Texts of Judaism

Zohar: Genesis: Chapter XXXVIII. The Divine Compassion

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is a passage from the Zohar, the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah, presented as a rabbinic dialogue in the midrashic tradition where multiple named sages offer layered interpretations of a single biblical verse — here, Genesis 6:6, "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth." The central argument across all the voices is that divine "repentance" or grief signals not anger but compassion: God suffers alongside sinners even as he punishes them, because they remain his children and the work of his hands. This is illustrated through several scriptural parallels, including the Persian king's sorrow over Daniel's plight and God's rebuke of angels who sang praises while Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea. A distinctively kabbalistic element appears in Rabbi Hiya's reference to Adam Kadmon, the primordial heavenly man whose form God used to create humanity — a concept absent from plain scriptural readings and specific to Jewish esoteric tradition. Rabbi Abba contributes a striking eschatological claim: every soul at death encounters Adam himself, who asks about the cause and moral quality of their life, and who deflects blame by noting that he broke only one commandment while most humans break many. The cumulative picture the rabbis construct is of a God whose justice is inseparable from grief, and whose mercy persists even in punishment.

Zohar: Genesis: Chapter XXXVIII. The Divine Compassion

Related pages View as graph →