They Sang Without Stopping While the Soul Passed the Seventh Gate

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The Ones Who Have a Care for Him

He died at the hour when lamps are lit, and the room did not change. The cup stayed half full on the table. The door stayed open onto the street.

Then others were standing in the room, and none of them looked at the body. They bent instead over the thing that had risen out of it, which had the shape of a man and no weight, and one of them took it under the arm the way a person steadies someone long sick.

"Come up," he said.

They gave no names. They were the ones who have a care for him, and their whole labor is this: to gather a righteous soul at the end and carry it into the chambers of the palace of the seventh heaven. They went out through the roof without opening it.

Three Angels Went Ahead of It

Palaces. That is the word for what they climbed through, though nothing in those halls held still. Doorposts stood higher than a city gate.

At every doorway there were keepers, and their breath came out hot enough to blister a wall. Each of them wanted the same thing before the door moved. Not a name. A right.

Somewhere past the middle of the climb, three took the front and walked ahead of the soul: Dumiel, Kazpiel, and Gabhriel. They go before anyone who deservingly descends to the Merkavah (מרכבה), the chariot that carries the throne. Men who train their whole lives for that road call it a descent even while they are climbing, and they arrive with seals gripped in their fists.

The soul had no fists. It had nothing but the life behind it.

The Bows Were Strung at the Seventh Gate

The seventh palace did not open.

Its guardians filled the gateway with their faces already angry, as though the argument had started long before anyone arrived. Bows strung. Swords out of the sheaths and turning slowly, catching light the way water catches it.

The escorts stopped. The soul stood where it was put and said nothing.

Then the guardians saw who walked in front, and something went out of them. They covered their faces. The bows came unstrung one at a time, and the sound of it ran down the whole rank like a rope going slack. The swords went back into the sheaths.

The doors still held. Nothing had been settled by fear alone. Dumiel raised the great seal and the fearful crown, and the writing on them could be read from the far end of the hall: "God of heaven, Master of earth, the Lord God of Israel."

The Name Set the Stones Moving

Then somebody spoke The Name.

Light broke off it and went everywhere, gilding and silvering the walls, and the stones in the gate woke up. Topaz turned. Onyx turned. Sapphire, carbuncle, and emerald began to move in their settings as if something beneath them had shifted its weight, and the pure marble gave back a brightness with no source.

By that Name heaven and earth had been made. By it every kind of created thing is held together, bound, suspended, and sealed shut, and the seventh palace opened on the sound of it.

What the Beasts Were Singing

Music came out through the doors before anything else. Every instrument that has ever been struck or blown or plucked, and voices under them, and the whole procession went in front of the soul.

They carried it past the cherubim. It passed the ophanim. It passed the holy beasts, who would not break off their singing to look.

A shout went across the servants who bear up the throne. "Be proud, be proud ye lofty! Lift yourselves up, lift yourselves up ye splendid! Strengthen, strengthen yourselves, ye strong! Exalt, exalt yourselves, ye haughty!" They straightened where they stood, because loftiness and strength belong to the King of the World, and the ones who carry His throne are meant to wear some of it.

They set the soul at the right hand of the throne of glory. There are hours when a soul standing in that place stands over against Tazsh, the Lord God of Israel, and there is no nearer place to stand.

From there it could see everything done before the throne, and know everything still coming to the world below. Who would be cast down and who exalted. Who weakened and who made strong. Who crushed with poverty and who made rich. Who would die that year and who would live. From whom an inheritance would be taken and to whom it would be handed, who would be granted the Law for his portion and who would be given Wisdom.

Under all of it the hymn kept going, and it had been going long before the ledger was ever opened.

"Honour and faith are His who liveth forever," the beasts sang. "Understanding and blessing are His who liveth forever. Grace and mercy are His who liveth forever. Preciousness and salvation are His who liveth forever."

Below, in the town it had left that morning, a man was being made rich and a woman was being made poor, and both of them were coming out of one hand. The soul opened its mouth to sing along and found nothing left to name that the song had not already claimed: beauty and victory, secret and intelligence, strength and humility, song and praise, laud and loveliness.

So it stood at the right hand with its mouth open and learned the words instead. Nobody told it when the hymn would finish. The singing had started before the earth had a name for itself, and the beasts showed no sign of stopping.