לבך יהגה אימה איה סופר איה שוקל וגו׳

The maamar opens with Isaiah’s verse, “Your heart will meditate on dread: ‘Where is the one who counts? Where is the one who weighs?’” It then quotes the Sifra DiTzniusa, the “Book of Concealment,” a short and cryptic part of the Zohar (printed in Terumah), which opens by calling itself a book that “weighs on the scale” (matkela).

The Zohar’s scale is the line of measure (kav hamiddah), the power in G‑dliness that sets limits and proportions: it decides how much of each divine attribute flows forth in Atzilus, the highest world, how much kindness (Chesed), how much restraint (Gevurah), and how they are arranged as lines to the right and to the left. The six directions, the four sides together with above and below, correspond to the six emotive Sefiros that make up Z’eir Anpin. The Mitteler Rebbe’s transcript of this maamar, quoted in the Kehot note, adds that every flow of light comes by measure and weight, and that the level in the Emanator which first measured out each one’s share is called matkela, the scale, and also the line of measure.

In a parenthesis the Alter Rebbe notes that this is why the Sefiros are called middos, a word that means both “attributes” and “measures”: each is given a measured amount. Measuring is itself an act of Gevurah and tzimtzum, for to measure is to hold back the flow so that it comes in a fixed amount.

The Zohar calls this measuring power the botzina dekardinusa, the “lamp of darkness” that bored (Sefer HaMaamarim 5652, quoted in the Kehot note, reads kardinusa as “strong,” like hard kurdinisa wheat), and the Alter Rebbe identifies it as the Gevurah of Atik Yomin enclothed in the Mocha Stima’ah. Atik Yomin is the innermost level of Keser, the crown above intellect, and the Mocha Stima’ah, the “hidden brain,” is the concealed wisdom of Arich Anpin, Keser’s outer level. This power is what the verse calls “the one who counts” and “the one who weighs.”

Here the Alter Rebbe explains why the verse asks “where.” One might think that the line of measure, a power of restraint and contraction, cannot be the Infinite One Himself, Whose essence has no limits, no lines and no Sefiros, Who takes in everything “in a single glance,” and before Whom, in the words of Psalms, “darkness and light are alike.” So one might conclude that the measuring power is a separate entity, standing apart from G‑d.

Therefore the verse says, “Where (Ayeh) is the one who counts? Where is the one who weighs?”, to rule that supposition out. Plainly the words are a question, but the maamar reads ayeh, “where,” as a name of the highest level, as the next words explain.

Ayeh is the “great circle,” the encompassing light (sovev), pictured as a circle that surrounds all things equally, above every distinction, even that of darkness and light; so the verse is read as a statement: Ayeh itself is the one who counts and weighs. The scale and the line of measure are not an independent power, G‑d forbid; it is the Infinite Himself Who measures. On these words Or HaTorah, the Kehot note says, points to Maimonides’ ruling that a person’s merits and sins “are weighed only by the knowledge of the G‑d of knowledge.”

The proof is the verse “Everything is from You”: nothing, not even the power to limit, exists apart from G‑d. Because He is omnipotent, He can also lower Himself to measure out and divide the Sefiros.

This is why the measuring comes specifically from the very highest level, the “great circle” called Ayeh, and not from something lower. Psalms describes G‑d as “enthroned on high” and, in the next verse, as lowering Himself to look upon heaven and earth, and another psalm says, “For Havayah is exalted, yet He sees the lowly”: precisely because He is so high, He can reach down to measure every detail of the worlds.

The Exodus is similar: on “I will pass through the land of Egypt” the Sages say “I, and not an angel” (in the Passover Haggadah; the Kehot note gives the Sifrei on Deuteronomy 26:8), for no angel could descend to a place as low as Egypt, only the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. In Likkutei Torah, Tzav, the Alter Rebbe explains that the plague of the firstborn was a revelation of the encompassing light (sovev), before which all levels are equal, and so it “skipped” the gradual order of descent.

The Torah too belongs to the realm of the line of measure. The Sages say the Torah preceded the world by two thousand years, a set and limited span, and the maamar reads alfin, “thousands,” as a play on a’alefcha, “I will teach you,” in the phrases “I will teach you wisdom” and “I will teach you understanding,” so the two thousand stand for Chochmah and Binah.

By contrast, the Infinite One Himself is beyond all contraction and division, with no beginning and no end. Since the Torah precedes the world by a set amount, two thousand years, it has a measure and so belongs among the contractions of the line of measure.

The mitzvos show the same thing: each has fixed dimensions, such as a sukkah that may be at most twenty cubits high and tefillin that must be square. Yet in truth all this measuring comes from Ayeh itself, the highest level.

The verse says ayeh, “where,” three times, matching the angels’ threefold “holy” (kadosh) in Isaiah’s vision; kadosh adds up to 410, linked in the Kabbalah to the 410 “hairs” of Arich Anpin, the outer level of Keser. When the angels ask, in the Kedushah, “Where is the place of His glory?”, they express that He cannot be grasped, and that is what kadosh means: separate and beyond all thought.

The verse’s third phrase, “Where is the one who counts the towers?”, is explained in another maamar, on the verse from the Song of Songs “and my breasts are like towers”; that maamar, printed in Or HaTorah on Shir HaShirim, explains (the Kehot note says) that Ayeh joins the supernal one who counts and weighs with the “towers,” so that they can unite face to face. The Alter Rebbe now turns to the verse’s opening words, “Your heart will meditate on dread.”

This is how the verse becomes a matter of a person’s inner work. The thoughtful person contemplates that Ayeh, the highest level of G‑dliness, is itself the one who counts, weighs and measures the life-force of every last detail of existence.

Then dread and fear fall upon him, an exceedingly great awe. That is “Your heart will meditate on dread”: the dread comes from the heart’s meditation.

Once this awe of G‑d is upon him, he will no longer have “external” fears, such as the worry that he will lack bread. The paragraph ends with the conclusion of Ecclesiastes: “The end of the matter, when all has been heard: fear G‑d.”