כי תקנה עבד עברי וגו׳

The maamar opens with the law of the Hebrew servant, whose key word is “acquire.” It then notes that G‑d is called both “Acquirer” (of heaven and earth in the Torah, and “of all” in the first blessing of the Amidah) and “Creator” (of heaven and earth, and “of all” in the first blessing before the morning Shema); the parts that follow explain the difference between the two titles.

There are two modes of divine activity. In the chain of descending worlds each level flows from the one above it, as an effect flows from its cause; and there is a level that stands above that whole ordered chain. The parenthesis refers the reader to a fuller explanation in the discourse on “Va’eschanan.”

“Creator” means bringing something into existence from nothing. Such an act cannot be one more link in the chain of cause and effect, so it belongs to the level above the chain.

An effect still bears some relation to its cause, but a created being bears no comparison at all to its Creator. Its existence is therefore genuinely new, something from nothing, and that is what the title “Creator” denotes.

Once created things exist, there is a second process: the worlds unfold one from another as cause and effect. This is what the title “Acquirer” refers to, and the next part explains why, using the example of a purchase.

In a purchase nothing new comes into being; the merchandise only passes from the seller’s domain into the buyer’s. Goods that lay in the seller’s box and are revealed to the buyer through the sale illustrate something that already exists moving from concealment into revelation.

Within the chain of cause and effect, the effect is not a new existence. Making something truly new belongs to the Creator alone.

Cause and effect are rather a revealing of what was concealed in the cause, as speech reveals what was concealed in thought. This is the sense of “Acquirer of all”: once things have been created from nothing, the term “acquisition” fits their being drawn from concealment into revelation, like merchandise brought out for the buyer.

The distinction between creating and acquiring will now explain the verse about acquiring a Hebrew servant. The key is Joshua’s statement, “Beyond the river your fathers dwelt,” and the river there is identified with the river that “goes out of Eden.”

Following the Zohar, the river is Binah of Atzilus, the divine understanding that flows downward and enclothes itself in the World of Beriah. “And from there it divides” describes that descent: from Atzilus the flow passes into Beriah, the first world of separate existence.

“Beyond the river” is what lies above Binah, above intellect that can be grasped, and there the Patriarchs dwelt and were rooted. When souls descended further, until they are called “the seed of beast” (souls whose understanding of G‑d is not a felt knowledge, as the preceding discourse explained), that name fits only the spark of the soul that is drawn down below.

Yet the root and source of even such a soul is “beyond the river,” above the chain of descending worlds, where man and beast are equal. The closing words, “Equal, and making small and great equal,” come from the High Holiday hymn Vechol Maaminim, which praises G‑d as treating small and great alike; at that level the difference between them does not exist.

So bringing Daas, an inward and felt knowledge of G‑d, to the souls called “the seed of beast” does not require creating anything new. It needs only “acquisition”: drawing out from concealment into revelation what is already present in their root beyond the river.

In their root these souls have very great Daas; it is only hidden from the spark of the soul that is enclothed in the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. The task is to draw that knowledge from there into revelation.

This is the meaning of “When you acquire a Hebrew servant”: the soul is “acquired” in the sense explained above, by revealing what is hidden in its root. Drawing out what already exists is easier than bringing about something truly new.