והניף ידו על הנהר בעים רוחו והכהו לשבעה…

The maamar opens with Isaiah’s prophecy of the final redemption (Isaiah 11:15 in our editions; the text gives the chapter as 12): as G‑d split the sea at the Exodus, so He will one day wave His hand over “the river” and break it into seven streams for the returning exiles. Before turning to the river, the Alter Rebbe explains the sea of the Exodus: the Sea of Reeds is Malchus of Atzilus, the last of the Ten Sefiros of the World of Emanation.

Malchus is G‑d’s “speech,” the lowest of the divine levels, and the Aramaic word for “end,” sofa, echoes the name Yam Suf. The world was created through divine speech, the Ten Utterances, and each utterance carries a light from one of the Ten Sefiros; “Let there be light,” for example, carries the light of Chochmah.

Speech carries this light, but it also covers it, like a garment. The human analogy makes the point: our words are the vessel that carries our ideas and feelings out to others.

Yet the same words also hide what they carry. A small child can read and pronounce every word of a wise text and still grasp nothing of its meaning.

Only someone who is already wise finds the idea inside the words, because he brings his own understanding to them. In themselves, the letters are a concealment of the intellect and feelings that they hold.

Above there is no “wise learner”: the wisdom found in the created worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah comes into being only from the supernal speech. Unlike the wise reader in the analogy, those worlds bring no understanding of their own to the letters.

It follows that the speech and letters of Malchus of Atzilus hide the intellect, Chochmah, Binah and Daas, and the emotive attributes of Atzilus that are vested in them.

So almost nothing of these lights appears in Beriah: only a faint glimmer, like the light that passes through the hairs, which grow from the head but carry only a trace of its life. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, on “Your teeth are like a flock of ewes,” the Alter Rebbe calls the flow that gives life to the worlds “hairs” and compares it to a teacher’s words, with the same difference as here: the student has a mind of his own, but above, the wisdom itself comes into being only from what passes through the “hairs.” That is why Malchus is called “sea,” the “hidden world,” for the sea covers everything within it.

A second explanation of why speech conceals: what passes from the intellect into speech is only the outer layer of an idea, the part that can be put into words.

The inner core of an idea can never be put into letters and speech. The Alter Rebbe refers to his explanation of the Yom Kippur verse “For on this day He shall atone” in Likkutei Torah, Acharei.

The splitting of the sea reverses this concealment: what was the “hidden world” becomes a “revealed world.”

The supernal speech no longer hides the lights it carries, the Ten Sefiros of Atzilus, called “intellect and emotive attributes” after the human analogy. At the splitting of the sea they were revealed to the souls in Beriah just as they are revealed in Atzilus.

Because the splitting of the sea joined Beriah to Atzilus itself, with no partition (parsa) or screen between them, the sea split into twelve parts. The partition is the boundary that normally separates the divine World of Atzilus from the created worlds below it.

Twelve is the number of Beriah: the souls there are the twelve tribes, and the angels there are the “twelve oxen” that bore the great basin in Shlomo’s Temple, called “the sea.” The verse “and the sea was upon them, above” fits exactly: the “sea,” Malchus of Atzilus, rests upon the twelve of Beriah.

In general the angels form four camps around the Shechinah, led by Michael, Gavriel, Refael and Uriel, just as the river of Eden divides into four heads. Yet each of the four divides into three, making twelve, as the twelve tribes camped under four banners, three tribes to a banner.

So too each arm and each leg has three joints. The Zohar on Vayechi describes the twelve tribes in just this way: four banners, three tribes to each arm and each thigh, with the body of the Shechinah upon them, “and the sea was upon them.”

The tribes themselves belong to Beriah, but their root is in Atzilus, in the “twelve diagonal boundaries” of Z’eir Anpin, the emotive attributes of Atzilus. Six directions meet along twelve edges, and these twelve boundaries stand for the twelve ways the six attributes join one another. In Torah Ohr, Vayeshev, the Alter Rebbe explains that these twelve boundaries are called “the tribes of Yah” because they are drawn from Abba and Imma, Chochmah and Binah.

