In the good times, holiness held sway to such a degree that even though evil existed in the world, it was unable to act but was bound and subordinate. Only the generation of the wilderness at the giving of the Torah were on the path to the revelation of perfection through Moses, who was complete and was the embodiment of the inner essence, as explained in several passages in the Zohar. Accordingly it was said of that generation: “…the writing of God was engraved upon the tablets” (Exodus 32:16). The Hebrew word for “engraved” (חָרוּת, charut) may be read as “freedom” (חֵרוּת cherut), teaching that they were “free from the Angel of Death and free from servitude to the nations…” (Eruvin 54b; Zohar II, 46a, 114a).