuming any form God wishes to show the prophet....including the Glory which
the prophet’s eye could bear” (4;3, p. 211).
Bakhya ibn Pakuda (c. 1050- c. 1120) wisely steered clear of this discussion, merely referring his readers to
Saadia’s writings (Hovot, 1:10, v.1, 129, Feldheim 1996). Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-1164) rejects the whole idea.
He explains that the “voice” does not refer to a corporeal voice but to “the true speech of which the speech of the
mouth is a likeness.” Ibn Ezra’s dibbur is not a created word in the air, but an intellectual “true speech.” It is an
entirely internal realization, which God causes the prophet to discover by his own reason (Repercussions,
106-107. Strongly contra: Isaac Husic, A History of Jewish Philosophy, 191, JPS, 1944).
Maimonides made a number of statements more or less directed to this subject, some of which I have canvassed
below, though there are undoubtedly more. They replicate the positions of his predecessors, but it is hard to say
which he adopts.
In Mishna Torah, Ysodei 8:3, Maimonides makes a statement that appears to support the idea of a created word
heard by physical ears. Attacking false prophets who would change the Torah, he said:
“But with our eyes we saw, and with our ears we heard the divine voice even as he (the claimant to
prophecy) also heard it (ele b’eineinu raionua u’v’azinu shmanua kmo sh’shma hu). To what may this be
compared? To persons testifying in the presence of a man concerning an incident, which he saw with his
own eyes, and [they are] denying that it took place as he saw it. He will surely not accept their statement,
but will be convinced that they are false witnesses.” (This is essentially the same result as in Guide [Link]
“The Israelites heard, on that occasion, a certain sound...” In Commentary on the Mishnah, Sota, 7:42,
8:41, the “voice” is in Hebrew.)
Despite all this, while Maimonides’ statement in our chapter carefully acknowledges the positions of his great
rabbinic predecessors, he does not commit to any of them. He says:
“The two terms (amar and dibbur), when applied to God, can only have one of the two last-mentioned
significations, viz., he wills and he desires, or he thinks, and there is no difference whether the divine
thought became known to man by means of an actual voice (b’kol nivra), or by one of those kinds of
inspiration (m’darkhei navua) which I shall explain further on (Guide 2:38). We must not suppose that in
speaking God employed voice or sound (b’otot v’kol), or that He has a soul (baal nefesh) in which the
thoughts reside (sh’ykhaku ha-inyanim b’nafsho), and that these thoughts are things superadded to His
essence (nosef al atzmuto); but we ascribe and attribute to Him thoughts in the same manner as we ascribe
to Him any other attributes (k’yakhas kol ha-pa’ulot).”
When Maimonides said “there is no difference” whether the created voice or some other kind of prophetic
inspiration made the divine will known to the prophet, he countenances both the Saadia/Halevi created voice and
ibn Ezra’s opposed “true” intellectual “speech” without deciding against either well established position. God,
evidently, could do either, and since Maimonides did not have scientific proof against the notion of the physical
dibbur, he was unwilling to deny its existence. His main concern, in any event, was to destroy the notion that this
“word” is a pre-eternal Logos existing with God (“that He has a soul in which the thoughts reside” as forms
inscribed therein).
Obviously, God, who is incorporeal, had not “employed (physical) voice or sound,” but that statement should not
be taken as a rejection of Saadia’s claim that He could create such a physical voice or light, which the prophets
call “Glory.” On several previous occasions, Maimonides says that if you believe this, it is an acceptable belief,
which I do not interpret as a note of disapproval. I think he meant exactly what he says: he acknowledges the
views of his sophisticated predecessors but does not declare his own mind on the subject.
Still, in Guide 2:45, where he carefully distinguishes the forms of non-Mosaic prophecy into eleven categories, all
of the visionary and auditory phenomena he lists are dreams and visions, not physical sense data.
The strongest statement of Maimonides’ view on the issue may be in Guide 1:5, but even this is not very clear.
Guide 1:5 is the continuation of 1:4, which is the lexical chapter for several words meaning “sight,” ra’a, hibit,
and khaza. He held that these words have a literal meaning of visual sight, as well as a figurative meaning of
intellectual comprehension. In 1:5, he condemned the Elders of Israel for interpreting a vision of the throne of
God in a corporeal manner, when they should have recognized it as a purely intellectual demonstration of the
noetic forces behind creation (the sapphire bricks should have been taken as the materia prima). His conclusion
was that “wherever, in a similar connection, any one of the three verbs mentioned above occurs, it has reference to
intellectual perception, not to the sensation of sight by the eye: for God is not a being to be perceived by the eye.”
Nonetheless:
“It will do no harm (ayn nizek b’kakh), however, if those who fall short of attaining that degree toward
which we endeavor to raise him (Friedlander note 2, p. 47; ekhad m’meuti ha-hasaga sh’lo l’hagia
l’draga zu sh’anu rotzim l’alot elea) should refer all the words in question to sensuous perception
(hasagot hushim), to seeing lights created [for the purpose], angels, or similar beings.”