So the splitting of the sea, which raised Beriah into Atzilus, raised each of the twelve tribes to its own root among the twelve boundaries of Z’eir Anpin. The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse on the boundaries of the Land of Israel, “And the border shall go down,” where the border’s descent to the Jordan (Yarden), which “takes from one and gives to another,” is explained as an ascent from below that raises the fallen sparks to holiness.

That is why each tribe had its own path through the sea: each rose to its own root, “each one according to his own measure.” In Likkutei Torah, Pekudei, the Alter Rebbe explains “For there the tribes went up, the tribes of Yah” in just this way: the tribes of Beriah join there with their root and source in Atzilus, which is called “the tribes of Yah.”

Everything said so far concerns the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, which takes place in the supernal speech, Malchus. Its effect was that the speech and its letters no longer hid what they carry.

Of the Future, however, Isaiah speaks of the river, not the sea. To explain the difference, the Alter Rebbe first shows why the sea had to split: it prepared the way for the receiving of the Torah.

The Gemara, explaining the psalm of the Exodus in Hallel, reads “The sea saw and fled” as the splitting of the sea and “The mountains danced,” in the next verse, as the Giving of the Torah; the maamar takes this to show that the one prepared for the other. The Tzemach Tzedek, in Yahel Or, adds that Rashi there links the dancing mountains with Sinai through the verse “Why do you leap, O high-peaked mountains.”

The purpose of the mitzvos is to draw the Infinite Light into the created worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah as openly as it shines in Atzilus, where, as Iggeres HaKodesh 20 explains, G‑d is one with the lights, “His life-forces,” and with the vessels of the Sefiros, all of them G‑dliness. The lower worlds are “separate”: they feel themselves to be a something (yesh), an existence of their own.

The mitzvos are “the 248 limbs of the King”: as the limbs carry out the will of the soul, the mitzvos carry out G‑d’s will, and in Likkutei Torah, Beshalach, the Alter Rebbe explains that they become 248 vessels for the emotive attributes of Atzilus. Through them the unity that is open in Atzilus is revealed in the same way in the lower worlds; the Alter Rebbe refers to his discourses in Torah Ohr on “For as the new heavens” and “Moshe would speak.”

That is why the sea had to split first: the splitting broke through the partition between Atzilus and Beriah, so that Israel walked on dry land in the midst of the sea. Only then could the Torah be given, drawing Atzilus down into the lower worlds.

The Gemara reads “which I command you today, to do them” as: today, in this world, is for doing the mitzvos, and tomorrow, in the Time to Come, is for receiving their reward; and Torah study is equal to all the mitzvos together. The Alter Rebbe identifies the reward with the revelation of the Torah’s inner dimension and of the reasons for the mitzvos, as Rashi explains “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth”: Israel trusts that G‑d will appear to them again to reveal the secret of the Torah’s reasons and its hidden treasures.

Isaiah’s verse about G‑d’s servant is read as a prophecy of Mashiach, who will reveal this inner dimension; Targum Yonasan, the Aramaic translation of the Prophets, cited in the notes, renders it “My servant the Mashiach.”

Each expression in the verse raises him above another great figure, beginning with Avraham and Yitzchak; the last words, “very (me’od) high,” place him highest of all, for the letters of me’od (מאד) are those of Adam (אדם): Mashiach will stand above Adam and even above Moshe. Sefer HaGilgulim, the Arizal’s teaching on the soul’s incarnations, explains this as above Adam after his sin; the maamar returns to the point later. A note from Likkutei Sichos explains that Moshe remains unequalled in prophecy, while in the level of the soul, and so in teaching the Torah’s inner dimension, Mashiach is greater.

