Zohar: Genesis: Chapter CI. Rabbi Abba's Punishment

This is an excerpt from the Zohar, the central text of Jewish Kabbalah, specifically from the section on the Torah portion *Lekh Lekha* (Genesis 12–17). It belongs to the genre of Kabbalistic midrash: narrative theological discourse in which sages — here Rabbi Abba, Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai, and Rabbi Jose — interpret scripture through mystical lenses while moving through story. The passage threads two concerns: a brief narrative about levirate marriage and the naming of a child, and a more sustained drama in which Rabbi Simeon rebukes Rabbi Abba for failing to share the learned discourses he witnessed at a circumcision feast. The central interpretive claim is that Abraham's circumcision was the precondition for his ability to stand erect before God — before entering the covenant, prostration was required; after it, a new dignity was conferred. The text's most distinctive tension is its paradoxical ethics of knowledge: Rabbi Simeon simultaneously rebukes Abba for *withholding* good teachings (citing Proverbs 3:27) and insists that occult doctrine must be *jealously guarded* and shared only among initiates, never divulged broadly. The section closes with a messianic promise — that a time will come when divine light breaks forth for every soul — before ending with the formal colophon "Peace to all beings."