As to the number four, it is strange, and demands our attention. In Midrash Tanḥuma the following passage occurs: “How many steps were in Jacob’s ladder?—Four.” The question refers to the verse, “And behold a ladder set upon the earth,” etc. (Gen. xxviii. 12). In all the Midrashim it is stated that there were four hosts of angels; this statement is frequently repeated. Some read in the above passage: “How many steps were in the ladder?—Seven.” But all readings and all Midrashim unanimously express that the angels whom Jacob saw ascending the ladder, and descending, were only four; two of whom were going up and two coming down. These four angels, the two that went up and the two that came down, occupied one step of the ladder, standing in one line. Hence it has been inferred that the breadth of the ladder in this vision was four-thirds of the world. For the breadth of an angel in a prophetic vision is equal to one-third of the world; comp. “And his body was like tarshish (two-sixths)” (Dan. x. 6); the four angels therefore occupied four-thirds of the world.—Zechariah, in describing the allegorical vision of “the four chariots that came out from between two mountains, which mountains were mountains of brass” (Zech. vi. 1), adds the explanation, “These are the four spirits of the heavens which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth” (ibid. ver. 5). By these four spirits the causes are meant which produce all changes in the Universe. The term “brass” (neḥoshet), employed here, and the phrase “burnished brass” (neḥoshet kalal), used by Ezekiel (i. 7), are to some extent homonymous, and will be discussed further on. The saying of our Sages, that the angel is as broad as the third part of the Universe, or, in the words of Bereshit Rabba (chap. x.), that the angel is the third part of the world, is quite clear; we have already explained it in our large work on the Holy Law. The whole creation consists of three parts, (1) the pure intelligences, or angels; (2) the bodies of the spheres; and (3) the materia prima, or the bodies which are below the spheres, and are subject to constant change. In this manner may those understand the dark sayings of the prophets who desire to understand them, who awake from the sleep of forgetfulness, deliver themselves from the sea of ignorance, and raise themselves upward nearer the higher beings. But those who prefer to swim in the waters of their ignorance, and to “go down very low,” need not exert the body or heart; they need only cease to move, and they will go down by the law of nature. Note and consider well all we have said. CHAPTER XI