## Sefer Yetzirah Chapter 2

###### Sefer Yetzirah 2:1
[Sefer Yetzirah 2:1](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Sefer%20Yetzirah/r/2:1)

עשרים ושתים אותיות יסוד שלש אמות שבע כפולות ושתים עשרה פשוטות. שלש אמות אמ"ש יסודן כף זכות וכף חובה ולשון חק מכריע בינתים:

**Sefaria Community Translation:**
Twenty-Two Letters of Foundation—Three Mothers, Seven Pairs, and Twelve Simple Letters. Three Mothers, *Alef-Mem-Shin*: Their foundation is the palm of innocence and the palm of guilt, and the tongue of edict decides between them.


###### Sefer Yetzirah 2:2
[Sefer Yetzirah 2:2](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Sefer%20Yetzirah/r/2:2)

עשרים ושתים אותיות חקקן חצבן שקלן והמירן צרפן וצר בהם נפש כל כל היצור ונפש כל העתיד לצור:

**Sefaria Community Translation:**
Twenty-Two Letters—He carved them, and hewed them, and weighed them, and exchanged them, and combined them, and formed with them the soul of every formed being and the soul of every being He has yet to form.


###### Sefer Yetzirah 2:3
[Sefer Yetzirah 2:3](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Sefer%20Yetzirah/r/2:3)

עשרים ושתים אותיות יסוד חקוקות בקול חצובות ברוח קבועות בפה בחמשה מקומות אחה"ע בומ"ף גיכ"ק דטלנ"ת זסשר"ץ [בדפוס מנטובה נוסף במשנה זו: קשורות בלשון כשהלבת בגחלת, אחה"ע משמשת בסוף הלשון ובבית הבליעה, בומ"ף בין השפתים ובראש הלשון, גיכ"ק על שלישיתה של לשון נכרתת, דטלנ"ת בראש הלשון משמשת עם הקול, וסצר"ש בין השינים ולשון שכובה ושטותה. וע"ז קאי פי' הרמ"ב:]:

**Sefaria Community Translation:**
Twenty-Two Letters of Foundation—Carved with voice, hewn with spirit, fixed in the mouth in five places: *Alef-Heh-Chet-ʽAyin*, *Bet-Waw-Mem-Peh*, *Gimel-Yod-Kaf-Qof*, *Dalet-Tet-Lamed-Nun-Taw*, *Zayin-Samekh-Shin-Resh-Tzadi*. ([In the Mantua printing, the following is added to the paragraph¹:] Bound to the tongue like a flame to coal—*Alef-Chet-Heh-ʽAyin*, serving behind the tongue in the house of swallowing. *Bet-Waw-Mem-Peh*, between the lips and in front of the tongue. *Gimel-Yod-Kaf-Qof*, being cut upon the third portion of the tongue. *Dalet-Tet-Lamed-Nun-Taw*, with the tip of the tongue, serving with voice. And *Samekh-Tzadi-Resh-Shin*, between the teeth and tongue, lain down and flattened. ¹ ‘to lie, lie down’, but שכובה looks like a passive participle, *shekhuvah*, while *shakhav* is normally an intransitive verb not amenable to being made passive. Nonetheless I have rendered it ‘lain down’. The second word, שטותה, cannot be made sense of without emendation. שְׁטוּתָה *shetutah* would appear to be passed on a root שָׁטָה *shatah* which means ‘to mock, ridicule’, found in words like שְׁטוּת *shetut* ‘stupidity’. This is certainly an editorial error, confusing a *Chet* for a *Taw*. What was intended was שְׁטוּחָה *shetuchah*, meaning ‘flat’. Thus the letters *Samekh-Tzadi-Resh-Shin* are pronounced thus with the tongue ‘lying down’ and ‘flat’. [On this stand the remarks of the *Ramav*.])

footnotes:
¹ I do not know why the editor of the 1884 Warsaw edition believes these additions to be present in the 1562 Mantua edition, but they are not. Interested readers can check the 1562 Mantua edition for themselves through the digital archives of the National Library of Israel: nli.org.il/he/books/NNL_ALEPH990012793690205171/NLI. The relevant passage is on slide 128.
¹ These last two words, שכובה ושטותה, are difficult to identify. The first is clearly the root שָׁכַב shakhav


