Tzion: the Place the World Came Out Of
Zion is treated as a location, and the sources keep declining to leave it at that.
The world came out of it
מִצִּיּוֹן מִכְלַל יֹפִי אֱלֹהִים הוֹפִיעַ
Out of Zion, perfection of beauty, God shone forth. Tehillim 50:2
The Gemara takes the geography further than geography goes: the world was created from Zion (Yoma 54b). A world made out of a place puts that place before the world rather than inside it, which makes Zion less a site than an office.
What leaves it is the teaching.
כִּי מִצִּיּוֹן תֵּצֵא תוֹרָה
For out of Zion the Torah goes forth. Yeshayahu 2:3
What returns to it is the light that was hidden at the beginning (Yalkut Shimoni, Yeshayahu 60, remez 499).
David took it through a pipe
וַיִּלְכֹּד דָּוִד אֵת מְצֻדַת צִיּוֹן הִיא עִיר דָּוִד
And David captured the stronghold of Zion, that is the City of David. Shmuel II 5:7
The next verse names the route in, and the word matters more than the tactic: צִנּוֹר, a channel or water shaft (Shmuel II 5:8). It is the same word the Psalmist uses for how the deep reaches the deep, לְקוֹל צִנּוֹרֶיךָ, at the voice of Your channels (Tehillim 42:8).
David enters the city through the word the series is named after. He captures a place that was already standing under another name and renames it after himself, which is what you do with an office rather than a plot of land.
The man who comes to the same number
Gematria on יוֹסֵף gives 10, 6, 60 and 80. One hundred and fifty-six. צִיּוֹן gives 90, 10, 6 and 50. One hundred and fifty-six.
The tradition holds the olive yields its oil only under crushing (Menachot 53b; Shemot Rabbah 36:1), and no one in the Torah was crushed the way Yosef was. What flows out of a beaten olive could never have flowed while the branch hung whole.
The deepest pit and the source of the light count to the same number. One arc, one man.
Kol Tehom is free to read, in English and in Hebrew.
Keep reading
- Yosef the redeemer who inherited on a technicality
- Tehom deep calling to deep, at the voice of Your channels
- Hakol everything and the voice, one word to the ear
The map shows how all of it connects.
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