and they glorify; they would cease to exist if they would not praise.“In consequence of the similarity between the letters and , the translator was misled into making the text say just the opposite. With regard to the music of the spheres, Philo, De Car., 3, refers to it in the very words which remind one of the anonymous Midrash quoted in Hadar, Deut. 32.1. Comp. also DR 10.1 and 2; Yelammedenu in alkut I, 729. See further vol. I, pp. 44, seq. The song of praise of the sun and moon did not strike the naive mind as strange, in view of the fact that the surfaces of these luminaries resemble the human countenance; comp. R. Benjamin b. Zerah (about 1050) in his piyyut אלהינו אלוהים אמת in the Roman and German Mahzor (comp. Zunz, Literaturgeschichte, 121), who undoubtedly made use of a version of Midrash Konen different from ours, but which Treves still had before him in his commentary on the Roman Mahzor entitled Kitnha Dabishuna, ad loc. The human countenance of the sun is also referred to in the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch 6. Comp. also the preceding note as well as note 112 and note 6 on vol. IV, p. 4.
103 PRE 6; Baraita de-Ma‘aseh Bereshit. See also 2 Enoch 37.2. In the Midrashim (BR 5.6; Koheleth 1.5; Tehillim 19, 170; Baraita de-Ma‘aseh Bereshit, loc. cit.) it is said that the sun is led through a stream, which is put up for that purpose in heaven, before it starts its revolution, to cool off its heat; otherwise it might consume the earth.
104 PRE 51 and 6; Baraita de-Ma‘aseh Bereshit 50. The moon and the stars have light but no heat, and hence the “bath of hail”. On the stream of fire in which the sun bathes, comp. also Enoch 17.4 and Baba Batra 84a. The latter passage reads: The sun passes paradise in the morning and hell in the evening. Dawn is a reflection of the roses of paradise; the evening twilight of the fire of hell. The stream of fire in which the sun bathes, is identical with the Nehar di-Nur; comp. Luria on PRE 51 and note 62.
105 WR 31.9; Tehillim 19, 169; ER 2, 11; MHG I, 42; Alphabetot 118; Baraita de-Ma'aseh Bereshit 50. Quite similar is the statement of the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch 8 to the effect that the angels remove the crown of the sun in the evening, bring it to heaven, and “renew” it there (the “renewing” of creation every day is also alluded to in the morning prayer, at the end of Yozer, comp. note 6), because the sun and its rays are becoming defiled on earth. With regard to the compulsory motion of the heavenly bodies, which do not wish to shed their light upon a sinful world, comp. vol. III, pp. 197–298;
37