The Ramaz, Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, a great commentator on the Zohar, speaks of Mashiach in several places: on the Zohar’s words “Moshe was the beginning,” which go on to name King Mashiach as “the end,” and on the verse “As in the days of your going out from Egypt, I will show him wonders.” As a Kehot note quotes him, he reads the five expressions of “Behold, My servant shall be wise” as the five levels of the soul and says that the highest, yechidah, no one has yet attained, but Mashiach will. The Alter Rebbe states the conclusion: Mashiach will teach all the people the inner dimension of the Torah.

This cannot mean the revealed Torah, “the revealed things” that belong “to us and to our children.” One man could not personally teach the countless myriads of Israel.

Besides, at the Resurrection of the Dead Moshe and all the great sages will rise, and they already know the whole revealed Torah. They would have no need for Mashiach to teach it to them.

So Mashiach’s teaching must be the inner dimension of the Torah, which is endless, “longer than the earth in measure.” In it there is always a further level to rise to, so that even the greatest will have something to learn.

This completes the parallel: the splitting of the sea had to come before the Torah of practical deeds was given, and “waving His hand over the river” must come before the inner dimension of the Torah is revealed in the Future.

The river of Isaiah’s prophecy is the Euphrates, the fourth of the rivers that flow from Eden. The Gemara says the Euphrates “is the one from the beginning,” the same river named at creation; so this river is the level of “a river goes out from Eden.”

The river is Binah, the level of thought, which is higher than speech. Thought never rests, for the mind is always thinking of something, just as a river flows without pause; Likkutei Torah on Shir HaShirim says the same, and in Torah Ohr, Noach, thoughts are called “rivers” because they move and flow, while gathered waters stand still.

The Hebrew nahar, “river,” is related to venaharu, “they shall stream,” a word for continuous flowing. The sea, by contrast, is “the gathering of the waters,” water that collects and stands still, and that is speech, which holds its content in fixed words; so “a river goes out from Eden” means that thought flows continually from Eden, the source above it.

Thought, too, is made of letters: we think in words, only silently. These letters are also garments that clothe the essence of Chochmah, the flash of insight itself, though thought is a more inward garment than speech.

So thought also hides the essence of the higher Chochmah, as speech does, only less. This prepares the point of the river: even after the sea is split, a further concealment remains, the letters of thought.

The Alter Rebbe refers to his explanation of “There are sixty queens” for the inner and outer aspects. He then defines the future “waving of the hand over the river”: the very essence of the supernal Eden will be revealed.

Today Gan Eden, the world of the souls, receives from Eden only through the “river,” that is, through letters of thought, and letters clothe and hide. So the souls there do not grasp the essence of Eden itself.

The Gemara says that “No eye has seen, O G‑d, except You” refers to Eden, which no creature’s eye has ever seen; and lest one think the Garden and Eden are the same, the verse distinguishes them: a river goes out from Eden to water the Garden.

That is why Eden remains unseen even by the souls in the Garden: the Garden is watered only through the “river,” the letters of thought, and letters hide.

What reaches Gan Eden now is only a glimmer. When G‑d “waves His hand over the river,” the souls will come to the revelation of Eden itself.

Micah’s prophecy of the Future says “I will show him wonders,” in the language of seeing. Hearing and understanding come through letters, but sight grasps the thing itself; as the Sages say, hearing cannot be compared with seeing.

The Alter Rebbe illustrates this “sight” of Chochmah itself with a story about the Arizal, recorded in Pri Etz Chaim, the Arizal’s teachings on the inner intentions of prayer and the mitzvos, in the chapter on the Shema said at bedtime.

During his Shabbos sleep the Arizal heard, in the Heavenly Academy, wondrous teachings on the portion of Balak and Bilam, and he said that he could not explain them in eighty years of continuous speaking.

This seems impossible: how could he take in, in one hour of thought, what would take eighty years to put into speech?

Admittedly, the letters of thought are called “large letters,” for thought grasps quickly what speech conveys slowly. The Zohar on Terumah speaks of these “large letters.”

