Moses de Leon, She’elot u-Teshuvot le-R. Mosheh de Le’on be-‘Inyene Kabbalah

Jewish Mysticism
Those very stories [in the Bible] are the secret of God, and they are included in the wisdom of His thought, the secret of His name. When a person removes the mask of blindness from his face, then he will find in that very story and literal sense (ha ma’aseh) a hill of spices [Cf. Song of Songs 8-14] and frankincense [Cf. ibid., 4-6]. Then his blind eyes will be opened [Cf. Isa. 35-5] and his thoughts will gladden, and he will say, ‘Whoever you are, O great mountain” (Zech. 4-7), exalted, “where you hid on the day of the incident” (1 Sam. 20-19), as I explained in the book that I composed called Pardes. I called it by the name Pardes in virtue of the matter that is known, for I composed it in accordance with the secret of the four ways [of interpretation], according to its very name [as alluded to in the saying] “Four entered the Pardes [b. Hagigah l4b and parallels],” in other words, peshat, remez, derashah, sod, this is the matter of Pardes. I explained there these matters pertaining to the secret of the narrative and literal sense written in the Torah, to show that everything is the eternal life and the true Torah, and there is nothing in all the Torah that is not contained in the secret of His name, may He be elevated.

Translated by Elliot Wolfson in- “Beautiful Maiden Without Eyes- Peshat and Sod in Zoharic Hermeneutics.” In The Midrashic imagination – Jewish exegesis, thought, and history. Edited by Michael Fishbane, Albany – State University of New York Press, 1993, pp. 155-203, from Moses de Leon, She’elot u Teshuvot le R. Mosheh de Le’on be ‘Inyene Kabbalah, in I. Tishby, Studies in the Kabbalah and Its Branches [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1982), 56, 64. Cf. Sefer ha Mishkal, ed. J. Wijnhoven (Ph.D., Brandeis University, 1964), 49, 105.