אליגוריות החוקים, ספר ג ל״אAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book III 31
א׳
1[95] This, moreover, is the reason of God’s proclaiming Bezalel by name, and saying that He has given him wisdom and knowledge, and that He will appoint him artificer and chief craftsman of all the works of the Tabernacle, that is of the soul (Exod. 31:2 ff.), though He has so far pointed to no work or deed of Bezalel’s, such as to win him even commendation. We must say, then, that here too we have a form which God has stamped on the soul as on the tested coin. What, then, the image impressed on it is we shall know if we first ascertain accurately the meaning of the name.
ב׳
2[96] Bezalel means, then, “in the shadow of God”; but God’s shadow is His Word, which he made use of like an instrument, and so made the world. But this shadow, and what we may describe as the representation, is the archetype for further creations. For just as God is the Pattern of the Image, to which the title of Shadow has just been given, even so the Image becomes the pattern of other beings, as the prophet made clear at the very outset of the Law-giving by saying, “And God made the man after the Image of God” (Gen. 1:27), implying that the Image had been made such as representing God, but that the man was made after the Image when it had acquired the force of a pattern.