dwelling of whatever was pregnant with evil; it was not becoming
that such things should exist near the Merciful One. Only then
they were removed to the earth.

The seventh heaven, on the other hand, contains naught but what
is good and beautiful: right, justice, and mercy, the storehouses
of life, peace, and blessing, the souls of the pious, the souls
and spirits of unborn generations, the dew with which God will
revive the dead on the resurrection day, and, above all, the
Divine Throne, surrounded by the seraphim, the ofanim, the holy
Hayyot, and the ministering angels.[22]

Corresponding to the seven heavens, God created seven earths,
each separated from the next by five layers. Over the lowest
earth, the seventh, called Erez, lie in succession the abyss, the
Tohu, the Bohu, a sea, and waters.[23] Then the sixth[24] earth
is reached, the Adamah, the scene of the magnificence of God. In
the same way the Adamah is separated from the fifth earth, the
Arka, which contains Gehenna, and Sha'are Mawet, and Sha'are
Zalmawet, and Beer Shahat, and Tit ha-Yawen, and Abaddon, and
Sheol,[25] and there the souls of the wicked are guarded by the
Angels of Destruction. In the same way Arka is followed by
Harabah, the dry, the place of brooks and streams in spite of its
name, as the next, called Yabbashah, the mainland, contains the
rivers and the springs. Tebel, the second earth, is the first
mainland inhabited by living creatures, three hundred and
sixty-five species,[26] all essentially different from those of
our own earth. Some have human heads set on the body of a lion,
or a serpent, or an ox; others have human bodies topped by the
head of one of these animals. Besides, Tebel is inhabited by