On its face, Maimonides’ “those who fall short” seems like a direct condemnation of the Saadia/Halevi view of
the created light and the created voice. Kafiḥ comments:
“This (passage) refers to the high intellectual level which merits seeing this vision, where the seer
abstracts the content of the vision from that which was visually sensed, recognizing that the sensual
content was the created light, which he merited to see. It appears to me that Maimonides’ intent in these
remarks (when he referred to ‘those who fall short...’) was directed to what Saadia Gaon had written in
Emunot 2:10 and 2:12.... but that this was no defect in belief since (by lights and angels) there is no
physicality conceived about God (sh’ayn ha-gashma klapei maala); nonetheless, we understand more
than those on this lower level.” (Notes 31-32, p. 24, my trans.)
I think Kafiḥ’s interpretation is correct as far as it goes, but to better understand Maimonides we have to
recognize that he is really saying two things. The first is that it is impermissible to relate any sensation or sense
object to God. Second, we may take literally any sensual description of angels or created lights in scripture, since
they are not directly about God. We, who have read the Guide to this point, should be able to understand that
these created entities represent the action of the active intellect as translated by our imagination. Additionally, we
should grasp that certain types of apparently sensed phenomena, such as the people “seeing” “thunder” at Sinai
(Exodus 20:18) must obviously refer to intellectual perception, since sound cannot be seen (Guide 1:46).
Nonetheless, in Guide 1:21, which I have described as the hidden lexical chapter on kol (voice/sound),
Maimonides does note the possible existence of a physical kol ha-nivra in carefully reserved language:
“Or, again, you may believe that there was, in addition, an apprehension due to the (physical) sense of
hearing; that which ‘passed before his face’ (Exodus 34:6) being the voice which is likewise indubitably a
created thing. Choose whatever opinion you wish, inasmuch as our only purpose is....(to show that)
God...is not a body and it is not permitted to ascribe motion to Him.” (Pines’ trans., p. 51, my emph.)
Thus, again, Maimonides carefully avoids affirming a physical dibbur ha-nivra. He does this because it is a
distraction from the point he wants to make about the created character of the imaginative visions of the prophets,
that those visions should be understood on the abstract level. Nonetheless, he does not entirely reject that such a
miracle as a physical created utterance could have occurred, just as he refuses to reject the miracle of resurrection
(Treatise on the Resurrection of the Dead), or the miracle of creation ex nihilo.
A remarkable confirmation of his conservatism on this issue comes from his son, R. Abraham. Commenting on
Exodus 19:19, “Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice (b’kol)”:
“Our sages have concurred that this voice was created, but it is associated with Him, like the divine
glory....Others have challenged this, saying, ‘You believe that God spoke to Moshe without an
intermediary (emtsai), and that this was the distinction between him and other prophets, as it says, mouth
to mouth (Numbers 12:8) and face to face (Deuteronomy 5:4). But if the sound and words He used for
communication were created, they certainly cannot stand alone; they need a physical entity to convey
them, such as wind (al yedei geshem nosei lo o ruakh o zulato). If so, that physical entity (ha-geshem
nosei la-dibbur) carrying the speech is a medium between God and Moshe, like the angel that mediates
between God and the other prophets!’ To answer this, I would need to enter a ‘narrow strait’ and boldly
advance to a complex matter in which I am truly inadequate; it is a secret of the Torah. However, I
cannot avoid providing some general principles (rashei p’rakim) about this: You should understand that
when the message comes to a living being (i.e., an angel), it receives it in its spirit (b’nafsho) and then
explains it to another (i.e., the prophet).... When we say that God spoke to Moshe without an
intermediary, it means that although He spoke through a [created physical] medium (bara oto ytalei
bi’shat ha-dibbur b’geshem nosei lo)...the [physical] medium (she’oto ha-geshem) does not possess its
own spirit or intellect like an angel does. This explanation should suffice for a thoughtful person, but not
for a fool, who should not be taught such a secret in any case.” (The Guide to Serving God, 583-585,
trans. Y. Wincelberg, with facing page Hebrew from Jud. Arabic. English parentheses are the
translator’s, brackets are mine, to emphasize how Rabbi Wincelberg softens the physicality of the
“voice,” which is readily apparent in the Hebrew. R. Abraham’s main intent was to retain the notion of
an un-ensouled “intermediary,” to affirm that Moses had no “intermediary,” all the while admitting that
there had to be some miracle wind which brought the “voice” to him, a position he could not conceivably
have taken had his father had a strong secret contrary position on this major passage from Exodus.)
In this period, before the Zohar sundered the unity of spiritual and cosmological perspectives, Maimonides shows,
once again, that he remains an ancient rather than a modern thinker, not completely allegorizing the dibbur ha-
nivra in the manner of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s “true intellectual speech.”
