Talmud Bavli
Talmud Bavli

Halakhah for Berakhot 79:11

וא"ר זירא ואיתימא ר' חיננא בר פפא בא וראה שלא כמדת הקב"ה מדת בשר ודם מדת בשר ודם כלי ריקן מחזיק מלא אינו מחזיק אבל הקב"ה אינו כן מלא מחזיק ריקן אינו מחזיק שנאמר (שמות טו, כו) ויאמר אם שמוע תשמע אם שמוע תשמע ואם לאו לא תשמע ד"א אם שמוע בישן תשמע בחדש ואם יפנה לבבך שוב לא תשמע:

R. Zera (another version : R. Hinnana b. Pappa) also said : Come and see that the attribute of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like that of the human being. The attribute of the human being is to support the empty vessel but not the full ; but the Holy One, blessed be He, is not so — He supports the full vessel, not the empty. As it is said, "And He said. If hearing, thou wilt hear" (sic ! Exod. xv. 26) — i.e. if thou wilt hear [once], thou wilt hear again; but if not, thou wilt not hear. Another explanation is : If thou wilt hear the old, thou wilt also hear the new; but should thine heart turn aside [from the Torah], thou wilt never again hear.

Shulchan Shel Arba

This is the topic of what “the sages of the truth” said here:91B. Sukkah 46b. The expression “sages of the truth” is an epithet for the Talmudic sages who received the Oral Torah, which is the truth, to explain the Written Torah. Rabbenu Bahya frequently employs this expression in his books (Chavel, p. 508). Come and see how the way of the Holy One Blessed be He is not the way of flesh and blood. For flesh and blood, an empty vessel can contain something, a full one cannot. But it is not so for the Holy One Blessed be He. The full vessel can contain, the empty one cannot, as it is said, “If only they would surely hear.”92Ex 15:26. The explanation of this is that insofar as bodily things have measure and dimension, when they are empty they can filled, but when one fills it, they cannot contain any more since they are already filled to their capacity, and nothing with a capacity can contain something more than its capacity. But among the upper things, full contains, since it has no measured capacity.
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