MONOGAMY: THE IDEAL UNION OF TWO HALF SOULS

MONOGAMY: THE IDEAL UNION OF TWO HALF SOULS
By
James Scott Trimm

Although the Torah does not forbid polygamy, in the soul of the Torah
we learn that the Image of Elohim is a “male and female” image, and
that the ideal marriage is a reunion of two half souls, which become one.

Mankind was created in the image of Elohim (Gen. 1:26-27; 1Cor. 11:7). This image of Elohim is an invisible image of attributes, which make up the Godhead (Col. 1:15; Rom. 1:27).

Because that which may be known of Elohim is manifest in them;
for Elohim hath shewed it unto them.
(Rom. 1:19)

Then in Rom. 1:26-28 we are told that those who fail to perceive these things may fall into the errors of Homosexuality and Lesbianism . So when in creation were Elohim’s invisible attributes manifested in man and made clearly seen. The answer is in the Torah, in Gen. 1:26, 27 where we read:

Then Elohim said, “Let Us make man in Our image,
according to Our likeness…
So Elohim created man in His own image;
in the image of Elohim He created him;
male and female He created them.

Now following the parallelism of the passage, “Our image”, “Our
likeness” and “male and female” appear to be parallel terms.

These feminine and masculine attributes are represented in the Tanak
(“Old Testament”) by the Father (Jer. 31:9; Mal. 1:6; Is. 63:16;
64:8), the Mother (Is. 66:13 ) and the Son (Prov. 30:4; Ps. 2:2, 7, 12).

According to Jewish tradition, as stated in the Sefer Yetzirah, the
Godhead is made up of ten aspects called “sefirot”:

Ten Sefirot of Nothingness ten and not nine ten and not eleven…
(Sefer Yetzirah 1:4)

If we arrange the attributes (sefirot) under three columns according
to their characteristics as Mother (feminine), Father (masculine) and
Son (feminine and masculine in perfect balance).

According to Jewish tradition the ten sefirot are arranged on a chart
known as the “Tree of Life” under three columns known as the “three
pillars of the Godhead”.

As we read in the Bahir:

Why are they called Sephirot?
Because it is written (Psalm 19:2),
“The heavens declare (me-SaPRim) the glory of Elohim.”
And what are they?
They are three. Among them are three troops and three dominions.
(Bahir 125-126)

The Zohar describes the three pillars of the Godhead as follows:

Then Elohim said, “Let thee be light; and there was light.
And Elohim saw that the light was good…
Why, it may be asked, was it necessary to repeat the word “light” in
this verse? The answer is that the first “light” refers to the
primordial light which is of the Right Hand, and it is destined for
the “end of days”; while the second “light” refers to the Left Hand,
which issues from the Right.

The next words, “And Elohim saw the light that it was good” (Gen.
1:4), refer to the pillar which, standing midway between them, unites
both sides, and therefore when the unity of the three, right, left,
and middle, was complete, “it was good”, since there could be no
completion until the third had appeared to remove the strife between
Right and Left, as it is written, “And Elohim separated between the
light and between the darkness.”…

This is the Middle Pillar: Ki Tov (that it was good) threw light above
and below and on all other sides, in virtue of YHWH, the name which
embraces all sides.
(Zohar 1:16b)

The three columns of the Tree of Life chart are known as the “Three
Pillars of the Godhead.” These three pillars or columns correspond to
three “Supernal Lights” also known as the three Tzachtzachot.

The Encyclopedia Judaica explains these three supernal lights this way:

…above all emanated powers, there exist in “the root of all roots”
three hidden lights which have no beginning, “for they are the name
and essence of the root of all roots… It is stressed that these
three lights constitute one essence and one root which is “infinitely
hidden” (ne’lam ad le-ein sof) [literally: hidden until Eyn-Sof],
forming a kind of kabbalistic trinity that precedes the emanation of
the ten Sefirot…. In the terminology of the Kabbalah these three
lights are called tzachtzachot (splendors)…
Christians later found an allusion to their own doctrine of the
trinity in this theory.
(KABBALAH by Scholem p. 95)

These qualities represent the male and female aspects of Elohim as the Encyclopedia Judaic also states:

Reference to male and female appear not only in the symbolism of
father and mother, son and daughter… but also in the striking use of
sexual imagery which is a particular characteristic of the Zohar…
(Kabbalah p. 573 – emphasis added)

This concept of YHWH being expressed as a Father (Is. 63:16; 64:8;
Jer. 31:9 & Mal. 1:6) and a Mother (Is. 66:13) is found in the Tanak
(“Old Testament”) itself, in which we are told that the image of
Elohim in which man was created was “male and female” (Gen. 1:26-27).

