His Hands

Psalm 145 declares, “You open Your hands and willingly satiate all living beings!”

Does God literally have “hands”?

The Medieval Jewish philosophers would say that the Psalmist is expressing himself allegorically; that God behaves with His creatures “as if” He has hands.  

The Kabbalists would say that God “having hands” is not meant as a description of God. Rather, it’s intended in a possessive sense, such as when we say, “His world”. In other words, as God possesses the world, so He possesses a spiritual level called, “Hands”. They are not hands in the sense that we know of (even if they are the spiritual source of our own hands). When God opens His “hands”, humanity bathed in blessings.

These two views do not contradict. In fact, they are entirely complementary.

The philosophers were referring to the essence of God. Regarding this level, nothing descriptive can be said about whom He is. Every possible description of this sort is merely an allegorical “as if”.  

On the other hand, the Kabbalists are not describing God Himself. In fact, they never do. In their coded system of metaphor they are offering a description of a spiritual level, which can as rightfully be considered a “possession” of God.

An interesting surprise emerges. Usually, one would expect the Kabbalists, who are mystics, to be the ones discussing the higher levels of reality.  It turns out that in this case it was the philosophers were talking on a higher level; as the Kabbalists were referring to a spiritual level, while the philosophers were referring to God’s core essence.

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