Hod, splendor, majesty, but also acknowledgment, hoda'ah, is the eighth Sefirah, at the bottom of the left column. With Netzach it forms "the two legs" of which Elijah speaks, and "the prophets of truth" of the Pardes. It is the fifth in the verse of Chronicles: "and the splendor." Rabbi Akiva reads: "the splendor, this is the Temple"; Rabbi Shila: "the war of the streams of Arnon." The Psalm says: "His splendor is over earth and heaven."
The Pardes explains the name through the Shaarei Tzedek: Hod is so called "when it clothes itself in the quality of Gevurah to bring down enemies and win wars"; and it adds something precious: "all the praises of acknowledgment that David said in the book of Psalms belong to this measure." Hod is thus at once the splendor of the warrior and the thanks of the one who was saved. The same Hebrew word says majesty and admission: to acknowledge is to bow before a splendor greater than oneself. The Ohr Ne'erav specifies that Hod is "so called when it is held by Gevurah and Binah," the left line.
Its figure is Aaron, the brother of Moses, the priest. The tradition of the Zohar, summed up by the Ohr HaChammah, says: "Moses and Aaron, Netzach and Hod." Aaron is the one who blesses, who pursues peace; and the Torah tells Moses, concerning Joshua: "you shall put of your splendor upon him." The Pardes notes, moreover, that David, whose measure is Malkhut, reaches it "from the side of Hod," and that the numerical value of his name, counting the word itself, is that of Hod: the kingship below is nourished by acknowledgment.
The Tomer Devorah gives Hod the same basis as Netzach: support those who study, honor their study, and learn from every person. Then it distinguishes: "when he studies the Mishnah, which is of the left side, he has a particular relation to Hod." If Scripture is Netzach, the Mishnah, the law learned and handed down from mouth to mouth, is Hod; and the Gemara, "which brings the proof of the laws of the Mishnah from Scripture," repairs the two together. To study the Mishnah is therefore to walk with the left leg of the world. The chapter continues with the warning that holds for both legs: the one who studies must make himself "a disciple of all," and only then does he become a chariot for Netzach and Hod, and does Tiferet flow toward him.
Keep Aaron's measure: the splendor that gives thanks. To say thank you, to acknowledge what you have received, to bless the other, is to make your left leg a support for others.
