Two Wives, Two Maidservants: Raising Everything Up

37“And he took his two wives and his two maidservants …” It seems to me that a person has two wives. One is the wife the Creator, may He be exalted, commanded him to take, to be fruitful and multiply. The second is his holy neshamah, the thinking soul that Hashem placed in man. All her longing is only for the service of the Creator, to rise to her root, the lofty place from which she was hewn. She is called “a woman of valor,”¹ and “a good wife is a good gift to her husband,”² for through her a person can come to great levels without end or limit. And one who truly chooses the service of the Creator meets no hindrance in his service of Him, not even from his actual wife. On the contrary, she too helps him, as Chazal said on the verse “When Hashem is pleased with a man's ways, even his enemies He makes to be at peace with him”: “This is his wife.”³ These two are called a person's two wives.

38A person also has two maidservants: the animal soul and the yetzer hara. These two hold him back from the service of the Creator. But when a person sanctifies and purifies himself and breaks his physical desires and his yetzer hara, then everything helps him, and he “brings out the precious from the worthless.”⁴ The yetzer hara too becomes good, and he serves Hashem with both his inclinations, the good inclination and the evil one.⁵ The animal soul, which draws him to physical desires, also helps him, for he sanctifies himself in what is permitted to him,⁶ in his eating and drinking and in all his movements. So he raises everything to the lofty holiness. That is “And he took his two wives and his two maidservants.”

39“And his eleven children” hints at the sitra achra, the “other side” opposed to holiness. As is well known, the kelipah, the husk that hides holiness, is eleven; this is the inner meaning of the “eleven curtains” of goats' hair.⁷ And “God has made the one opposite the other,”⁸ so Hashem, blessed be He, commanded us to offer eleven spices of incense,⁹ to nullify them. Through his righteousness, Yaakov Avinu raised all of these, the wives, the maidservants and the eleven, to the upper worlds, through all that his good deeds brought forth. That is “and he crossed the ford of the Yabbok”: Yabbok (יב״ק) hints at the three holy Names Havayah (הוי״ה), the four-letter Name, Ekyeh (אהי״ה) and Adnus (אדנ״י), whose numbers add up to Yabbok.¹⁰ This is also the meaning of “and he brought them across the stream”:¹¹ the upper stream. Understand this.