That is why the Shabbos hymn Kel Adon, arranged by the alef-beis, gives each letter four or five words, while the weekday version gives each letter a single word: Shabbos is the level of thought, of “large letters,” in which each letter holds more.

But this explains only a modest ratio, a quarter of an hour of thought for an hour or two of speech. To fit sixty or eighty years of speech into one hour of thought is impossible.

The answer is that the Arizal’s grasp was not thought at all but “sight”: he saw the very essence of Chochmah, before it is clothed in Binah, in comprehension and letters.

Chochmah in itself is far above intellect as it is clothed in letters, so what is seen in an hour may need a lifetime to be put into words. It is like the way time itself comes down from what is above time: “A thousand years in Your eyes are like yesterday.”

Moshe’s plea to enter the Land was of this kind. Moshe had the sight of Chochmah, for of him it is written, “he saw the first (reishis) for himself,” and reishis, “the first,” is a name for Chochmah; he wanted to draw this sight into “the land,” the Community of Israel, which is called “a land of delight,” but G‑d did not allow it.

So Moshe told Israel, “And now, Israel, hear”: in his time they could only hear, not see, and only in the Future will Mashiach reveal this level of sight to the whole Community of Israel. In the Zohar on “You have begun,” Moshe is “the beginning” and King Mashiach “the end,” the completion; and at the end of his explanation of “And the kohen shall wave them” (Likkutei Torah, Emor), the Alter Rebbe teaches that the inner essence of Chochmah cannot enter letters at all, and only a glimmer of it is hinted in the cantillation and melodies of the Torah.

Just as Mashiach’s teaching will be a seeing, so the reasons of the mitzvos will be revealed in the Time to Come in the manner of sight.

That is why the reward of the Future is called “what no eye has seen.” The Zohar asks who it is that “will do” it, and answers that it is the hidden Atik, the highest level, on which everything depends.

This sight of Chochmah is what Mashiach will teach, and of it Isaiah says, “Behold, My servant shall be wise.” Teaching by sight, a note explains, means seeing the whole matter at once, in general and in all its details; and even in this level there are endless ascents.

The third section explains the “seven streams”: they correspond to the three Patriarchs, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, and the four Matriarchs, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah. As the sea split into twelve for the twelve tribes, the river will split into seven for the Patriarchs and Matriarchs.

The tribes, in Beriah, are “the lower chariot”: like a chariot, they carry G‑d’s will with no will of their own. The Patriarchs are “the higher chariot,” in Atzilus: they correspond to Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes of Atzilus, Avraham’s love, Yitzchak’s awe and Yaakov’s compassion.

The parenthesis lists where this is explained: the Torah Ohr discourse on “The Patriarchs are themselves the chariot,” the discourse on “And Lavan rose early” on the Patriarchs and the tribes, and the end of the discourse in Bamidbar on the census “by their fathers’ house.” It adds that the Matriarchs, too, are in Atzilus.

The Alter Rebbe draws a parallel between the tribes and the Patriarchs, beginning with the tribes: their souls exist in Beriah, yet they have a root in Atzilus, the world above it.

But in Atzilus there is only their root; their own existence is in Beriah. This is like the morning blessing: “The soul You placed in me is pure,” as it is in its root, and then “You created it,” as a created being, something from nothing; and a created being bears no comparison to Atzilus.

For the tribes themselves to be joined to their root, with Atzilus revealed in them, the sea had to be split. That is why it split into twelve, one path for each tribe.

The Patriarchs stand one level higher: they themselves are in the seven lower Sefiros of Atzilus, but their root is “beyond the river,” above Binah, in Atik, the inner dimension of Keser, for Z’eir Anpin, the emotive attributes, is bound to Atika and depends upon it. In Likkutei Torah, Bechukosai, the Alter Rebbe explains this verse: the Patriarchs’ root is above “the river that goes out from Eden,” which is Binah, and from there G‑d drew them down through Atzilus to be clothed in bodies below.

