17) From the written Torah and the Oral Torah that has been transmitted to us, each person from the mouth of another, from our prophet Moses, peace be upon him, there are strong and truthful testimonies that our God, who is called by the name 'YHWH' and 'Adonai,' and according to the words of our sages, in the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, He is the primary cause. He alone is the necessary existence, as will be explained later.
This is not as stated in the Book of the Covenant, in the name 'Yosher Levav' (uprightness of heart), or as stated by the Arizal, who followed the words of the philosopher in the book 'HaZohar' and claimed that He is a small countenance (Ze'eir Anpin). From the Torah, as it is written, 'From everlasting to everlasting, You are God,' for the Lord our God is the primary cause for all created beings, above and below, and He alone is the one we worship, as stated by the Rambam (Maimonides) in his commentary on the Mishnah, and in the writings of Rabbi Saadia Gaon and Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, and others.
And it is said, 'I am the Lord, and there is no other God besides Me.' And King David, peace be upon him, said, 'For who is God besides the Lord? And who is a rock except our God?' For He, may He be blessed, is the cause and the initial act for everything other than Himself, as explained by the revered teacher in Chapter 16 of the Guide for the Perplexed.
There is no other preceding cause before Him. And the righteous Chassid, author of the book Chovot HaLevavot (Duties of the Heart), states in the Gate of Unity, based on the principle that He always exists as the beginning. There is no beginning before Him, and He is the first without a first, and He is the one who formed and created everything from nothing, not through something and not upon something, as it is said, 'I am the Lord, who does all these things, who stretches out the heavens alone, who spreads out the earth by Myself.'
And Job said, 'He stretches out the north over empty space, He hangs the earth on nothingness, and so on.' He is the primordial first, without a beginning to His beginning. There is no end to His primacy, as the scripture says, 'I am the first and I am the last, and besides Me, there is no God.' Also, in the liturgical amendments made by the Men of the Great Assembly, it is said, 'You are true, You are the first, and You are the last, and so on.'