Rabbi Akiva Counts the Measured Road to the Throne of Glory

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The Ascent into the Power

Rabbi Akiva went up. He never said how, only that he ascended and gazed into ha-Gevurah, the Power, and there he saw the creatures that stand on every path of heaven. Some stretched long above and wide below. Others turned the other way, wide above and long below, as though the sky had been folded and no direction held its shape. He came back down, and he did not look like a man who had merely traveled far.

Rabbi Yishmael wanted one thing settled first. "How do the ministering angels stand upon them?" he asked. It was the practical question, the question of a man who has watched laborers cross a scaffold and cannot picture footing in a place with no ground.

The Bridge Where the Angels Circle

Akiva answered with a bridge. "Like this bridge that is set over the river," he said, "the one all the world passes over, so is a bridge set from the head of the alley to its end." On that span the angels circle and never stop. They walk its length and turn and walk it again, and as they go they sing, and the song rises before a Name too large to hold in the mouth, the LORD, the God of Israel.

They do not sing alone. Before them stand the swift ones of dread and the captains of awe, rank behind rank, a thousand thousand thousands, and myriads of myriads stacked on top of that, until counting itself gives out. All of them face one direction. All of them praise the throne of Yah. Akiva had stood in a place where a mortal could watch the traffic of heaven cross a bridge and keep its footing on nothing.

The Count That Would Not End

Yishmael pressed for numbers, and Akiva gave them the way a man recites what he has been forced to memorize. How many bridges. How many rivers of fire. How many rivers of hail, how many storehouses of snow, how many wheels of fire, how many angels waiting at each crossing.

Twelve myriad bridges, he said, six above and six below. Twelve thousand rivers of fire, six above and six below. Rivers of hail in the twelve-thousand myriads, storehouses of snow stacked in the same doubled halves, and twenty-four myriad wheels of fire, twelve above and twelve below. Around each bridge ran a circuit, and around each river, and around each storehouse, rings inside rings, and in every passage its own host of angels stood facing the paths of heaven. The place Akiva had walked was not empty and vast. It was full and vast, packed to its edges with fire and water and singing, and that was worse.

The Measure Between the Spans

Then Yishmael asked the question that empties the ground from under a man. "What is the measure between one bridge and another bridge?"

Twelve myriad parasangs, Akiva said. And to climb from one bridge to the next, twelve myriad more. And to come down again, twelve myriad more. Between the rivers of dread and the rivers of awe, twenty-two myriad. Between the rivers of hail and the rivers of darkness, thirty-six myriad. Between the chambers of lightning and the clouds of consolation, forty-two myriad. From those clouds to the Merkavah, eighty-four myriad. From the Merkavah (the divine chariot) to the cherubim, one hundred sixty-eight myriad. From the cherubim to the Ofanim, twenty-four myriad. From the Ofanim inward, to the holy living creatures in the innermost chambers, forty thousand myriad parasangs, and a single parasang is the ground a caravan crosses in an hour.

He kept going. Between one wing of a creature and its other wing, twelve myriad parasangs. From the holy camps to the Throne of Glory, thirty myriad. And from the foot of the Throne up to the place where the King sits upon it, high and exalted, forty thousand myriad parasangs more, and there, only there, His great Name is made holy.

The Chariots of the Seven Palaces

Akiva was not finished, and the last of it was the seven palaces. He set a question in front of Yishmael before he answered it, and it was not a question anyone could answer. "Who can contemplate the seven palaces, and gaze on the heaven of heavens, and see the chambers within the chambers, and say, 'I have seen the chambers of the LORD'?"

Then he counted the fire anyway. In the first palace, four thousand myriads of chariots of fire, and two thousand myriads of flames moving among them like riders among horses. In the second, a hundred thousand myriads of chariots. In the third, two hundred thousand. Each palace deeper held more than the last, chariots multiplying past every number a tongue can hold, until the seventh, where a hundred thousand thousand myriads of chariots of fire stood waiting, and Akiva stopped, because after the seventh there is only the One who does not stand in ranks.

Yishmael had his inventory. He also had the look on Akiva's face, and the knowledge that a man had gone up, counted the road to God to its last measured parasang, and learned exactly how far it runs and how heavily it is kept. Akiva had seen the chambers. He never once said, "I have seen the chambers of the LORD."