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The Scholar Who Said Not to Worship the Sun Even Though It Obeys God

A Yemeni scholar received an argument that divine agents deserve worship. His response used the sun, the moon, fire, and Sinai to show why the logic collapsed.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Sun and Every Other Agent of God
  2. The Argument That Swallows the Wind and the Fire
  3. What Was Said at Sinai
  4. All Israel at Sinai Heard the Same Thing

The letter arrived with a dangerous argument inside.

Its author had been thinking about the sefirot, the ten divine emanations through which the infinite God interacts with a finite world, and he had arrived at a position that followed logically from the premises if you did not spot where the premises went wrong. The sefirot act on God's behalf. They carry out divine will in the world. They perform good. They are, in a meaningful sense, God's instruments and extensions into creation. Given all of this, why should human worship go exclusively to the hidden infinite? Why not direct some of it toward these knowable channels?

The Sun and Every Other Agent of God

The scholar who received this argument did not dismiss it gently. He attacked it with a sequence of analogies designed to make the position look absurd before he was finished with it.

The Wars of God 2:12, composed by Rabbi Yihya Qafih in Yemen in 1914 CE as part of a sustained Kabbalistic philosophical debate, preserves the response. The scholar begins with the sun. The sun performs many good actions. It lights the world. It warms the earth. It causes vegetation to grow. Everything alive depends on it. By the logic of the correspondent's argument, the sun deserves worship: it acts willingly, it performs good, it is clearly an agent of the Creator. Should we worship the sun? And the moon, and the stars, and the earth, and the water, and the fire.

The Argument That Swallows the Wind and the Fire

Psalm 104:4 says that God's messengers are winds and God's servants are flaming fire. By the correspondent's logic, we should worship the wind. We should pray to fire. The earth flows with the good things described in scripture as gifts from God's hand; by the same logic, worship the earth. The argument that begins with the sefirot, elevated and spiritual intermediaries, arrives by its own logic at the worship of anything that does anything good in the world. At that point the argument has destroyed the principle it was trying to honor.

What Was Said at Sinai

Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah, a text of Jewish wisdom engaged in the same debate, approaches the question from a different direction. The root of what might be called evil, the force of limitation and contrast in creation, was established at the beginning not as a failure in design but as a necessary element of it. To understand perfection requires understanding what is not perfect. The shadow makes the light visible. This is not dualism, the idea that two equal forces contest the world. It is a description of how a unified creation includes contrast and shadow within itself, subordinate to and in service of the same unity that generates the light.

The scholar's argument about sun-worship is the practical application of this principle. An agent, however excellent, however clearly divine in origin, does not become a legitimate object of worship by virtue of its service. The sun's goodness is real. The sun's agency is real. The sun's complete subordination to the power behind it is also real, and it is that last fact which settles the question. You do not worship the tool. You do not pray to the hand of the workman. You address what moves everything.

All Israel at Sinai Heard the Same Thing

The scene at Sinai was not complex on this point. The first commandment: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. The second: you shall have no other gods before me. Not next to me. Not alongside me. Not in addition to me. The prohibition covers every possible candidate, including those who seem most divine, those who seem most like reflections of the divine character, those who perform the most visibly divine actions in the world.

Sifrei Devarim, the tannaitic midrash on Deuteronomy associated with the school of Rabbi Akiva, preserves the tradition that all of Israel heard the commandments directly at Sinai, not mediated through Moses. The prohibition was not a legal technicality. It was addressed personally to a people standing at the foot of a mountain on fire, and it was addressed to them all. Every agent, every emanation, every beautiful and powerful thing that carries divine energy through the world, was covered by what they heard that day.

PrayerKabbalahSinaiTheology
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The Wars of God 2:12The Wars of God

Sometimes, that happens with our understanding of the Divine, too.

There's a fascinating debate, captured in letters from Jewish scholars of generations past, about how we relate to God and to the intermediaries – the "helpers," if you will – that carry out God's will. One side argued, essentially, "Why stop at the top? Shouldn't we worship everything that does good in the world, everything that acts on God's behalf?" The other side... well, that's where things get really interesting.

