והיה אור הלבנה כאור החמה ואור החמה יהיה…

The maamar opens with Isaiah’s prophecy of the redemption: the moon will shine as the sun shines now, and the sun will shine seven times brighter, “like the light of the seven days.” The whole discourse explains what these two lights and their future increase mean in the supernal worlds and in a person’s service of G‑d.

The Midrash (Shemos Rabbah 18:11) explains “the light of the seven days” as the light G‑d created at the very beginning and hid away in the Garden of Eden. Rabbi Chaim Vital, the Arizal’s foremost disciple, cited by the Zohar commentary Mikdash Melech, identifies the seven days of Creation with the seven lower Sefiros of Atik, the inner dimension of Keser, the level that is above all the worlds. The Kehot note adds that the Tzemach Tzedek, in Or HaTorah, raises a difficulty with this identification.

“The light of the seven days” is not the seven days themselves but the light and life-force that animates them, which is the first three Sefiros of Atik. The proof is that Chochmah, the first of those three, is called “light”: in his explanation of “You have captured my heart” (Song of Songs 4:9), the Alter Rebbe teaches that as physical light lets a person see, so wisdom lets one see and grasp a thing, while folly is darkness.

The source of the days’ light is higher than the days. The Alter Rebbe takes a phrase of the morning prayers (the Yotzer blessing, as the Kehot note says), hamisnasei mimos olam, which there means “exalted since days of old,” and reads it as “Who is exalted above the days of the world”: the “days of the world” are the seven days of Creation, the seven lower Sefiros of Atik, and what is exalted above them is the first three.

The maamar turns to the wedding blessing that prays, “Speedily may there be heard … the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride.” We pray for it because at present the bride, Knesses Yisrael (the Community of Israel), has no voice: she is “mute with silence” (Psalms 39:3), like the ewe (rachel) of Isaiah 53:7 that is “mute before her shearers”; the Kehot note remarks that the words “before her shearers” are not quoted here.

Speech is revelation, and the divine “speech” is not revealed in the created worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, for they are utterly incomparable to G‑d, who remains holy and set apart from them. Only in Atzilus, the world of Emanation that is one with its Source, is the divine speech revealed as G‑dliness, in the mode of the Infinite.

The parenthesis quotes the Arizal: around the chashmal, the radiance at the heart of Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 1:4), stands nogah, the fourth kelipah, called “a still, small voice” (I Kings 19:12). The word chashmal (חשמל) is read as two words, chash (חש), “be silent,” and mal (מל), “speak,” as the Talmud (Chagigah 13b) says of it, “at times they are silent, at times they speak.” Kelipas nogah, the husk that is a mixture of good and evil, conceals, and this concealment is what keeps the supernal speech from being revealed.

Chash is a term for silence, and so is the “still” (demamah) voice. The Alter Rebbe refers to the beginning of Parshas Bamidbar in Likkutei Torah, where the word (davar) of G‑d, enclothed in the lower worlds, is called midbar, wilderness, a davar with an added open mem, an opening through which the kelipos draw life; and to the Torah Ohr discourse on “And I return in peace,” which reads Yaakov’s going to Charan as a descent into the constricted “throat” (garon), where the voice cannot come out freely.

One might object that the angels in the lower worlds do perceive G‑d’s glory, for they say, “Blessed be the glory of Havayah from His place” (Ezekiel 3:12). The next part answers that this revelation does not come of itself.

The answer: it comes only as the verse says, “And You are holy, enthroned (yoshev) upon the praises of Israel” (Psalms 22:4), read precisely: “holy” means transcendent and set apart, and “sitting” means lowering oneself, as one who sits lowers his height. The transcendent G‑d lowers Himself into the worlds only through Israel’s praises; the Kehot note adds that the Tzemach Tzedek quotes this passage in Or HaTorah and gives a reason for it.

In his explanation of “You have captured my heart,” the Alter Rebbe taught that the chayos, the holy beings of Ezekiel’s chariot, carry only the Throne, while the likeness of a man seated upon it (Ezekiel 1:26) is revealed only through Israel’s love “with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). The word me’od (מאד, “might”) has the same letters as adam (אדם, “man”), as the Zohar notes.

The name Yaakov (יעקב) has the same letters as yevaka (יבקע), “split,” as in “He split rocks in the wilderness” (Psalms 78:15), said there of G‑d bringing water out of the rock for Israel. So Yaakov stands for the kav, the line of the Infinite Light, which breaks through every concealing “rock” and descends.