Now in Romans 1:19-20 we are told:

19: Because that which may be known of Elohim is manifest in them; for Elohim hath shewed it unto them.
20: For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his
eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
(Rom. 1:19-20)

Further down in Rom. 1:26-28 we are told that those who fail to
perceive these things may fall into the errors of Homosexuality and
Lesbianism.

So when in creation was Elohim’s invisible attributes manifest in man
and made clearly seen. The answer is in Gen. 1:26, 27 where we read:

Now following the parallelism of the passage, “Our image”, “Our
likeness” and “male and female” appear to be parallel terms.

The male aspect of this image of Elohim is called “Father” as we read
in the Tanak (“Old Testament”):

…If then I be a Father, Where is My honor?…
Says the YHWH of Hosts. …
(Mal. 1:6)

…You, O YHWH, are our Father,
Our Redeemer from everlasting is Your name.
(Is. 63:16)

But now. O YHWH, You are our Father;…
(Is. 64:7)

The female aspect of this image is called “mother” as we also read in
the Tanak (“Old Testament”):

As one whom his mother comforts, so will I [YHWH]
comfort you…
(Is. 66:13)

YHWH as a “comforter” is also known as the Ruach HaKodesh as we read in John:

…I will ask my Father and he will give you another comforter that will
be with you forever,
The Spirit of Truth …
(Jn. 14:16-17)

…the comforter, the Ruach HaKodesh, whom my Father will send in my name,…
(Jn. 14:27)

…when the comforter comes. Whom I will send you from my Father, the Spirit of Truth who has proceeded from my Father…
(Jn. 15:26)

…I will send the comforter to you.
(Jn. 16:7)

The Ruach HaKodesh is the Spirit of Elohim, which rested upon Messiah at his immersion:

…behold, the Spirit of Elohim descending from the heavens…
…and rested upon him…
(Mt. 3:16-17 see also Mk. 1:10-11; Lk. 3:21-22 & Jn. 1:33)

Which is the Spirit of YHWH which rests upon Messiah in Isaiah 11:2-4:

And the Spirit of YHWH shall rest upon him, the Spirit of Wisdom
(Chokmah) and Understanding (Binah) the Spirit of Counsel (Atzah) and power (Gevurah) the spirit of knowledge and of the fear (yirah) of
YHWH …But with righteousness shall he judge…
(Is. 11:2-4)

This Ruach HaKodesh is clearly is the “her/she” of Prov. 8:1-2, 12-18:

Does not wisdom call, And understanding put forth her voice?
Where the paths meet, she stands…I Wisdom (Chokmah) dwell with
prudence…the fear (yirah) of YHWH is to hate evil…
Counsel (atzah) is mine…I am understanding (Binah) power (Geburah) is mine…. …by me rule… all judges…

One problem that presents itself in translating the New Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic into English is that of the gender of the Ruach HaKodesh (Ruach HaKodesh). English is very different from Hebrew and Aramaic. To begin with English has three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter (i.e. he, she and it). Hebrew and Aramaic have no neuter gender. In Hebrew and Aramaic everything is either a “he” or a “she” and nothing is an “it”. Also gender plays a much more important role in Hebrew and in Aramaic than in English. In English gender is usually only an issue when dealing with pronouns. But in Hebrew and in Aramaic nouns and verbs are also masculine or feminine. And while there are no true adjectives in Hebrew (nouns are used as adjectives), noun modifiers must agree in gender with the noun. Now the Hebrew word RUACH (Aramaic RUCHA) is grammatically feminine as is the phrase Ruach HaKodesh. This is matched by the role of the Ruach HaKodesh as “comforter” (Jn. 14-16) and the identification of the “comforter” with YHWH acting as a “mother” (Is. 66:13).

Now in English the Ruach is often referred to as “he” or “it” as also
in the Greek New Testament. However this seems very odd indeed to the Semitic mind. In fact the Peshitta Aramaic of Rom. 8:16 opens
(literally) with “And she the Ruach gives testimony….”

While it is clear that the Ruach HaKodesh has no literal gender, it is
also clear that the Ruach HaKodesh is grammatically and figuratively a “she”.

