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Harvard Divinity School

The Divine Garment and Shi'ur QomahAuthor(s): Raphael LoeweSource: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Jan., 1965), pp. 153-160Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity SchoolStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1508795 .

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154 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

tW'ar( And from His stature the Heavens are sparkling His stature

sends out the lofty ), referenceis made also to the divine garment,or

rather shift (hdlEfq): And His garment exudes (or rather extrudes,

pushes out) the precious. In another specimen of the Hjykhalthliteraturethis shift is mentioned again, this time as a garmentin which

an angel of very high rank invests the Deity.10 Scholemnotes 11the fact

that the operativetermis not one of the severalbiblicalsynonymsmean-

ing garment,of which salmdhis the one which we might have expectedto encounterhere in view of its occurrence n Ps. 104:2, He who wrapson light as it were a garment. 4 Instead, the term employedhere is the

post-biblical hdlfiq, i.e., a simple shirt formed by cutting a neck-holeand leaving arm-slots unsewnin a folded oblong of material.12 I would

suggest, in passing, that the preferencefor the word hadlq may be due

to the occurrenceof the root hlq (normally = divide, distribute) in Job

38:24 ( What is the way to the place where the light is distrib-

uted? ),13 and it may be noted that a feasible, if scarcely plausible,

renderinghere would indeed be where the light is created, since in

Arabiccreate is a possible meaningof -/ hlq: 14but for the H~ykh'loth

hymnologist,as for R. Samuel b. Nahmani,the

conjunctiony•hadleqor

in Job could have been sufficientlysuggestive, and one need not postu-late a consciousnesson their part of a possible Arabic meaning of the

verbal stem. Scholem further observes15 the conspicuousabsence,both

in the esotericallyorientated midrashicpassages 16 and in the HMykhd-lith references,of any allusion to the garment (Hebrew lebhish) white

as snow, worn, accordingto Daniel 7:9, by the Ancient of Days as He

takes His seat upon the throne.

10Included in the Heykhdl•th Zutarti, and there ascribed to R. Ishmael; the

relevant excerpt is printed by Scholem (p. 63) from MS Oxford, Bodleian Library,Neubauer 1531, f.45a, and MS 828, f. 23a of the Jewish Theological Seminary of

America.

n P. 58, infra.For

.hdhlq

see M. Jastrow, Dictionary, p. 465; and note that according to a

Baraita in T.B. Btsdh 32b (cf. Mo'~dhQdt.6n

14a) possession of but a single.hdliqeems to be a criterion of poverty (cf. Mark 6:9). The type of simple garment to

which the term hdlfiq would plausibly apply has now been discovered by Y. Yadin

amongst textiles from the Dead Sea area: see Y. Yadin, Mehqerey Midhbar Y hudh-ah (= Judean Desert Studies), Ha-Mamsa'im Miymey Bar Kokhba Bime'arathHa-'iggaroth (= The Finds from the Bar-Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters ),

Jerusalem, 1963, pp. 215f., diagram p. 218, and illustrations, plates 66, 75, 77.1' I •) n 11't ijT-'c. No citations of this verse occur in the substantial body

of rabbinic literature covered by A. Hyman's index (T6rdh Hakk*thtbhdh we-

hamm'esrdh [Tel Aviv, 1940]).

1 I cannot now trace this observation in print, but do not think that it originateswith myself.

15P. 58.oSee note 2, supra, and add Pir qty d'-R. Eliezer, 3.



NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS 155

From the fact that the vision of the divine garment apparentlyarouses the same numinousqualities as are arousedby the vision of the

mystical 'body of glory' itself, Scholem concludes17that it stands to

reasonthat the descriptionof the garmentwas part of the Shiur Komak

traditions. The visionary was taught to expect such a garmentof light

covering the glory. This conclusion is possibly confirmedby the cir-

cumstance that in the great magical papyrus of Paris the visionary sees

Helios revealed as a youthful god, well-favoured, fiery-haired, in a

white chiton and scarlet cloak (wvpLvo'Yrptxa, iv XtrwVI XEAViK KaiLXXaIVThL

KOKKLf) 18 Whatever he immediateor ultimate sourceof this, the

Shi'firQ5mdhat any rate derives from the Song of Songs; 7,8 and it isto be emphasisedthat the relevant verses of the Song make no reference

whatsoever to any garment at all.

