Eleazar of Worms. Sefer ha-Shem, MS British Museum 737, fol. 378a

 

“What form [can you] compare to him?” (Isa. 40-18). Rather “and through the prophets I was imagined” (Hosea 12-11). One sees with one’s heart. “Yet my own eyes have beheld the King Lord of Hosts” (Isa. 6-5). According to the image (dimyon) that the prophet saw he knew the end of the decree. Concerning that which is said, “the face of the Shekhinah,” i.e., according to the way that it was seen in the mind of the prophets, for the Creator of all has no face. He appears rather in the image (demut) of an elder or the image of a youth.

Translated by Elliot Wolfson in Through a Speculum that Shines- Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, Princeton- Princeton University Press, 1994.

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