The Zohar (Beshalach, 64a) teaches that a “rock” (tzur) is always Gevurah, the power of restraint, and the Mikdash Melech there says that the “rocks” are Gevuros; “in the wilderness” recalls the concealment described above, where the divine word (davar) becomes a wilderness (midbar). Yaakov breaks through these restraints, for of him it says, “And the sun shone for him” (Genesis 32:32): the Infinite Light itself shone for him.

Psalms 19 compares the sun to “a groom coming out of his chuppah.” The word chassan (חתן, groom) is read as chos (חות), “descend,” as in the Talmud’s advice to go down a step in taking a wife (Yevamos 63a): the groom is the light that descends a level. That descent through barriers is Yaakov, whose name speaks of repeated breaking-through.

The doubled verb in “Yaakov had gone out, gone out” (Genesis 27:30) teaches two goings-out; the Arizal explains that the configuration called Yaakov emerges only through two splittings of the light (Etz Chaim; the text cites Shaar 31, which is gate 32 in the edition on Sefaria). Yaakov also “separated the lambs” (Genesis 30:40); the reader is sent to the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah and to the Alter Rebbe’s discourse on “And the kohen shall wave them” in Likkutei Torah, Emor, which reads the unusual spelling kesavim as Yaakov drawing light from Keser and Chochmah into the attributes.

This is why the blessing speaks of the jubilation of “grooms” in the plural: there are two levels of groom. Between every level and the next a partition (parsa) separates, and Yaakov, the breaking-through light, pierces it. The opening discourse of Likkutei Torah on the Song of Songs explains that the two levels of groom come from the two levels of bride: kallah as kilayon, the soul’s expiring in self-sacrifice, and kallah as “my soul pines.”

The bride is kallah, as in “my soul pines (kalsah)” (Psalms 84:3): she longs for the Infinite Light and receives it. In exile she is “mute,” for there is no one before whom she can speak and be revealed; the physical world hides and conceals the Infinite Light.

In the future “the glory of Havayah shall be revealed” (Isaiah 40:5), and that glory is the Infinite Light that encompasses all worlds, the transcendent light now hidden from them. Then the bride will have a voice, for a voice is the drawing of something hidden into revelation.

Even the groom’s voice is not heard now, because the descending light does not yet come into revealed “letters of speech.” In the future the groom’s voice will be revealed together with the bride’s.

The parenthesis gives sources for the hidden voice of the groom. In the Zohar on Tazria (42a), Knesses Yisrael says of her exile, “I sought him and did not find him,” for it is not His way to unite with her except in His palace, and His voice is heard only by His children; the comments of the Ramaz, the Kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, there are cited by their opening words.

A second explanation: at the end of Bechukosai (115b) the Zohar reads lechalosam, “to destroy them,” as lechalasam, “for their bride,” and compares G‑d to a man whose beloved lives in the tanners’ market, a place he would never enter but for her. The Torah Ohr discourse on “A person is obligated to become intoxicated on Purim” (Torah Ohr, Megillat Esther 12:37–38) uses this parable to explain why no Name of G‑d appears in the Megillah: the bride, Malchus, descends into kelipas nogah, and the supernal groom goes down to her clothed in nature, so groom and bride are present now, but enclothed in concealment.

In the future the jubilation of both grooms will be heard. Ecclesiastes says there is “a time to be silent and a time to speak” (3:7): now is the time of chash, silence, because kelipas nogah conceals; when nogah is refined in the future, it will be the time of mal, speech, the second half of chashmal.

The second section turns to the second half of the blessing’s phrase, “youths from the feast of their song,” and finds two levels of “youth” as well. The first is Yosef, whom the Torah calls a youth when he was with the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah (Genesis 37:2).

The sons of the handmaids correspond to the legs and thighs, the lowest limbs, which the saying quoted here calls “outside the body” (the text names Bilhah, though Gad and Asher, cited next, are Zilpah’s sons; the verse names both). Yet they are still the sons of “his father’s wives,” belonging to Yaakov, which shows that Yaakov’s breaking-through light reaches even these lowest levels, and Yosef the youth is there with them.

So Moshe blessed Asher, a son of Zilpah, “he dips his foot in oil” (Deuteronomy 33:24): though Asher is only a “foot,” he is immersed in oil, which stands for Chochmah. The Talmud (Menachos 85b) says that Tekoa was foremost for oil, and that Yoav brought a “wise woman” from Tekoa because olive oil made wisdom common there; and Tekoa, the Alter Rebbe adds, was in Asher’s portion.

