Maimonides begins this chapter with a parable or metaphor – mathal, in which he sets up the following scene:

There is a king (sultan), and the king’s subjects can be divided into the following categories. Each category seems ‘concentric’, so that

  1. Those who are abroad; the remaining categories are all ‘in the country’.
  2. Those who have their backs turned toward the king
  3. Those who desire nearness to the king, among whom:
  4. Some have not yet seen even ‘the face of the wall of the house’. Of the remaining,
  5. Some who have arrived at the house but are still in search of an entrance,
  6. while others have entered and are at the lobby (dahliz);
  7. still others have entered the king’s chambers;
  8. and only a subset of these have been able to speak with the king, at varying degrees of closeness.

When Maimonides explains his parables, he first does so using the categories of religion.

  1. corresponds to those who have no religion, “neither one based on speculation nor one received by tradition”
  2. corresponds to those who hold false doctrines/opinions (آراء غير صحيحة), either based on faulty reasoning or based on following the wrong person
  3. corresponds to the ahl al-shari’ah,
  4. of which category 4 is the jumhur, or multitude, among them.
  5. corresponds to the fuqaha’, who learn ‘correct opinions’ by tradition (اللذين يعتقدون الأراء الصحيحة تقليدا) and do not attempt to establish them by proofs
  6. corresponds to those who have “delved into speculation regarding the fundamentals of religion” (خاضوا في النظر في أصول الدين)
  7. “those who have succeeded in finding a proof for everything that can be proved, who have a true knowledge of God, so far as a true knowledge can be attained, and are near the truth, wherever an approach to the truth is possible”
  8. a subset of the seventh, perhaps.

He also sets up an alternative hierarchy, seemingly based on degrees of philosophical study rather than degrees of religious attainment:

  1. -
  2. -
  3. -
  4. -
  5. Those who have studied Logic and Mathematics
  6. Physics
  7. Metaphysics

That these two hierarchies are, for Maimonides, one and the same, is indicated by the way he says

There are some who direct all their mind toward the attainment of perfection in Metaphysics, devote themselves entirely to God, exclude from their thought every other thing, and employ all their intellectual faculties in the study of the Universe, in order to derive therefrom a proof for the existence of God, and to learn in every possible way how God rules all things; they form the class of those who have entered the palace, namely, the class of prophets.

At the culmination of this hierarchy is placed the prophet Moses, to whom Maimonides gestures without name but with a great deal of reverence and awe:

One of these has attained so much knowledge, and has concentrated his thoughts to such an extent in the idea of God, that it could be said of him, “And he was with the Lord forty days,” etc. (Exod. 34:28); during that holy communion he could ask Him, answer Him, speak to Him, and be addressed by Him, enjoying beatitude in that which he had obtained to such a degree that “he did neither eat bread nor drink water” (ibid.); his intellectual energy was so predominant that all coarser functions of the body, especially those connected with the sense of touch, were in abeyance.

Next follows Maimonides’ exhortation to worship God in what he thinks is the correct way. For he does not only specify this ‘intellectual worship of God’ as a superior form of worship; he goes further, by disparaging an intellectually uninformed worship of God thus:

Those, however, who think of God, and frequently mention His name, without any correct notion of Him, but merely following some imagination, or some theory received from another person, are, in my opinion, like those who remain outside the palace and distant from it. They do not mention the name of God in truth, nor do they reflect on it. That which they imagine and mention does not correspond to any being in existence: it is a thing invented by their imagination.

So what is the correct way to approach the worship of God?

The true worship of God is only possible when correct notions of Him have previously been conceived. When you have arrived by way of intellectual research at a knowledge of God and His works, then commence to devote yourselves to Him, try to approach Him and strengthen the intellect (aql, I assume), which is the link that joins you to Him.

Lastly, Maimonides talks about the link between this intellectual love/worship and Divine Providence; he believes that Providence only looks over someone when they are actively engaged in contemplating the Divine; and since as human beings we often have to tend to other things, we are not always watched over by this Providence. For Maimonides, this explains much of the problems of theodicy; Providence only applies to those who worship God in the ‘right way’, and that too only when they are actively doing so. At all other times, one is just as exposed to the vagaries of chance as the rest of the sublunary world is. Thus, life becomes for Maimonides a constant search for that tenuous connection with the Divine; our mundane, earthly concerns ever pulling us away from Him.

And let us pray to God and beseech Him that He clear and remove from our way everything that forms an obstruction and a partition between us and Him, although most of these obstacles are our own creation, as has several times been shown in this treatise. Comp. “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God” (Isaiah 59:2 ).

The Youtube Channel Seekers of Unity has a couple of great video about this chapter:

From Joseph Soloveitchik

Out of the levels identified by Maimonides, we can discern three categories of approaching the knowledge of God (ignoring the first two levels, which are for people who do not approach the knowledge of God). These are:

  1. Normative-Halakhic: Those for whom “the experience of God is a normative one”, i.e., a view of God as the “supreme ethical arbiter”, “a normative authority who dictates actions”. This includes levels (4) and (5) in my list above.
  2. Cosmic-Intellectual: Those for whom “the experience of God is a cosmic one … one finds in the cosmos the fingerprints of God”.
  3. Mystical:Ecstatic: Those who have a “mystical experience of God”: an experience of “ heshek, of passionate love”