Bahya ibn Paquda
XIᵉ siècle
Trust as rest: setting down what one was never able to carry.
Who was Bahya ibn Paquda?
A judge in the rabbinic court of Saragossa, in Muslim Spain, he wrote in Judeo-Arabic a book that moves religion from the gesture inward. What the body must do, he said, is taught everywhere; what the heart must do, almost nobody teaches, and he called these invisible obligations the duties of the heart. Translated into Hebrew a century later, the book became one of the most widely read in Judaism, among mystics and merchants alike.
In their own words
The essence of trust is the rest of the soul of the one who trusts: that his heart lean upon the one he has trusted, sure that he will do for him what is good and right in the matter he has entrusted to him.
Since our previous treatise dealt with the duty of taking up the service of God, I judged it right to follow it with what one who serves God needs more than anything else: trust in Him in all his affairs.
Among them, the rest of his soul and his trust in his God, as a servant must trust his master; for if he does not trust in God, he trusts in something else.