Now the ancient Nazarenes (an ancient Jewish sect of believers in
Yeshua) actually believed the Ruach HaKodesh to be a sort of Heavenly Mother. These ancient Nazarenes used an apocryphal Gospel called The Gospel according to the Hebrews. While this apocryphal Gospel is now lost, several quotes from it have survived in the writings on the ancient “Church Fathers.” One of these quotes, found in Jerome’s commentary on Isaiah, tells the story of Messiah’s baptism as follows:

And it came to pass when YHWH was come up out of the water, the whole fount of the Ruach HaKodesh descended and rested upon him, and said to him, “My Son, in all the prophets was I waiting for you that you should come, and I might rest in you. For you are my rest, you are My firstborn son, that reigns forever.”
(Jerome- On Is. 11:2)

Here it is the Ruach HaKodesh, not the Father, who is calling Messiah
“My Son” In another place the Church Fathers cite a passage from this lost Gospel where Messiah is reported as saying:

“Even so did my Mother, the Ruach HaKodesh, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away to the great mountain Tabor.”
[Origen- On Jn. 2:12; Hom. on Jer. 15:4; Jerome- On Micah 7:6; On. Is. 40:9; On Ezkl. 16:13]

There are other feminine titles for Elohim as well, which also point
to the feminine aspect within the Godhead. Among these are terms like Shekinah (glory – a feminine word in Hebrew) and El-Shaddai. “El”
means “Elohim” while Shaddai is the dual form of the Hebrew word
“Shad” (Strong’s Heb. # 7699) “the breast of a woman” so that
El-Shaddai signifies “El, the double breasted” or the Elohim with a
woman’s breasts.

Just as there is a Father aspect of the Godhead and a Mother aspect of the Godhead, there is also a “Son” aspect of the Godhead as well as we read in the Tanak (“Old Testament”):

Who has ascended up into heaven, and descended?
Who has gathered the wind in his fists?
Who has bound the waters in his garment?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if you know?
(Prov. 30:4)

The kings of the earth stand up,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against YHWH, and against His Messiah:…
I will tell of the decree:
YHWH said to me: “You are My Son,”
This day have I begotten you….
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry…
(Ps. 2:2, 7, 12)

We have already established that the right and left pillars are
assigned as Mother and Father, the middle pillar, which balances the
feminine and masculine characteristics from the male and female sides, is identified in the Zohar as “the Son of Yah” (“Yah” being short for “Yahweh” the proper name of Elohim.):

Better is a neighbor that is near, than a brother far off.
This neighbor is the Middle Pillar in the Godhead,
which is the Son of Yah.
(Zohar 2:115)

In another Passage the Zohar has:

The Holy One, blessed be He, has a son, whose glory (tifret) shines
from one end of the world to another. He is a great and mighty tree,
whose head reaches heaven, and whose roots are set in the holy ground, and his name is “Mispar” and his place is in the uppermost heaven… as it is written, “The heavens declare (me-SaPRim) the glory (tifret) of Elohim” (Ps. 19:1).
Were it not for this “Mispar” there would be neither hosts
Nor offspring in any of the worlds.
(Zohar 2:105a)

This is intended to point the reader back to a familiar passage from
the Bahir:

Why are they called Sephirot?
Because it is written (Psalm 19:2),
“The heavens declare (me-SaPRim) the glory (tifret) of Elohim.”
(Bahir 125)

As the Middle Pillar of the Godhead the Son of Yah is centered and
focused at tifret and is the harmony of all of the pillars. The Son
encompasses the Tree of Life and the ten sefirot. “In him dwells all
the fullness of the Godhead” (Col. 2:9).

Moreover the the Zohar elsewhere states:

We may also translate “he who withholds blessings from the Son” (Prov. 11:26), Whom the Father and Mother have crowned and blessed with many blessings, and concerning whom they commanded, “Kiss the Son lest he be angry” (Ps. 2:12), since he is invested with judgment (gevurah) and with mercy (chesed).
(Zohar 3:191b)

Now with all of this discussion about the plural nature of the
Godhead, we must not lose sight of the primary tenant of Judaism, the Sh’ma. The Sh’ma declares the oneness of the Godhead as follows:

Hear O Israel: YHWH your Elohim, YHWH is ECHAD
(Dt. 6:4a)

Now this text stresses the oneness (echad) of YHWH. The question
remains however, what in light of the plural nature of the Godhead,
does “ECHAD” really mean?

The Hebrew word “echad” means “one” or “a unity.” This word appears in
several passages in the Torah, which make it clear that echad may
refer to a unity:

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his
wife, and they shall become one [echad] flesh.
(Gen. 2:24)

And YHWH said, “Indeed the people are one [echad] and they all have one language…
(Gen. 11:6)

Now Deut. 6:4 states:

Hear O Israel: YHWH your Elohim, YHWH is one [echad]

In light of the various passages discussed previously in which there
are two or three pillars called “YHWH”, this passage could be read to
mean that YHWH, Elohim and YHWH are echad (a unity.) In fact this is exactly the interpretation given to this passage by the Zohar:

The prescribed daily form of prayer
(a confession of the unity in the godhead),
has for its object, that you shall know and
comprehend it. We have said in many places
that this daily form of prayer is one of those
passages concerning the unity, which is taught
in the Scriptures. In Deut. 6:4, we read first
“YHWH”, then “our Elohim” and again “YHWH”,
which together make one unity. But how can
three names be one? Are they truly one,
because we call them one? How three can
be one can only be known through the revelation
of the Ruach HaKodesh, and, in fact, with closed eyes.
This is also the mystery of the voice. The voice is
heard only as one sound, yet it consists of three
substances, fire, wind, and water, but all three
are one, as indicated through the mystery of the
voice.

