Aggada -- Translations into English; Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends; Midrash -- Translations into English
Corresponding to the seven heavens, God created seven earths, each
separated from the next by five layers. Over the lowest earth, the
seventh, called Erez, lie in succession the abyss, the Tohu, the Bohu,
a sea, and waters.[23] Then the sixth[24] earth is reached, the Adamah,
the scene of the magnificence of God. In the same way the Adamah is
separated from the fifth earth, the Arka, which contains Gehenna, and
Sha'are Mawet, and Sha'are Zalmawet, and Beer Shahat, and Tit ha-Yawen,
and Abaddon, and Sheol,[25] and there the souls of the wicked are
guarded by the Angels of Destruction. In the same way Arka is followed
by Harabah, the dry, the place of brooks and streams in spite of its
name, as the next, called Yabbashah, the mainland, contains the rivers
and the springs. Tebel, the second earth, is the first mainland
inhabited by living creatures, three hundred and sixty-five
species,[26] all essentially different from those of our own earth.
Some have human heads set on the body of a lion, or a serpent, or an
ox; others have human bodies topped by the head of one of these
animals. Besides, Tebel is inhabited by human beings with two heads and
four hands and feet, in fact with all their organs doubled excepting
only the trunk.[27] It happens sometimes that the parts of these double
persons quarrel with each other, especially while eating and drinking,
when each claims the best and largest portions for himself. This
species of mankind is distinguished for great piety, another difference
between it and the inhabitants of our earth.
Our own earth is called Heled, and, like the others, it is separated
from the Tebel by an abyss, the Tohu, the Bohu, a sea, and waters.
Thus one earth rises above the other, from the first to the seventh,
and over the seventh earth the heavens are vaulted, from the first to
the seventh, the last of them attached to the arm of God. The seven
heavens form a unity, the seven kinds of earth form a unity, and the
heavens and the earth together also form a unity.[28]
When God made our present heavens and our present earth, "the new
heavens and the new earth"[29] were also brought forth, yea, and the
hundred and ninety-six thousand worlds which God created unto His Own
glory.[30]
It takes five hundred years to walk from the earth to the heavens, and
from one end of a heaven to the other, and also from one heaven to the
next,[31] and it takes the same length of time to travel from the east
to the west, or from the south to the north.[32] Of all this vast world
only one-third is inhabited, the other two-thirds being equally divided
between water and waste desert land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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