Therefore Yosef is called a youth precisely when he is with the sons of the handmaids: he is the supernal youth of Atzilus, the one who brings the flow down to the lowest levels. The Zohar on Vayeshev (182b) explains that Yosef, the Tzaddik, never parts from Malchus, so that as she is called by his name he is called by hers, na’ar, and that he stays among the sons of the handmaids to renew them and gladden them with his joy.

This youth resembles the cherub set at one end of the Ark cover (Exodus 25:19); the Talmud explains keruv as ke-ravya, “like a child,” a “small face” (Chagigah 13b). It is the outer end of the Infinite Light within Z’eir Anpin, when its flow is contracted into Netzach, Hod and Yesod, the lowest Sefiros of Z’eir Anpin, in order to be enclothed afterward in Malchus.

The second youth is Yehoshua, Moshe’s attendant, called a youth (Exodus 33:11), whose face, the Talmud says, was like the face of the moon (Bava Basra 75a). “Train (chanoch) a youth according to his way” (Proverbs 22:6) points to Chanoch, who “walked with G‑d” and was taken up (Genesis 5:24) and, according to the Targum Yonasan there, was named Metatron, the angel called “youth”; Metatron stands in the worlds of Beriah and Yetzirah, below Atzilus.

The Alter Rebbe refers to his Chanukah discourse in Torah Ohr, which reads “Train (chanoch) a youth” together with “I was a youth (na’ar),” said by the Prince of the World, and teaches that the life-force spread through all the worlds is at the level of na’ar, as in “and he was a youth with the sons of Bilhah.” The blessing’s prayer is that both levels, the grooms and the youths, be revealed in the Time to Come.

That revelation comes through joy, which reveals the 370 lights spoken of in the Zohar; in Likkutei Torah, Nitzavim, the Alter Rebbe reads yesha, “salvation,” as these 370 (ש״ע) lights with a yud for the future, lights far above the chain of descending worlds. Hence the priestly blessing, “May Havayah make His face shine upon you” (Numbers 6:25), and Isaiah’s “your healing shall speedily sprout” (Isaiah 58:8): a revelation that comes in the manner of something sprouting and growing.

Now the two halves of the phrase are contrasted. “Their chuppah,” the canopy that surrounds the couple, is a makif, an encompassing light, from Binah; in a person’s service of G‑d it is contemplation of the greatness of the Infinite One Himself.

The grooms’ joy comes straight from contemplation: the love is born from the contemplation itself, without melody or song to stir the emotions. So “the jubilation of grooms” is joy drawn from the chuppah, the makif, which is contemplation itself.

Binah is called makifim, “encompassing lights”: the Torah Ohr explanation of “And the Jews accepted” (Esther 9:23) speaks of refining the emotions through “the makifim of Imma,” that is, of Binah, and the Likkutei Torah discourse on waving the omer (Leviticus 23:11) of drawing those makifim down. A second way: when one contemplates the Infinite One Himself, who transcends and encompasses all worlds, the contemplation itself is a makif, as explained on “It is better to take refuge in Havayah” (Psalms 118:8), where taking refuge is sheltering in an encompassing shade.

Such joy is the revelation of the inner dimension of Binah, “the mother of the children,” who is “joyful” (Psalms 113:9). Joy reveals the 370 lights that are above the chain of descending worlds, or, counted another way, 375.

The priestly blessing ends “and grant you peace (shalom)” (Numbers 6:26): the letters of שלום add up to 376, which is 375 plus one for the word itself (the kolel). This revelation is what makes the grooms “Yaakov,” the light that breaks through every partition.

So “the jubilation of grooms from their chuppah” means that their rejoicing comes from the chuppah itself, the revealed light that encompasses all worlds.

The parenthesis refers to the discourse on “To a mare” (Song of Songs 1:9), which explains “like a groom coming out of his chuppah” (Psalms 19:6), and to the discourse “Who gladdens the groom.” In a person’s service of G‑d, the grooms’ joy comes from contemplation itself.

The youths, Yosef and Yehoshua, are different from the grooms: their joy is “from the feast of their song.”

Song (shirah) is what the Levites sang in the Temple to arouse love. When love has descended and become enclothed in lower levels, it has to be awakened by song.