You're in a conversation about the En Sof, the Infinite, the unknowable essence of God. And then about the sefirot, the emanations or attributes through which the En Sof manifests – things like Wisdom, Understanding, Kindness, and Severity. Some felt it was right to focus on these attributes, these intermediate expressions of the Divine will. After all, they contain both judgment and mercy, encompassing everything. The Emanator, they said, desires to manifest His actions through these instruments.

One scholar, deeply concerned, responded with a powerful analogy: "It's like saying we should worship the hand because it performs all the tasks, while the head, positioned above, does nothing!" Even the power of speech, he argues, is just a tool. Should we worship the tool itself?

The core of his argument comes down to this: Should we worship everything that acts willingly? He then unleashed a barrage of rhetorical questions, each one more pointed than the last. "The sun performs many good actions – illuminating, warming, causing vegetation to grow. Should we worship it too? The moon, the stars, the earth, the water, the fire – they all act according to the Creator's will. Should we worship any of them?" He even quotes, "From the choicest produce of the sun and from the choicest yield of the months" (Deuteronomy 33:14). Should we be worshipping the sun and moon? The waters flow, giving life. The earth produces vegetation. Scripture itself tells us that God's messengers are winds and His servants are flaming fire (Psalm 104:4). Yet, despite all these agents, all these intermediaries, the Almighty commanded us to serve Him alone and warned us not to worship any other besides Him.

The scholar reminds his correspondent – and us – of that pivotal moment at Mount Sinai. In the desert, during the Exodus, God's voice resounded before the entire assembly: "I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:2-3). And again, "I am the Lord; that is My name! And My glory I will not give to another" (Isaiah 42:8).

"You and I," he writes, "stood before the Creator, who made us, and He did not desire that we worship any other, even though He has appointed agents to perform certain actions. Why should we not heed His voice and go worship that which He did not command us to worship?"

It's a powerful question, isn't it? It forces us to consider what it truly means to worship, and where our focus should lie. The world is full of wonders, full of things that inspire awe and gratitude. But does that mean we should elevate them to the level of the Divine? Or does it mean we should recognize them as expressions of a higher power, a power that ultimately calls us to a direct relationship? Food for thought,.

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Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah 49:8Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah

While there aren't easy answers, Jewish mystical thought offers a fascinating perspective. to a concept explored in the Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah, a profound text of Jewish wisdom. It talks about the very "root of evil." Now, that sounds intense. The text suggests that, at its inception, this root was actual evil. The idea isn't that evil is just a misunderstanding or a lack of good. It had a purpose, a reason for being. And that reason,

Wait, what? Evil highlighting perfection? It sounds paradoxical, I know. But bear with me.

The idea is that, to truly appreciate perfection, you need to understand what it isn't. This "root of evil" came into being to demonstrate what deficiencies look like. It acted as a contrast, a shadow against which God's light could shine even brighter. It was the original source of deficiency, born out of the concealment of God's perfection.

It's like appreciating the warmth of the sun only after experiencing a cold winter. Or understanding the beauty of harmony only after hearing discord.

But here's the truly amazing part. According to the Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah, this isn't the end of the story. After the deficiencies – the bad things, the imperfections – are repaired, what happens to this root of evil? Does it just disappear? No. It remains.

But it remains for a completely different reason.

Now, it remains to show us how those deficiencies were rectified. It acts as a roadmap, a evidence of the journey from imperfection to wholeness. We get to see, clearly, the path that was taken, the steps that were made, the gradual unveiling of perfection that healed the brokenness.

Think of it like a scar. It's a reminder of a wound, yes, but it's also a evidence of the body's incredible ability to heal. The scar doesn't erase the pain, but it tells a story of resilience and recovery.

This is a powerful idea. It suggests that even the darkest parts of our experience can ultimately serve a higher purpose. That even evil, in its own strange way, can contribute to the revelation of God's perfection.

And that revelation, according to the Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah, is a gradual process, a "little by little" unfolding. It's not a sudden, dramatic transformation, but a slow, steady movement towards wholeness. And as that perfection is revealed, it rectifies the deficiencies in that same gradual way.

So, the next time you encounter something difficult, something painful, something that seems inherently evil, remember this: it might be part of a larger story, a story of healing and transformation. It might be a reminder that even in the darkest of times, the light of perfection is slowly, but surely, making its way through.

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