על החלומות, ספר א י״אOn Dreams, Book I 11
א׳
1[61] What Haran is and why the man who leaves the Well of the Oath comes to it, has been made evident. We must consider the point which naturally comes next, our third point, namely what the place is which he lights upon or meets, for we read “he met a place” (Gen. 28:11).
ב׳
2[62] Now “place” has a threefold meaning, firstly that of a space filled by a material form, secondly that of the Divine Word, which God Himself has completely filled throughout with incorporeal potencies; for “they saw,” says Moses, “the place where the God of Israel stood” (Ex. 24:10). Only in this place did he permit them to sacrifice, forbidding them to do so elsewhere: for they were expressly bidden to go up “to the place which the Lord God shall choose” (Deut. 12:5), and there to sacrifice “the whole burnt offerings and the peace offerings” (Ex. 20:24) and to offer the other pure sacrifices.
ג׳
3[63] There is a third signification, in keeping with which God Himself is called a place, by reason of His containing things, and being contained by nothing whatever, and being a place for all to flee into, and because He is Himself the space which holds Him; for He is that which He Himself has occupied, and naught encloses Him but Himself.
ד׳
4[64] I, mark you, am not a place, but in a place; and each thing likewise that exists; for that which is contained is different from that which contains it, and the Deity, being contained by nothing, is of necessity Itself Its own place.
ה׳
5Witness is borne to what I am saying by this oracle delivered in Abraham’s case: “He came to the place of which God had told him: and lifting up his eyes he saw the place from afar” (Gen. 22:3 f.).
ו׳
6[65] Tell me, pray, did he who had come to the place see it from afar? Nay, it would seem that one and the same word is used of two different things: one of these is a divine Word, the other God Who was before the Word.
ז׳
7[66] One who has come from abroad under Wisdom’s guidance arrives at the former place, thus attaining in the divine word the sum and consummation of service. But when he has his place in the divine Word he does not actually reach Him Who is in very essence God, but sees Him from afar: or rather, not even from a distance is he capable of contemplating Him; all he sees is the bare fact that God is far away from all Creation, and that the apprehension of Him is removed to a very great distance from all human power of thought.
ח׳
8[67] Nay, it may be that neither in this part of the text does the lawgiver use “place” as a figurative description of the First Cause, but that what is signified is something like this: “he came to the place and looked up and saw with his eyes” the place itself to which he had come, that it was a long way off from God for Whom no name nor utterance nor conception of any sort is adequate.