131. “Rav Hamnuna Saba etc.” Rav Hamnuna Saba said the following: “Do not let your mouth bring your flesh into sin” (Ecclesiastes 5:5). This means that a person must not let his mouth cause the arrival of an evil thought, and [thereby] cause that holy flesh in which the holy covenant is inscribed to come to guilt. For if he does so, he will be drawn into Gehennom. The one appointed over Gehennom is called Duma, and several myriads of destructive angels are with him, and he stands before the entrance to Gehennom, but he has no permission to draw near to all those who protected the holy covenant in this world.

“The arrival of an evil thought.” This is a warning that every person should guard his mouth, which [refers to] the concept of raising feminine waters through Torah and prayer, so that it should be in [a state of] complete purity. If there is any purchase in [one’s mouth] for the Sitra Aḥara, the Sitra Aḥara will receive [the person’s] feminine waters, and with this strength [the Sitra Aḥara] will lead him to doubt the Holy One, blessed be He, that is, through alien thoughts, Heaven forfend. “And [he will thereby] cause that holy flesh in which the holy covenant is sealed to come to guilt.” [It is] by means of the [alien] thoughts [that] he pulls the foreskin over the holy covenant, and the holy soul falls captive in the hands of the Sitra Aḥara, at which point the Sitra Aḥara draws his soul to Gehennom. This is in accordance with what Rabbi Elazar said (section #68#, above), that from this word a false firmament is fashioned, which is called “emptiness,” and one falls into the hands of Lilith; see there. Here, however, it is referring specifically to a defect in the holy covenant. ¹

footnotes: ¹ The concepts in these sections oscillate between sexual analogies and the underlying conceptual dynamic represented by the analogies. The holy covenant is a term for the circumcised male sex organ, in which the foreskin, a barrier between the male and female in sexual intimacy, is removed. Similarly, the holy covenant conceptually is the covenant between man and God, in which the insertion of foreign thoughts serves as a conceptual foreskin forming a barrier between man and God.

When [the Zohar] states “[thereby] cause that holy flesh in which the holy covenant is sealed to come to sin,” it is referring to the holy soul, which is tied [to the body] and protected by the holy covenant, as stated in the Zohar (Lekh Lekha, 410): “‘From my flesh I shall see the Lord’ (Job 19:26) – what is [the meaning of] ‘from my flesh’? It should say ‘from myself. ’ Rather, from my actual flesh... as we learned: Whenever a person is inscribed with this holy inscription of that sign, he sees the Holy One, blessed be He from within himself, literally from within himself, and the holy soul cleaves to him. But if he does not merit it, because he did not protect this sign, what is written? ‘from the breath (soul) of God they perish’ (Job 4:9).” See there.

This is the meaning of the statement here: “And [thereby] cause that holy flesh […] to come to sin.” In other words, through the strength of the [alien] thoughts, the foreskin, which is the Sitra Aḥara, returns and touches the holy covenant, as a result of which the Divine soul immediately departs from [the person]. This is the mystical meaning of the tree’s cry: “Wicked one; do not touch me” (as stated in the Zohar, Bereshit, 263b, Hashmatot, and in Avot DeRabbi Natan, Ch. 1). The tree is the Yesod, and the coronet of the Yesod is the mystical meaning of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (as stated in Etz Ḥayyim, section 43, chapter 3, and in my book, Beit Sha’ar HaKavanot, p. 45, s. v., U-veḥet). ² represents the glans of the male sex organ, the region uncovered by the removal of the foreskin during a circumcision.

footnotes: ² The coronet of the Yesod

[The Zohar] continues: “The one appointed over Gehennom is called Duma.” [The word] Duma is related to demama [“silence”], since [Duma] takes the soul of life from him and leaves him in the silence of death. It can also be suggested that it is because [Duma] is the angel that brings the [evil] thoughts to the sinner and [thereby] renders the thoughts of the Holy One, blessed be He, similar [domeh] to the thoughts of a mortal being. As long as one understands that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways (see Isaiah 55:8), that is, that a thought [of ours] cannot grasp Him at all, neither His thoughts nor His ways, [a person] will not even conceive that it is possible to have any doubts about Him at all, Heaven forbid.

However, on account of sin, the angel Duma attaches to [the person] and brings into him a spirit of folly, to say that a mortal being is similar to the Holy One, blessed be He, in knowledge and intellect. [The person] is then primed for all sorts of thoughts, and [Duma thereby] draws him into Gehennom. This is the mystical meaning of: “Who is like You, Master of restraint, and who is similar [domeh] to You, O King who causes death and restores to life.” When one stumbles in thinking he is similar to You, there is death, while when one understands that nothing is similar to Him, there is life. Accordingly, “several myriads of destructive angels are with him, and they stands over the entrance to Gehennom.” The thoughts that [Duma] brings to a person are endless myriads, and all these are over the entrance to Gehennom, that is, the entrance through which a person is pulled into Gehennom, although it is not Gehennom itself.

[The Zohar] continues: “But he has no permission to draw near to all those who kept the holy covenant in this world.” That is, although they are not completely clean and there is still the aspect of good and evil within them, nevertheless, if they keep the holy covenant in a manner that they never come to doubt [God], then the angel Duma has no permission to pull them into Gehennom.