###### Sefer Yetzirah 2:4
[Sefer Yetzirah 2:4](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Sefer%20Yetzirah/r/2:4)

עשרים ושתים אותיות יסוד קבועות בגלגל ברל"א שערים וחוזר הגלגל פנים ואחור וזהו סימן לדבר אין בטובה למעלה מענג ואין ברעה למטה מנגע:

**Sefaria Community Translation:**
Twenty-Two Letters of Foundation—Fixed in a wheel with 231 gates.² ‘gates’, to connect every possible combination of 2 letters. In this way every word of the Hebrew language traces a path through the ‘gates’ from one letter to the next. Such diagrams are often arranged so that the letter א *Alef* is across from ל *Lamed*, spelling the name אֵל *El*, God. For an example of such a diagram, see: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/points-231-lines-The-231-lines-connecting-the-22-letters-are-the-231-Gates-from-Kaplan_fig2_236826988 (From Jerome Levi (2009), Structuralism and Kabbalah: Sciences of Mysticism or Mystifications of Science?, in *Anthropological Quartlery* 82(4), pp. 929-984), citing Aryeh Kaplan (1997), *Sefer Yetzirah*, p. 111). The wheel turns back and forth. This is a cypher for the matter: There is nothing in goodness higher than Delight, and nothing in evil lower than Affliction.³ ‘delight, pleasure’ and נֶגַע *negaʽ* ‘affliction, plague, strike’ are anagrams and antonyms.

footnotes:
² This refers to a kind of letter diagram. Drawing the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet around the edge of a circle, it takes 231 lines, here called שְׁעָרִים sheʽarim
³ The words עֹנֶג ʽoneg


###### Sefer Yetzirah 2:5
[Sefer Yetzirah 2:5](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Sefer%20Yetzirah/r/2:5)

כיצד שקלן והמירן אל"ף עם כלם וכלם עם אל"ף, בי"ת עם כלם וכלם עם בי"ת וחוזרת חלילה נמצא כל היצור וכל הדבור יוצא בשם אחד:

**Sefaria Community Translation:**
How did He weigh and transform them? *Alef* with them all and all of them with *Alef*; *Bet* with them all and all of them with *Bet*. And so it turns, such that all matter is found and all speech emerges into one name.


###### Sefer Yetzirah 2:6
[Sefer Yetzirah 2:6](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Sefer%20Yetzirah/r/2:6)

יצר מתהו ממש ועשה אינו ישנו וחצב עמודים גדולים מאויר שאינו נתפש וזה סימן צופה וממיר עושה כל היצור ואת כל הדברים שם אחד וסימן לדבר עשרים ושתים (מניינים) [חפצים] בגוף אחד:

**Sefaria Community Translation:**
He formed matter from chaos⁴, meaning a ‘void’, ‘chasm’, or state of emptiness and inactivity. The Hebrew term תֹּהוּ *tohu* is much more similar in sense to the Greek *kháos* than it is to English *chaos*. Most literally, it means ‘waste(land)’, the lifeless open desert, a translation of [Genesis 1:2] so far captured in English only by Robert Alter’s *The Hebrew Bible* (2019), who poetically renders תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ *tohu vavohu* as “waste and welter”; cf. Onqelos, who renders it into Aramaic as צָדְיָא וְרוֹקָנְיָא *tzadya weroqanya* ‘(and the earth was) barren and desolate’ (https://cal.huc.edu/comment.php?coord=5100101021). The SY seems to employ *tohu* here a similar sense of profound primordial emptiness and inactivity, paralleled by אֵינוֹ *eno*, ‘nothingness’, literally ‘it is not’ or ‘there is no one/none/nothing’. and made nothingness somethingness; He hewed great columns out of imperceptible Air. This is a cipher: observing, transforming, making all matter and all words one name. A cipher for the matter: twenty-two (numbers) [objects] in one body.

footnotes:
⁴ Though the term ‘chaos’ in modern English implies a state of great energy, fullness, and disorderly restlessness, the English term originates from Greek χάος kháos