Nevertheless, Scholem's findings may be confirmed by the indirect

testimony of a Jewish sourcestandingwithin the mainstreamof rabbinic

tradition, viz., the treatment of the same passage of the Song of Songs

by the Targum. As I hope to be able to show in the course of a studyunder preparation,19 he character of this targum is determined by a

twofold apologetic purpose. The targumist was fighting a zweifronts-krieg- externally, against the Christian handling of the book which,

particularly from Origen's time onwards,20 found therein a dialoguebetween Christ the lover and his church, the latter (as constituting the

new Israel ) displacing and downgradingthe older Israel accordingto the flesh. On the domesticJewish front the targumist is, as it seems

to me, at pains to combat any too advanced mystical treatment of the

Song of Songs presumablybecause, by his own time, such treatment

of it seems to have been a feature of certain Jewish (?gnostic and anti-

nomian) circles.21 His rejoindertakes the form of an emphasis, intro-

duced on every possible occasion, of the significance of Torah- and

in particular the significanceof the oral Torah and certain of its prac-tical halakhic institutions, alongside the assertion that it is the oral

17P. 6o.sPreisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae, I (1928), no. iv, ii. 636f., translated

by Morton Smith, Observations on Hekhalot Rabbati, in A. Altmann (ed.), Bib-

lical and Other Studies, Brandeis University Judaic Studies and Texts, I (Harvard

University Press, 1963), i59. The Septuagintal rendering of the Hebrew epithets

sahhwe-'ddhom in Song of Songs 5:io is XEvKOS Ka 7rvPP6s.oTo appear in Vol. 3 of the same series (see note 18), entitled Biblical Motifs:

Origins and Transformations.20 Scholem, pp. 38f.

Origen in the Prologue to his Commentary on the Song of Songs (Migne,PGL 13,63) alludes to Jewish circumspection regarding the teaching of the Songof Songs to the young, in terms that link up with rabbinic statements (T.B. ~HIghi-ghdh 13a) concerning the vision of Ezekiel, etc.



156 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Torah which in itself constitutes the hallmark of the divine choice of

Israel.22

In the biblical text, the maiden begins the descriptionof her lover

with the words: My beloved is all radiant and ruddy, distinguished

among ten thousand. 22a The root whence comes sah, here renderedby

radiant, carries in Hebrew the basic meaning of something dazzling, a

meaning of which the semantic development bifurcates. One branch

(dazzling > glaring heat > scorched > parched,dry) survives longerin Jewish Aramaic than in Hebrew, where it does not, I think, outlive

the biblical language. The other developmentmoves from dazzling >

brilliant or glowingly clear > clear in regardto intellectual grasp, ped-agogic exposition, linguistic accuracy, or literary elegance. This line is

well attested in Hebrew, Syriac, and Jewish Aramaic,and the root sur-

vives, particularly in the last-mentionedsignifications,right into medi-

aeval Hebrew usage. And it is the primary meaning of dazzling bril-

liance, partly overlaid (it seems) by the more sophisticated significa-tion of clarity in exposition,that is reflectedin the paraphrasticrender-

ing of the foregoingpassage from the Song of Songs in the targum. In

translation,this reads as follows:23

Thereupon idthe Congregationf Israelbeginthe recitationof the praiseof the Masterof the world,and thus didshe declare: It is thatsameGodwhomto serve 'tis my will andpleasure,who is wrapped or, who wrapson24)by dayin a stole white as snowandis engageduponthe twenty-four[canonical]books the wordsof theTorah,andthewordsof theProphetsandthe Writings and whoby night s engageduponthe six Orders f theMishnah:heeffulgencef thegloryof whosefaceis brilliant s firebecauseof the multitudeof wisdomand deductive nsight,forasmuchas He pro-duces on each several

daynew

particularsdiscovered rom within tradi-

tionallearning,&c.