Thus are “YHWH”; “our Elohim”; “the lord”
but one unity, three substantive beings which
are one; and this is indicated by the voice
which a person uses in reading the words,
“Hear, O Israel,” thereby comprehending
with the understanding the most perfect unity
of the boundless one; because all three
are read with one voice, which indicates a
trinity.

And this is the daily confession of faith
of the unity, which is revealed by
the Ruach HaKodesh in a mystery. Although
there are so many persons united in the unity,
yet each person is a true-one;
what the one does, that the other does.
(The Zohar Vol. 2 p. 43):

These qualities represent the male and female aspects of Elohim as the Encyclopedia Judaica also states:

According to Scripture man was originally created in the image of
Elohim “male and female” (Gen. 1:27) then Elohim took the “rib” from
Adam and made “woman” (Gen. 2:21-22). The Hebrew word for “rib” here can also be translated “side” so that Elohim took one “side” of man and made woman. One Jewish tradition has it that man was originally created male on his right side and female on his left side. Another Jewish tradition has it that man and woman were originally joined at the back and that Elohim separated them with an axe. Fanciful as these traditions are, there is some truth to them. Today we know that males and females have tendencies to each be more dominant on different hemispheres of their brains. Jewish tradition holds that an unmarried man is only half of a man.

When a man and woman are joined together they become “one”:

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife:
and they shall be one flesh.
(Gen. 2:24)

They each complete the other and restore each other to the very image of Elohim that man was originally made in: male and female. This joining together and oneness is not just physical, but spiritual as
well. Messiah refers to them as having been joined by Elohim:

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and
shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.
What therefore Elohim hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
(Mt. 19:4-6)

Ephesians states:

So it is right for husbands to love their wives as their [own] bodies,
for he who loves his wife loves his nefesh.
(Eph. 5:28).

(“Nefesh” is the Aramaic word for “soul”) Why does Paul say that a
man who loves his wife, loves his own soul?

When Elohim called the Prophet Jeremiah He said:

Then the word of YHWH came unto me, saying,
Before I formed you in the belly I knew you;
and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you,
and I ordained you a prophet unto the nations.
(Jer. 1:4-5)

Elohim knew the soul of Jeremiah before Jeremiah was ever born. This is because all creation was completed by the end of the sixth day of creation as the Scripture states: “And on the sixth day Elohim
finished His work which He had made…” (Gen. 2:2)

Now when man was first created on the sixth day,
man was created “in the image of Elohim … male and female.
(Gen. 1:26-27)

However after creation was completed Elohim extracted the “female”
aspect of man and made woman:

And Adonai YHWH caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Adonai YHWH had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:
she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
(Gen. 2:21-23)

The Hebrew word for “rib” in this verse can also mean “side”. The
text goes on to say:

24: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
(Gen. 2:24)

All creation was completed on the sixth day. Every soul that would
ever be created was created by the end of that sixth day. All of
these souls were, like that of the first man, both “male and female”
and just as Elohim extracted the female side of Adam to make Eve, He
must also have extracted the female “side” of all of the other souls,
thus dividing them each into what one might think of as “half souls”,
a female half and a male half. When two such half-souls are reunited
they become “one” just as the image of Elohim from which they were
modeled is “male and female” (Gen. 1:26-27) yet is totally united as
“one” (Deut. 6:4).

The Talmud says:

R. Eleazar said: Any man who has no wife is no proper man;
for it is said, Male and female created He them
and called their name Adam.
(b.Yeb. 63a)

The Zohar elaborates on this ideal as it says:

All the souls in the world… are all mystically one,
But when they descend to this world they are
separated into male and female, though these are
still conjoined. When they first issue forth, they
issue male and female together. Subsequently,
when they descend (to this world) they separate,
one to one side and the other to the other. And
Elohim afterwards mates them—Elohim and no other,
He alone knowing the proper mate to each. Happy
is the man who is upright in his works and walks
in the way of truth, so that his soul may find its
original mate, for then he becomes indeed perfect,
and through his perfection the whole world is
blessed.
(Zohar 1:85b)

Ideally then if a man has been reunited with his other “side” and he
loves his wife, he is literally loving his own soul, just as Paul says
in the original Aramaic!

Thus the ideal marriage in the soul of the Torah, is a union between
two half souls, which become one, thus emulating the “male and female” image of Elohim from which we were created.

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