Their root is there, but they themselves remain in the emotive attributes of Atzilus. The Alter Rebbe also refers to his explanation of “Set me as a seal,” where the black straps of the tefillin, required by a law given to Moshe at Sinai, are explained as coming from a root so high that it can descend only in blackness.

In the Future, when G‑d “waves His hand over the river,” the Patriarchs and Matriarchs will be raised to their root. The light above Atzilus, “beyond the river,” the seven lower Sefiros of Atik Yomin, will then be revealed in them.

Through them it will reach all Israel: this is the river struck into seven streams, a channel through each of the seven. The explanations of the menorah’s seven lamps, to which the text refers, speak of the seven shepherds who draw G‑dliness down to all Israel; and in Torah Ohr on Vayishlach, Yaakov’s crossing of the ford of the Yabbok is explained through the Patriarchs’ root “beyond the river.”

Through this revelation the inner dimension of the Torah, the reasons of the Torah, will be revealed. It is the revelation of Mocha Stima’ah, “the hidden brain,” the concealed wisdom within Arich Anpin, the level of the divine will above Atzilus.

The revealed Torah, by contrast, comes from the intellect of Z’eir Anpin, a lower level. In Likkutei Torah, Sh’lach, at the end of the discourse on “I am Havayah your G‑d,” the Alter Rebbe explains “his desire is in the Torah of Havayah” as the Torah above, the higher Chochmah, which will be revealed in the Time to Come, and “his Torah” as the Torah below, the vessel for it.

So for the inner dimension to be revealed, the river must be crossed on dry land, as the sea was at the Exodus. Then the level above Atzilus, Mocha Stima’ah, will be revealed even in the lower worlds.

The Alter Rebbe refers to two more explanations of this future revelation: on “For as the new heavens” and on “For over all the glory there shall be a canopy.” In the second (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim) he explains that Mocha Stima’ah is the hidden reason of the supernal will, so lofty that to others the will seems to have no reason at all, and that in the Future the reasons of the Torah’s inner dimension, from Mocha Stima’ah, will be revealed.

The Ramaz describes the four levels of Torah interpretation, PaRDeS, as rectifying the four worlds: sod, the secret, rectifies Atzilus, while peshat, remez and derush, the plain sense, allusion and exposition, rectify the three lower worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

The lower worlds are “the world of division,” where each thing feels separate. Their rectification is that they become nullified to G‑d as Atzilus is.

This rectification will be revealed in the Future, as the fruit of our deeds now, when all the lower worlds will be included in Atzilus. The Ramaz says this in his comment on Va’eschanan.

The verse “a river goes out from Eden to water the Garden” carries an allusion: the word gan, “garden” (גן), has the numerical value fifty-three (gimmel 3, nun 50), here taken as the number of the Torah’s portions (sedarim). “From there it divides,” yipared, alludes to the rectification of the world of division (pirud).

The letters of yipared, פרד, are the initials of peshat, remez and derush, which are the “Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah within Atzilus” and flow from the “river.” Through them the Torah, of which it is said “For My glory I created it, I formed it, I also made it,” rectifies the three lower worlds.

Sod, the secret dimension of the Torah, rectifies Atzilus itself, by making the Infinite Light from the inner dimension of Atik shine in it. This is the Torah’s inner dimension, “the secret of Havayah for those who fear Him.”

This higher rectification is “And He will wave His hand over the river.” The river, the source of “from there it divides,” is only the source of the lower worlds and of their rectification.

Atzilus is rectified by a level above the river, and this is the striking of the river into seven streams: like “the stream of Your delights,” adanecha, a word related to Eden, they carry the revelation of Eden itself.

The river is thought: thought, speech and action correspond to Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, and Atzilus too has its own thought, speech and action, “the Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah within Atzilus,” which are peshat, remez and derush. In Likkutei Torah, Shabbos Shuvah, the Alter Rebbe draws this from “I created it, I formed it, I also made it”: Beriah is thought, Yetzirah speech and Asiyah action.