It will at once be obvious that the referenceto the divine garment has

22 See especially he targumto 1,2; and compare he motif as found elsewherein rabbinic iterature hat treats the oral Torah as God's mystery, e.g., P'siqtdRabbdthi,V (way hi b'yjm kall6th masheh, beginning),ed. M. Friedmannp.

I4b,1=1HIM

11t1 tIr l11ItM013113.22a5:10o hat '. lf K'I'b M

t' l23I cite the text of a YemeniteMS (BritishMuseumOr. 1302), criticallyedited

by R. H. Melamed n JQR (N.S.) 9 (1918-I9), 377f., also separately,Philadelphia,

1921: bt#•b 11613bP'ZIN btb) Nnty •]r

lln lttinv lrjlrlz'a f7 trw Ilwair1•• 1-1?:Iz• M0M1tnN [codd. and Lagarde'sedition + btb?:]1 ID'rt1t0

I Il

11IM1.10bflN 'i'rn1111 t1T' 'I1 WItPII T'IT N110 1VPO3 (Lagarde'sd. HIM)

2' Melamed'smain MS points de-' tif, .e., a passiveparticiple;but three othercodicescollatedby him point

de-'d.tif, .e., active. For the possiblesignificanceofthe difference, f. supra,at note io.




been introduced quite gratuitously, as it would at first sight seem-

by the targumist; since he does not scruple to mention the brightnessof the divine face (this being his exegesis of the word 'ddh5m = red or

ruddy in the original text), there is no reasonwhy he should have hes-

itated likewise to apply the foregoingsah = radiant to some feature in

the divine physiognomy or form. Secondly,we may note that the word

for a garment introducedby him is, like hdallq,post-biblical, being in

fact the Greek oan-wordoi-ToX' a term not restricted, n Hebrewusage,to the dress of any particularclass of persons. Moreover, the garmentis declared to be white as snow, in echo of the very descriptionof the

divine garment in Daniel 7:10, the absence of any allusion to which inthe Hjykhdl6th passages occasioned Scholem some surprise.25 More

important than this, however, is the circumstancethat the descriptionof the divine radiance in the targum is carefully integrated with the

descriptionof the divine expertise in biblical literature and in the oral

Torah which is simultaneously both encoded in the Mishnah and yetever capable of expansion. In the targumist'selaboration of the second

biblical term, 'ddh6m = red, ruddy, the cause of the divine effulgence s

stated, quite explicitly, to be because of the richness of the Deity's owntoranic scholarship (mis-saggiy'uthhukhmethdwe-sibhrd).26 It is fromthe first term, sah, radiant, that the targumist has drawn the whole

notion of the effulgent garmentenwrappingthe Deity: and although its

brilliance is not, in this case, explicitly connected with God's own bib-

lical scholarship, t is to be noted that the targumist'sformulationseems

to hint that the wrapping on 24 of the garment is an invariable (andindeed indispensable?) preliminaryto the study of the Bible - almost

a scholar'sgown. If, then, the divine redness/ruddiness (= 'ddhum)> effulgence s the outcome of the concentratedintensity of God's rab-binical scholarship,the radiance (= sah) > shining garmentwhich He

dons is, perhaps, in some sense the essential symbol of the Deity's aca-

demic standing as an Alttestamentler.It would seem to me, in view of what I believe can be shown from

elsewhereto be the major tendency of this targum,that the introductionof the whole conceit of the divine garment into this context has been

occasioned by the fact that-as Scholem has surmised --it was

already present, and present to boot in a form obnoxious to the tar-gumist, viz., on the lines of the hadliqmotif as treated in the Heykhdldthand as adumbratedby R. Samuel b. Nahmani. He accordinglyadmitted,or perhaps felt constrainedby the force of tradition to retain, the gar-

