ויחפרו עבדי יצחק בנחל כו׳

1“And Yitzchak’s servants dug in the valley,” etc. “A well that princes dug,” etc. For behold, it is stated in the Gemara on [the verse] “And the fourth river, it is Perat”: “It is the one from the beginning,” from which [the river] parted into four heads; that is, three went out from it, and the fourth

is [Perat] itself. And they said: All the rivers are lower than Perat, and all the springs in the world well up from the ladder of Perat. Meaning: beneath the ground it bores its way onward, until with a little digging one finds a well of living water.

2At first glance it is puzzling: why should it be called a well of living water, since the essence of its welling up is from the river Perat? The explanation is this. Behold, it is written, “And a river goes out from Eden to water the garden,” etc.

“The garden” (gan): the fifty-three orders of the Torah. Meaning: as is known, at first one must accept the yoke of the kingship of Heaven completely, that is, believe with complete faith in the unity of G‑d,

that He brings all the worlds into being, and all before Him is considered as nothing, and all is one, etc. And when a person contemplates during the Shema and sets his heart well upon the matter of [G‑d’s] unity, and truly accepts upon himself the yoke of [His] kingship —

for “Yaakov is the lot of His inheritance”: their desire is to cleave to Him with all their heart, and they believe in the One and desire Him — yet there is no place in which the level of “One” may rest within him after he has accepted [it] upon himself.

3And it has no place except in the Torah. That is: immediately after accepting the kingship of Heaven, he should study the Oral Torah in depth, with his thought, his intellect and his speech; and before his study he should contemplate the unity of G‑d, etc.

And through this, engagement in Torah with all the depth of his thought and his heart, etc., will come about for him. And this is called “And a river goes out from Eden.” Meaning: “from Eden” — from the Holy One, blessed be He, who is called “Eden”; and “river” is a term for drawing down.

Meaning: when G‑dliness is drawn down from above to below through the acceptance of the kingship of Heaven, this drawing-down waters the garden, which is the Torah, which is “the four cubits of halachah,” in the place of the Holy of Holies — “the Torah is the King’s palace” — in which the unity of G‑d rests, etc.

When the level of “a river goes out from Eden” is fulfilled in him in his prayer and in his set study immediately after prayer — but afterwards he must occupy all his thought, etc.,

with the affairs of the lowly world, and he forgets all his contemplation in accepting the kingship of Heaven because of the physicality of his body, on account of his meager understanding (daas), and he becomes very distant from the state in which he had understanding in his prayer and his service in Torah, etc. —

therefore He gave us mitzvos to perform all day. For the matter of the practical mitzvos is that they are lofty, exceedingly high in their inner dimension (pnimiyus) and their root,

only they have been clothed in many garments in the chain of descending worlds (hishtalshelus), etc. Nevertheless, they allude to the lofty level that is in their root: for example, the mitzvah of tzitzis, whose meaning is on high in the supernal worlds, and its mitzvah has been clothed in eight threads of wool and five knots, etc.

Therefore the mitzvos do not need a person’s service to rectify them and to aim at their true essence, for “mitzvos do not require intention,” since they themselves are rectified and have descended step by step from above to below, etc. And [for] one who performs the mitzvah, the drawing-down of G‑dliness that he brings about is not by virtue of his service, but only because of the mitzvos themselves, etc.

This is not so with Torah and prayer, which is the service of the heart: it depends specifically on the person’s intention, etc. And the main intention needed in performing the mitzvos is that he first contemplate how very far he is from G‑d,

through his being taken up all day with the vanities of the concerns of this world, and the physicality of his material nature, and his sins — a separating screen, [keeping him] from drawing near to G‑d even a little. And he should contemplate

this thoroughly and minutely, and break his heart with this contemplation, and his heart will be humbled — because nevertheless he does desire to draw near to G‑d through His Torah, etc. And he should have [this] intention in a mitzvah that comes to his hand, while performing it.

For this is like a well of living water that wells up from beneath the ground from a river: although the river is not called “living water,” the water that comes out of it and bores its way through the thickness of the ground’s earth is called “living water,” because it is refined and purified by being pressed to come out through the material earth.

And exactly so is the performance of the mitzvos: at first, in his prayer and service, he had the level of “a river goes out from Eden” mentioned above, only it became covered and hidden within him through the physicality of his body’s longing all day.

4And when he performs the mitzvah that wells up from the river mentioned above — meaning, because he remembers that he has already accepted upon himself the kingship of Heaven with all his heart, and therefore he performs his mitzvos to enter under the yoke of His kingship; even though now he does not have the level of the river mentioned above, he relies in his heart on having already resolved in his heart to serve G‑d in truth — this is

like a well of living water, because this small measure in the service of G‑d is very pleasant to him, since he has contemplated that he is very, very far from G‑d.

5And [when] he performs the mitzvah in the manner described above, [so] that it is very sweet and pleasant to him to perform the mitzvah, etc. — like the well: when one digs in the ground and finds water, it is living water because it has passed through the thickness of the earth; so too the performance of the mitzvos: his performance of it wells up from the river mentioned above, etc.

6And this is [why] the Arizal rejoiced greatly in performing the mitzvos, and therefore merited the holy spirit (ruach hakodesh), and did not rejoice in his [own] service, etc.; for the mitzvos in themselves, their holiness [is their own], etc.,

as [explained] above. And his doing it came from contemplating the lowliness of his closeness to G‑d. For this is the true trait of humility that is said of Moshe our teacher, peace be upon him; for the essence of lowliness before every person — which, they said, is impossible except in this way — is that he sees in his fellow that he is closer to G‑d, etc.

And this is [the meaning of] “A sated soul tramples honeycomb” — even honey is bitter to it — “but to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.”

Meaning: the well of living water mentioned above — through his digging in the earth of his body, when a little water comes out, it is sweet and very pleasant to him, because his body is hungry in the service of G‑d. And this is “A well that princes dug.”