The Zohar (Beshalach, 45a) says that music was played before the prophets so that the spirit of prophecy would rest on them, as Elisha asked for a musician, “and as the musician played” the hand of Havayah came upon him (II Kings 3:15); Moshe alone needed none. The Zohar on Vayechi (216b) adds that the Shechinah does not rest amid sadness, which is why the musician was called.

The same holds in serving G‑d. Some people need song and a melody that stirs the heart’s kavanah before love and awe can be revealed in them, while others, whose intellect and emotions are greater, need none of this: contemplation in the mind is enough to awaken love and awe in the heart.

The two brothers of Genesis 4:20–21 stand for the two types: Yaval, father of those who dwell in a tent, and Yuval, father of those who play the lyre.

Yaval, the tent-dweller, is the groom: the sun’s “tent” in Psalms 19, from which it goes out “like a groom from his chuppah.” His joy comes from the tent, the encompassing light itself, with no need for lyre, song or musician.

Yuval, the lyre-player, is the lower level, whose emotions can be stirred only through music. The same difference divides the Levites, who served with song, from the kohanim, who served in silence “with the desire of the heart,” the inner dimension of the heart.

The Torah Ohr discourse on “The voice of my beloved” explains that one whose Chochmah and Binah, contemplating G‑d’s greatness, are broad and expansive, the level called Be’er Sheva, can arouse love and awe openly in his heart by thought alone. But one whose mind is too small must cry out to G‑d in prayer, “for the voice arouses the kavanah”: this is Yaakov’s going from Be’er Sheva to Charan, the constricted “throat.”

That is why the youths, the level of katnus (smallness), must have “the feast of their song.” A further proof comes from the Zohar on Vayeshev, which says of Yosef, “so too he is called by her name”: he is called na’ar after Malchus.

The supernal Tzaddik of Atzilus, Yesod, is called na’ar mainly because of Malchus, which bears that name. The Mikdash Melech explains that Malchus is sometimes called na’ar and sometimes na’arah, and Z’eir Anpin is called na’ar after her.

The Torah sometimes writes na’arah (“girl”) without its final hei, as na’ar (as in Deuteronomy 22:23). The Zohar (Bo, 38b) explains that as long as she has not received from the male she is called na’ar, and once she has received she is called na’arah; so the missing hei marks a state of not yet receiving.

The Alter Rebbe’s discourse on “For the fragrance of your oils” (Song of Songs 1:3) applies this to a person: “before she has received” means that G‑dliness has not yet shone within the heart, which remains sealed like a virgin’s. There the missing hei stands for the five Gevuros (hei is five) that the groom gives the bride.

Elsewhere the Alter Rebbe adds that the heart can remain “sealed” even when contemplation has already spread into it, for it may reach only the heart’s outer dimension and not be absorbed within, like betrothal (erusin) without the full marriage. Likkutei Torah, Matos, makes a similar point on the vow of a young woman “in her youth, in her father’s house” (Numbers 30): it is the first love, “before she has received the male,” the “kindness of your youth” of Jeremiah 2:2.

Jeremiah’s verse goes on, “your going after Me in the wilderness”: following G‑d through a wilderness is iskafya, subduing one’s nature, but not yet transforming darkness into light so that the inner point of the heart is revealed; in Likkutei Torah, Matos, acharai, “after Me,” is read as achorayim, “the back,” service still from behind. The Torah Ohr discourse on “Remember what Amalek did to you” (Deuteronomy 25:17) explains this at length.

So at the level of “youths” one needs great toil and practical counsel to arouse love, and song and melody stir the heart’s kavanah. The grooms need none of this, for the inner heart is already united with the mind, like the Zohar’s “two companions who never part.”

Song is said over wine (Berachos 35a), and “wine enters, the secret comes out” (Eruvin 65a), for yayin (יין, wine) and sod (סוד, secret) both have the numerical value seventy: wine brings what is hidden into the open. So the youths’ joy, “from the feast (mishteh, drinking) of their song,” is song and wine together.

The grooms are above wine: their joy comes from the chuppah itself. The Zohar reads “Eat, companions; drink and be drunk, beloved ones” (Song of Songs 5:1) as two levels: the companions above, who are always united, only eat, while the beloved ones below, who long for each other and are together only at times, need drink.

