Moses Demands the Measure of Paradise from Its Own Prince

Moses climbed past the last cloud a mortal is meant to see, and he did not slow down to admire it. Another man would have folded his hands and been grateful for the view. Moses wanted a map. He wanted numbers. He wanted the guardians of the place to open their mouths and account for exactly what they were keeping.

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The first thing that answered him was not soft.

Where the Air Was Fire and Water

An angel stood in his path so tall that Moses lost the top of him in the light. Three hundred parasangs high, and a single parasang swallows three or four miles. This was Nuriel, and the realm he held looked nothing like a cushioned heaven. Behind him waited fifty myriads of angels, five hundred thousand, each one braided out of water and fire at the same time, and neither element quenched or scorched the other. Every face was turned one way, toward the Shechinah (שכינה), God's divine presence, and every mouth was open in a song that did not stop. Moses stood small beneath the count of them. The sound of the praise pressed on him from every side.

Moses demanded to know what all this burning and singing was for. It was Metatron who answered him. These were the angels set over the weather, he said, the ones who hold the clouds, the winds, and the rains. The instant God's will went out, they broke from the choir, drove a storm across some far field or bent a wind where it was needed, and rushed straight back to their stations in the second heaven to take up the hymn where they had dropped it.

Seventy Thrones and Their Watchmen

Farther in, under the tree of life, the thrones began. Seventy of them, each one cut from precious stone and standing on legs of pure gold, and around every single throne seventy angels kept watch. The light broke off the gold legs and scattered through the whole hall until Moses could not tell where one dazzle ended and the next began. He counted the guard the way a man counts an army on a field.

Then he reached the throne that broke his count. One hundred and twenty angels ringed this one, and the soul seated on it did not wait to be addressed. When Abraham understood who had come and why he had climbed so far, he did not offer a king's welcome or a word about himself. He called out, "Praise ye the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever."

The Prince Who Could Not Measure

Somewhere past the thrones stood Shamshiel, prince of the whole garden, and to him Moses put the blunt question. "How large is Paradise? Give me its measure."

Shamshiel, who ruled the place, had to admit that he did not have one to give. The garden, he confessed, "can neither be measured nor fathomed nor numbered." The ruler of Paradise did not know the size of Paradise.

Moses waited. A prince who cannot measure his own garden is a strange kind of prince. Shamshiel did not apologize. He named the thrones instead. Moses walked from pearl to ruby to gold. He put his hand on a silver armrest still cold. "And this?" he asked, and Shamshiel named the convert who had come to the faith from outside it. He asked again at the gold. Shamshiel named the sinner who had turned back before the end. Pearl was for the scholars who wore themselves down over the Torah day and night for the love of it alone. Precious stone for the pious. Rubies for the just. Greatest of them all was the throne of Abraham, then Isaac and Jacob, then the prophets, then the righteous, each seat sized to the weight of a life. The garden would not give Moses a length or a width. It would give him seats.

The Throne of Copper

Among all that gold and jewel and pearl, one throne was beaten out of plain copper, and Moses stopped at it. Copper, here. He laid his palm on the metal. It was not warm. He asked what it was doing in such company and who could possibly be waiting to sit on it.

Shamshiel's answer was short. "For the sinner that has a pious son." The man who earned nothing for himself would still be given his place, drawn up into the garden on the merits of a child who lived well. Moses had climbed for measurements and left with something he could not weigh. Even here, at the top of everything, a soul could be saved by someone standing a generation below it.

He took his hand off the copper. Nuriel still filled the path behind him. Abraham's praise still hung in the hall. The garden kept its size to itself.