Sefer ha-Bahir · Translation 1 · §1
The Light That Reads as Dark
The opening passage: unseen light, darkness as concealment, and the verse that sets the two in relation.
Passage 1
Light and Darkness
אור · חושך
Unseen light, darkness as concealment, and the verse that sets the two in relation.
Source text
Translation
Rabbi Nehunia ben ha-Kanah said: One written verse says Job 37:21, “And now they do not see the light — bahir it is, in the shechakim”; and one written verse says Ps 18:12, “He set choshech as his concealment”; and it says Ps 97:2, “Cloud and arafel surround him” — a difficulty. The third written verse came and decided between them Ps 139:12: “Even choshech does not darken from you; and night shines like the day — as the darkness, so the light.”
Source text: Torat Emet
Key terms
- bahirבהירב.ה.ר · BDB s.v. בָּהִירbright, brilliant — an intensity, not a colour; the root also gives בהרת, the bright spot of Lev 13 · here: names the quality of a light that is present while unseen · Job 37:21 is its only occurrence as an adjective in Tanakh.
- shechakimשחקיםש.ח.ק, to pulverise · BDB s.v. שַׁחַקfine dust, cloud, sky · here: a plural locative, “in the shechakim” · the same word closes Ps 18:12 (עבי שחקים, “thick clouds of the shechakim”), so the first two prooftexts share a lexeme; Chagigah 12b later counts Shechakim among seven named heavens · reading it as a bounded stratum is a contextual interpretation, not the lexical meaning by itself.
- choshechחשךח.ש.ך · BDB s.v. חֹשֶׁךְdarkness; the verb יחשיך (hiphil, Ps 139:12) "to darken" · here: in 18:12 a thing set as concealment; in 139:12 denied any effect "from you".
- seterסתרוס.ת.ר, to hide · BDB s.v. סֵתֶרa hiding place, a covering · here: "his concealment", paired in the full verse with סכתו, "his booth" — an enclosure, not an abstraction.
- arafelערפלBDB s.v. עֲרָפֶלdense cloud, thick darkness · here: what surrounds "him" · the Sinai word — Ex 20:21 (20:18 where the Decalogue counts fourteen verses), "Moses drew near the arafel where the Elohim was"; Deut 4:11, 5:22; 1 Kgs 8:12, "YHWH said he would dwell in the arafel". Sinai carries fire, smoke and sound — behaviour markers, logged for the paleo-contact layer.
- mimmekhaממךמן + 2ms suffix · formally “from you”; in this idiom, “for you” or “in relation to you” · an observer-position reading is possible, but the preposition alone does not prove a measurement frame. Verse numbers follow the Hebrew text, as the witness cites them (Ps 18:12 is 18:11 in most English Bibles).
Significance
The opening puzzle is simple: how can light be brilliant and still be unseen? Job 37:21 describes just that. Psalms 18:12 and 97:2 introduce the covering that conceals it; Psalm 139:12 supplies the answer: darkness is no barrier to the presence addressed there. The passage separates light itself from the conditions under which someone can see it. Concealment is not the same as absence.
In , I develop this distinction between Ain Sof, the unconfined Source, and the limited world available to an observer. Bentov’s models and the Gateway report explore how a reality extending beyond ordinary space and time might be experienced from within it. That higher-dimensional comparison gives this reading its cosmological meaning: what falls outside the observer’s range can remain fully present. Darkness marks a limit of access, not an extinguished source.
The cited psalms also help distinguish a hidden power from the Infinite Source. Psalm 18’s rider descends and fights—actions within a location. Psalm 139 describes a presence that night and distance cannot exclude. I read that contrast as the difference between something concealed inside the cosmos and the Source on which the cosmos depends. The physical comparison develops the passage’s central insight: the boundary of sight is not the boundary of reality.