The reader is sent to the end of the discourse “I have come into my garden” and to the discourse “You have captured my heart,” both in Likkutei Torah on the Song of Songs; the latter explains “my sister” as the love hidden in every soul by nature, “the two companions,” and “bride” as the fiery love born of contemplation. Elsewhere it is explained that Shabbos is the level of “Eat, companions,” and Yom Tov the level of “drink and be drunk, beloved ones.”

The third section returns to the opening verse about the moon (levanah). The key is a saying of the Mishnah about the generation before Mashiach’s coming, “Youths will whiten (yalbinu) the faces of elders” (Sotah 9:15), whose plain sense is the young shaming the old; yalbinu, “whiten,” shares its root (lavan, white) with levanah, the moon. The Alter Rebbe will read it as the youths rising above the elders, and later identifies the two youths with the sun and the moon of Isaiah’s verse.

The Talmud says that an “elder” (zaken) is only one who has acquired (kanah) wisdom (Kiddushin 32b). To acquire is to draw something out of concealment into revelation, and the source from which Chochmah and Binah are drawn is the “beard” (dikna) of Arich Anpin (the “long face,” the outer dimension of Keser), whose thirteen tikkunim are channels through which the light above intellect flows down.

The Arizal teaches that of the thirteen tikkunim of the beard, the eighth (“who keeps kindness”) and the thirteenth (“and who cleanses”) are each called mazal, from “flowing,” and that Abba (Chochmah) draws from the eighth and Imma (Binah) from the thirteenth. In Hebrew the elder (zaken) and the beard (zakan) are one word, so “an elder who has acquired wisdom” means that wisdom itself comes into being from the beard.

Job asks, “And wisdom, from where (me’ayin) shall it be found?” (Job 28:12), and the Alter Rebbe reads me’ayin as “from ayin, nothing”: wisdom comes from a level that has no (ein) comparison to it, which relative to its source is only “hairs,” a thin outgrowth. He refers to his discourse on “And you shall make holy garments” (Exodus 28:2).

These hairs are the laws (halachos) of the Torah, as in Daniel’s vision of the Ancient of Days, “the hair of His head like pure wool” (Daniel 7:9). So too the Sages said (Rashi on Exodus 20:2, from the Mechilta, as the Kehot note shows) that at the Giving of the Torah G‑d appeared to Israel as an elder.

The hairs and the beard are rooted in Mocha Stima’ah, the “hidden brain” of Arich Anpin, but they draw only from its seven lower Sefiros, not from its intellect.

As an analogy, hair in a person is like plant life, growing without feeling, and the vegetative level corresponds to the seven lower Sefiros, the emotive attributes. That is why old age is reckoned at seventy: seven attributes, each made up of ten.

Normally the youths are far below the elders, whose wisdom is “acquired.” But in the Time to Come all the worlds will rise, and then the youths will rise so high that they will “whiten,” stand above, the elders who acquired wisdom.

The same Mishnah goes on, quoting Micah 7:6, “a daughter rises up against her mother,” a sign of strife; the Alter Rebbe reads it as the daughter rising up to her mother’s level. The Torah Ohr discourse on “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion” explains the Midrash that G‑d first called Knesses Yisrael “My daughter,” then “My sister,” and finally “My mother,” three ascending levels.

In the future Zechariah’s call “Sing and rejoice, O daughter” (Zechariah 2:14) will be fulfilled: the “daughter,” Malchus, will rise beyond her place and become “a woman of valor, the crown of her husband” (Proverbs 12:4). So the daughter rising to her mother, and the daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law, describe the lower rising to the level of the higher, as the Zohar (Shelach, 171a) asks how living waters from Jerusalem can flow up to the “eastern,” literally the “former,” sea, the source of all the waters.

Isaiah’s prophecy, “The youth shall die a hundred years old” (Isaiah 65:20), means in its plain sense that lives will be so long that one who dies at a hundred will be thought young; here it means that the youth will rise to the level of “a hundred.” The Mishnah sets the gray hair of old age at seventy (Avos 5:21), corresponding to the seven lower Sefiros of Keser, so “a hundred” is higher still.

A hundred includes the first three Sefiros of Keser together with the seven lower ones: all ten Sefiros of Keser, each comprising ten.

The Zohar (Chayei Sarah, 123a), explaining the “hundred years” of Sarah’s life, speaks of the Holy One, blessed be He, as included from the most hidden place in the number one hundred, “in the secret of the hundred blessings” said each day. So in the future the youths will stand above today’s elder, whose level is only the seven lower Sefiros of Mocha Stima’ah.