Above ordinary thought, speech and action there is a deeper level, “Your thoughts are very deep”: thought, speech and action that are above intellect, which the discourse on “Return, O Israel” connects with Adam Kadmon, the first and highest level of emanation, called “the primordial thought.” The revelation of what is above the river is to be understood in the same way.

Ruach means both “wind” and “spirit.” In Isaiah’s plain sense it is the strong wind with which G‑d dries the river; the Alter Rebbe reads it through the Midrash, which says that “the spirit (ruach) of G‑d hovered over the face of the waters” is the spirit of King Mashiach, of whom it is said, “the spirit of Havayah shall rest upon him.” So the “spirit” that strikes the river is Mashiach’s spirit.

Moshe was named “for I drew him out of the water”: his root is in the upper waters, the source of the revealed Torah. The Torah is compared to water, which flows from a high place to a low one, and so the revealed Torah comes down to us.

The inner dimension of the Torah is the “spirit” that hovers above the waters, above the level of water. So the river, which is water, is struck “with the might of His spirit,” a level above water, and split into seven streams.

This higher revelation is drawn down through teshuvah, the return of the soul to its source, “And the spirit shall return to G‑d.” In the Aramaic saying the text quotes, “a spirit brings a spirit”: the spirit a person raises up draws down a spirit from above, “the might of His spirit.”

The fourth section explains why the revelation of the Torah’s inner dimension is tied to the seven streams, the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. It starts from the discourse on “And Lavan rose early”: Yaakov’s attribute is the supernal compassion, Tiferes of Atzilus.

Yaakov’s compassion is so lofty that it extends even to the higher worlds, for even they are lowly in comparison with G‑d. The tribes, his children, stand a rank below him.

Their compassion is the one the Tanya describes: to arouse great compassion for the spark of G‑dliness in one’s own soul, which has fallen so far from its source. Compassion is in proportion to knowledge: the better one knows how high the soul’s source is, the more one feels its fall.

That is why the sea split into twelve, for the twelve tribes: in our time, the compassion that applies is the tribes’ compassion for the soul that has come down into a body.

The physical World of Asiyah hides G‑d most of all, which is why the soul’s descent into it calls for such compassion; the higher worlds do not hide Him so much. “I also made it” is read as the World of Asiyah, the lowest of the three verbs of creation.

In the Future, when Asiyah is refined and “the glory of Havayah will be revealed” in it as it is above, there will be no special cause for compassion over the descent into Asiyah rather than into Beriah. What will remain is the compassion of the Patriarchs themselves, which extends even to the higher worlds.

The tribes’ compassion is an arousal from below, a human initiative, and it draws down an arousal from above: the higher compassion of the Patriarchs.

It is like bending one branch of a tree, which pulls the whole tree with it; shevet means both “tribe” and “branch.” So the tribes’ compassion draws the Patriarchs’ compassion after it, and through it G‑dliness is drawn down by the Torah and mitzvos, the higher Chochmah contained in the Torah we have.

The Alter Rebbe refers to the end of the discourse on “Who has counted the dust of Yaakov” in Likkutei Torah, Balak, which explains that one merits the light of the Torah through Yaakov’s attribute: arousing great compassion on one’s own soul, for the name Yaakov is read yud-akev, compassion for the yud, the higher Chochmah, that has fallen to the “heel.”

In the Time to Come, the compassion of the Patriarchs themselves, revealed in all the souls of Israel, will draw down an arousal from above from a still higher source: the “great compassion” of Arich Anpin, the divine will, above the attributes of Atzilus. Isaiah speaks of it: “with great compassion I will gather you,” and “My kindness shall not depart from you,” with the stress on “My kindness,” G‑d’s own.

Through this the inner dimension of the Torah, rooted in Mocha Stima’ah above the Chochmah of Atzilus, will be revealed. The same idea explains the Sages’ saying that the Tree of Knowledge was wheat.

