The text draws upon the wisdom of the Midrash of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the Zohar, specifically Parshat Pinchas. It states, "And there is wisdom which is called wise among all types of wisdom." That's a powerful statement! It hints at a deeper understanding, one that goes beyond the surface level.
The Zohar tells us that God has many "nicknames," but these aren't based on God's inherent nature. Instead, they arise from God's creations. It's "...according to the name of their creator that they were going to be created in the future." Think about that for a moment. Our understanding of God is shaped by the very act of creation itself!
This isn't to say that God is changing or evolving. Absolutely not! There’s no innovation or change in God. Rather, from the very beginning, God possessed the power to manifest these characteristics. These characteristics, like mercy or justice, are always relevant to creation, not necessarily relevant to God's own being.
The text uses the analogy of the soul. Just as the existence of the soul reflects God's perfection, so too do these characteristics. "Like this did He create the Soul," it says. And further: "Like this is the Master of the world..., but all of those are to Him like the Sefirot...and just like the Master of worlds has no known name..so to the Soul does not have [a name]..."
The Sefirot? These are the ten attributes or emanations through which God reveals Himself. As we find in the Zohar, these are aspects of divine expression, not definitions of God's core essence.
It emphasizes the importance of precision in understanding the creation of the body and soul, and all that depends on it. Because the singular Master, blessed be His name, is beyond our ability to fully grasp, we cannot assign any name or appellation to Him that fully captures Him. A name, after all, implies a limitation.
We can, however, grasp specific characteristics: mercy, rulership, strength, justice, compassion, and even anger. These are the aspects that the prophets, from ancient times to more recent ones, grasped in God, because God granted them this comprehension. And it's according to this comprehension that we name God: merciful, ruler, courageous, judge, and so on.
Now, here's a crucial point: Even though God is without boundary or measure, these characteristics do have limits. We call one characteristic mercy, another rulership, another strength. Each exists within the limit that God willed it to be. In mercy, there is only mercy, and in rulership, only rulership.
But, and this is incredibly important, don't think that these measures define God's perfection. As the text emphasizes, all of this is dependent on God's will. God remains the master and can change all of this. In God's perfection, we cannot measure anything at all. We ascribe these appellations to God because God wants to be understood through them and to act in this way.
So, when we say that God is merciful, we're not saying that mercy is an inherent quality of God's essence, like a personality trait. Far from it! It's impossible to truly know God's essence. Rather, we understand that God desires a characteristic of mercy, a characteristic that is not according to God's Self, but is according to the values of creation and measured in their measurements. Because God wants this and wants to be understood in this way, we call God merciful.
God's complete and true essence, however, remains outside of all these matters. As the text concludes, this is the faith we are obligated to believe in with certainty.
So, what does this all mean? Perhaps it means that our understanding of God is a constant process of refinement. We use the language and concepts available to us to try to grasp the ungraspable. Our names for God are like maps: useful for navigating, but never the territory itself. It is up to us to believe in God with certainty, as we've explained already.