The Arizal in Pri Etz Chaim (his teachings on the prayers and festivals; Gate of Shavuos, chapter 1) explains the mishnah “At five years old for Scripture … at seventy for gray hair” (Avos 5:21) as stages in the growth of Z’eir Anpin: “seventy,” the white-bearded elder, is when Z’eir Anpin rises to the white beard of Arich Anpin.

“A hundred” is therefore far higher, and that is where the youth will rise in the future.

Proverbs says, “Acquire wisdom, acquire understanding” (Proverbs 4:5). The word kneh (קנה, 155) twice equals 310, the value of yesh (יש), and 310 is half of 620, the value of keser (כתר); the Arizal says that Keser has 620 lights and gives half of them, yesh, to Abba and Imma.

Why half? Because the Keser within any Sefirah counts as much as the nine Sefiros below it together, just as the Talmud says that “the feet of the chayos” equal all the measures listed before them (Chagigah 13a).

So it is within Keser itself: its nine lower Sefiros, from Chochmah to Malchus, make up one half of its 620 lights, and the Keser of Keser alone makes up the other half.

Therefore the root of Chochmah and Binah, “acquire wisdom, acquire understanding,” whose value is yesh, is the lower half of Keser, the root of the elders.

In the future the youth will rise to “a hundred,” the Keser of Keser, which is the upper half of Keser, far above the lower half that is the root of the elders today. That is how youths will surpass elders.

Keser is the intermediary between the Infinite One, the Emanator, and the emanated Sefiros, and so it has two aspects; this is how the Arizal settled the Kabbalists’ dispute whether Keser is counted among the Sefiros (Etz Chaim 42:1), as the Alter Rebbe recounts in Likkutei Torah, Bechukosai. Its lower aspect is that it is the root and head of all that is emanated.

Its upper aspect is a radiance of the Infinite Light itself, the lowest level of the Emanator. The Alter Rebbe refers to his explanation of “I am black, yet comely” (Song of Songs 1:5) and to his discourse on Rosh HaShanah that falls on Shabbos.

Now the youths are identified with the lights of Isaiah’s verse. The youth is Yosef, Yesod of Z’eir Anpin, and in the future he will rise into Yesod of Atik, the upper half of Keser, and higher still.

Isaiah’s “My servant … shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high (me’od)” (Isaiah 52:13) is read with the Arizal: me’od has the letters of adam, Adam Kadmon, the primordial level above all the worlds.

This is what “the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun” means, for the sun and the moon are the two youths. Yehoshua the youth is the moon, for his face was like the face of the moon (Bava Basra 75a), and Yosef, Yesod, is the sun; as the sun gives light to the moon, so Yosef was “the one who supplied” grain to all the people of the land (Genesis 42:6).

The Zohar (Shemos, 3b), explaining “before the sun” (Numbers 25:4) through the verse “For Havayah, G‑d, is a sun and a shield” (Psalms 84:12), identifies the “sun” with the holy covenant, the Sefirah of Yesod, which is Yosef. Yosef’s dream, in which “the sun and the moon and eleven stars” bowed down to him (Genesis 37:9), is quoted to tie Yosef to the sun and the moon of Isaiah’s verse.

In the future Malchus, the “moon,” will rise. Now, in the Zohar’s words, she “has nothing of her own” and only receives the sun’s light; the Kehot note refers to Zohar II, 215a, where this is said of Yehoshua, whose face was like the moon: the moon has no light but the light of the sun that shines on it.

In the future she will have a light of her own, like the sun’s.

The sun itself, Yesod of Z’eir Anpin, will rise into Yesod of Atik and beyond, as far as Yesod of Adam Kadmon, until it becomes “sevenfold, like the light of the seven days,” the first three Sefiros of Atik, as explained at the beginning of the maamar.

This is the ascent described above in Isaiah’s “and shall be very high (me’od),” me’od being adam, Adam Kadmon.

Isaiah’s words “the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun” can be explained in two ways: either the moon will shine as the sun shines today, or, more boldly, the moon will shine like the sun of the future, which will itself be sevenfold, “like the light of the seven days.”

The Arizal (Pri Etz Chaim, end of the gate on Purim) brings together the Sages’ description of the future, “the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads” (Berachos 17a), and this verse: in the days of Mashiach the sun and the moon will be equal, as they were before the moon was diminished, and in the Time to Come the moon will rise even above the sun, a crown upon the heads of the righteous.