The difficulty: elsewhere “wheat” (chitah, חטה) is said to be the twenty-two letters of the Torah, for its letters add up to twenty-two (ches 8, tes 9, hei 5); how then can the Tree of Knowledge be wheat? The answer comes from the discourse on Israel’s putting “we will do” before “we will hear”: the Written Torah is the Tree of Life, and the Zohar calls the Oral Torah “the tree of good and evil.”

This does not mean that the Oral Torah is itself good and evil, G‑d forbid: it is Malchus of Atzilus, entirely one with G‑d (the Tikkunei Zohar, cited in the notes, calls Malchus the “mouth,” the Oral Torah). It bears the name because it clothes itself in the work of refining the Tree of Knowledge, kelipas nogah, the “glowing husk,” the mixed realm in which good can be separated from evil: what is permitted and forbidden, pure and impure.

This is explained at length in Iggeres HaKodesh 26 of the Tanya, which opens with the Raaya Mehemna, a section of the Zohar: the inner wisdom of the Torah, the Zohar, is the Tree of Life, while the laws of forbidden and permitted, impure and pure, are called the tree of good and evil.

The Written Torah also came down. “When I break for you the staff of bread” is, in its plain sense, a curse of famine; read through its words, “when I break” alludes to the breaking of the first Tablets, after which “the staff of bread,” the Torah, the Tree of Life, descended and was clothed in physical matters, as Likkutei Torah on Bechukosai explains.

The Written Torah came down because the Oral Torah, which deals with physical matters, receives from it and is its explanation.

Adam before the sin stood above this whole work of separating good from evil. Sefer HaGilgulim says that before the sin Adam had the level of Mashiach, above Moshe.

His dwelling was Gan Eden, watered by the river that goes out from Eden; that is, it drew down Eden itself.

Eden is the inner dimension of the Torah, above letters, which Mashiach will reveal when G‑d “waves His hand over the river.”

From all this the Shavuos offering will be understood, in which the kohen waved the two loaves together with the two lambs. The two loaves are the Written and the Oral Torah, and the two lambs are compassion, Yaakov’s attribute.

The Torah is “bread,” and compassion brings it down: “I carried you on eagles’ wings,” which is compassion, led to “I brought you to Me” at Sinai. In Likkutei Torah, Beha’aloscha, the Alter Rebbe explains “My tears have been my bread”: through tears of bitterness over the darkness that hides G‑dliness, one merits “bread,” the Torah.

The waving lifts the Torah, the “bread of wheat,” and binds it to the Infinite Light, the supernal Eden itself; and it lifts the Patriarchs’ compassion to its source, the great compassion.

That is why the thirteen rules by which the Torah is expounded correspond to the Thirteen Attributes of Compassion: the Torah is drawn down by compassion and returns to it. The text refers to the discourse on “Remember” and “Keep,” which speaks of elevation and drawing down.

The fifth section turns to the first half of Isaiah’s verse: “And Havayah will destroy the tongue of the Sea of Egypt.” The Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi) and the Metzudos explain this “sea” as the river of Egypt, the Nile, which the Radak calls Shichor.

The Nile is one of the four rivers that come out of Eden: Rashi identifies Pishon, the first of them, with the Nile.

The Zohar explains in the same way why the Torah compares Egypt to “the garden of Havayah”: one of the rivers of Gan Eden, Pishon, flows there.

The Zohar reads “the one” (ha-echad) as “the special one”: Pishon is the choicest of the rivers, and that is why the wisdom of Egypt surpassed that of the whole world.

The proof is the praise of Shlomo, whose wisdom exceeded “all the wisdom of Egypt”; Egypt’s wisdom was the measure to be surpassed.

Egypt’s wisdom comes from its river, whose root is the river that goes out from Eden, Chochmah and Binah. As the Zohar puts it, there are waters that raise up wise men; the text also refers to the Midrash at the end of Balak, “There are springs,” and to the Ramaz on Chayei Sarah.

Me’orei Or, a Kabbalistic lexicon, assigns the four rivers to Abba and Imma, Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, with Pishon in Abba, that is, Chochmah, the source of abundance, as in “You made them all with wisdom.” The text also points to the Tikkunei Zohar on this.