25 See note 15.* See note 17. I transliterate according to the punctuation of the MS.




a little older. This poem leads up to a fairly close paraphrase, n rhyme,of the details listed in the Song of Songs passage, the order beinggoverned by the exigencies of the alphabetical acrostic. The last lineof this section describes the Deity as radiant and ruddy ('ddhkm) in

respect of His red ('ddkdm) garment, at the time that He treads the

winepress as He comes [victorious] from Edom. 30 The combinationof our sah we-'ddhim passage with Isaiah 63:2, Wherefore is therered on Thy apparel? 31was intended, of course, to underscore(by anadditional reference to redness and the bloodshed leading to victory)the description of the divine triumph over Edom found in the Isaiah

passage; and in the enjambement (so to call it) of the two biblicalfragmentsin this sense, the poet was either dependenton or anticipatedby R. Yohanan (or another), as recorded in Genesis Rabbak.32 Butthe poet --or, indeed, his rabbinical source--might well have been

prompted to bring the two passages into association by a familiaritywith the circumstancethat sah we-'ddhdmin the Song of Songs had

long since been made the vehicle of the esoteric doctrines to which R.Samuelb. Nahmani as well as the author of the HIykhadlth hymn werelikewise

privy.It

is, incidentally,worth

observing that the Hymn ofGlory switches, immediately after the passage quoted, to an encomiumof the supreme revelation vouchsafed to Moses, and thereafter con-cludes with an affirmation hat it is Israel'spsalmody that is a peculiarlyacceptable tribute to the Deity.33 In the course of time, the Hymn of

Glory found its way into the Sabbath liturgy,34and later perhaps into

daily use, in some Ashkenazic rites. And it is not inconceivable thatit owes its selection for use on the Sabbathto its offeringan innocuouselaboration of the descriptionin the Song of Songs assumedby mysticsto apply to the body of God- a down-to-earth paraphrase,whichmight serve as a counterpoiseto the indulgenceof any esoteric specula-tions which the recitation of the Song of Songs at the onset of Sabbath

might have stimulated. It might be problematicto find evidence for this

liturgical recitation35 anterior to the Lurianic rite which derives from

3263,12, end, and 75,4, also other parallels; ed. Theodor-Albeck, pp. 697,882,

cf. also 'Aggddhath B'rishith, ? 84, p. 164.3Cf. targum to Song of Songs 5:2 (1'iMl

,M ,'mr), ,•a1'M1~ 'J*1

•itm1$I

'Imtr~,and, e.g., the blessing of God as making choice of song and psalmthat concludes the selections of the psalter in the daily morning liturgy - S. Singer,Authorised Daily Prayer Book (1929), p. 36.

'I. Elbogen, Die jiidische Gottesdienst,2 p. 81; I. Abrahams, Companion to(Singer's) Authorised Daily Prayer Book (revised ed., 1922), p. xc.

' See Abrahams, op cit., p. cxxvi.



160 HARVARD THEOLOGICALREVIEW

cabbalistic circles in I6th-century Safed. But it was from this milieu

that there emanatedSolomonHallevi Alqabes'swell-knownhymn lekhdhdjdhi 36 for the inauguration of the Sabbath, the concluding verse of

which shows that the custom of readingthe Song (or selected verses of

it) on Friday before dusk is closely linked with the ceremony35of ad-

journingto the synagogueporch to welcome the arrivalof the Sabbathas queen and bride. And this custom is already recorded37 of

R. Hanina (who used, incidentally, wraphimself 38 for the purpose)and of R. Yannai, both of them tannaitic figureswho lived at the begin-

ning of the third century C.E.-

the very period to which Scholemassigns the origins of Jewish attraction towards the type of esotericdoctrine that produced the Shk'frQmakh.

RAPHAELLOEWE

INSTITUTEOF JEWISH STUDIES,UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON

6Printed, e.g., Singer, op. cit. pp. iiif. Abrahams, op. cit., pp. cxxivf.

7 T. B. Sabbath 1i9a.3sll~, nN,( L

loewe, garment

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