Matsref ha-Sekhel · מצרף השכל

The author's preface to his commentary on the seven prophetic books of his master Raziel, written, he says, after a dream commanded him to expound them by their hidden sense and not by the plain way at all. The author, who calls himself Abubrahim the Small, counts six whole books — Sefer Melits, Sefer Ish Adam, Sefer ha-Berit ha-Hadashah, Sefer ha-Edut, Sefer Hayyim and Sefer ha-Yashar — and one called "Haftarah", half a book, and names his commentary Matsref ha-Sekhel, the crucible of the intellect, "whose secret is the dwelling of the intellect"; it was not composed, he says, for anyone not refined in it. The preface hints briefly at the secret of the life of the world to come as he believes it, and distinguishes three kinds of commentary — the corporeal, the mixed and the spiritual — answering to three sects, and what is unlike any of the three: the secrets of the Names, which no book can explain, only hint at. He sets it as a key to every book in the divine and human sciences, and passes from it to the commentary on the first book, Sefer Melits.