Still, the verse says of the four rivers that from there the stream “divides,” so they are the source of the separate worlds; the Zohar on Vayeitzei calls them “mountains of separation.”

That is why the prophet calls the Nile “the tongue of the Sea of Mitzrayim”: Mitzrayim, Egypt, is related to meitzarim, straits and boundaries.

The four rivers are the source of all that has limits, as the Sages measure the distance from the earth to the firmament as a journey of five hundred years. Physical and spiritual things that come from them alike have bounds, and so they appear as separate beings.

They are the source of the flow that creates Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, because they receive from speech, and speech by its nature leaves the speaker and becomes something separate from him.

Above, nothing is truly outside G‑d; separateness exists only from the standpoint of the created beings, through many contractions that make them seem separate.

So in Ezekiel’s vision the wings of the chayos, the angels that bear the divine chariot, are “separate,” because they are drawn from the four origins of speech, and speech produces separate things. In Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar, on “And you shall count for yourselves,” the Alter Rebbe explains that their life comes from Malchus, “the breath of His mouth,” which divides into the four camps of angels as the breath of speech divides among the organs of the mouth.

But of the Time to Come Isaiah says that “the glory of Havayah will be revealed, and all flesh together will see that the mouth of Havayah has spoken.”

The Midrash on Vayikra contrasts this with the present, when the Shechinah is revealed only to individuals; the Zohar, at the end of Mishpatim, says that in the Future all will see G‑d’s glory eye to eye. The text also refers to Torah Ohr on Avram’s change of name.

The meaning is that the supernal speech will be revealed as it is in G‑d Himself.

There, unlike a person’s speech, which leaves the speaker, it is not a separate thing: as the Tanya explains in chapter 21, G‑d’s speech remains united with His essence even after it has gone forth to create the worlds, exactly as before creation.

So “that the mouth of Havayah has spoken” means that the speech will be seen below as it is in “the mouth of Havayah,” united with His essence. All flesh will see this.

Then the unity that is open in Atzilus will be revealed even in Asiyah, as Zechariah says, “On that day Havayah will be One and His Name One.” The text refers to its discourse on “To the conductor, on the Sheminis” for more on this.

There will then be no need for the four rivers, through which the flow comes in a way that “divides” and creates separate beings; instead the very river that goes out from Eden, above the division, will be revealed.

That is the destruction of “the tongue of the Sea of Egypt,” which the Targum renders “He will dry up”: the dividing channel will no longer be needed.

Beyond removing the Nile, G‑d will “wave His hand over the river” itself, the river of Eden before it divides, and split it into seven streams, as explained earlier: through the Patriarchs and Matriarchs.

A further interpretation: the seven streams are the seven lower Sefiros, the emotive attributes and speech, in which and through which the divine flow descends. The river is Binah, above them, and specifically its Fiftieth Gate, the highest level of understanding, which cannot be grasped at all.

The emotive attributes and speech receive only a glimmer from Binah. This is the teaching on “Who created these”: in Kabbalah “Who” (Mi) stands for the hidden level, Binah, and “these” (Eleh) for the revealed attributes it brings forth; the text refers to the discourse on “These are the accounts of the Mishkan.”

In the Future, “He will strike it into seven streams”: the very light of the river, Binah itself, will flow into the seven attributes and speech and be revealed in the lower worlds. The Zohar on Bereishis describes seven lights that strike the sea on seven sides, each side dividing into seven streams.

This is the promise that “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Havayah, as the waters cover the sea”: the knowledge of G‑d will fill even the lowest level, as water covers the bed of the sea. Earlier in Tzav the Alter Rebbe ties this verse to the Mishkan and its offerings, which draw down the light that encompasses all worlds as it will be revealed in the Future.

The maamar closes by pointing to the Midrash at the beginning of Koheles, on “Vanity of vanities,” for more on “the tongue of the Sea of Egypt.”