ספר שמות

Exodus 38,23. “and at his side, Oholiov son of Achisamach ‎of the tribe of Dan, carver and designer, etc.;” Our sages in ‎‎Chagigah 14 comment on the words ‎חרש וחושב‎ by ‎explaining that the word ‎חרש‎, or ‎חרשים‎ refers to a wise student, ‎who as soon as he opens his mouth causes his teachers to become ‎even wiser when they hear his questions, whereas ‎חרשים‎ are ‎people who when they open their mouths cause others to fall ‎silent, acknowledging superior knowledge.‎Perhaps the Talmud refers to two levels of serving G’d; the ‎first uses his intellect, i.e. the common sense G’d has endowed ‎him with to do so, whereas the second does so by contemplating ‎the enormity of the ‎אין סוף‎, the indescribable superiority of the ‎Creator, something that our common sense cannot even try to ‎comprehend. This distinction has been alluded to in Numbers ‎‎12,8 [where the subject is Miriam and Aaron having ‎compared their statures as prophets to that of Moses, ‎Ed.] When G’d explains to them that Moses’ stature of ‎prophecy enables him to ‎תמונת ה' יביט‎, “to conceptually visualize ‎the Creator as if he saw a picture of Him,” He alluded to the ‎Divine assistance Moses enjoyed when visualizing such difficult ‎concepts. He would only have been able to do so if he had first ‎abandoned and negated any attempt to comprehend G’d’s essence ‎by applying ordinary human intellect. People on that level are ‎described in the Torah as ‎חרש‎, having made themselves deaf to ‎‎“normal” ways of perceiving and comprehending phenomena ‎they see. When a person, after having been granted such ‎superhuman perceptions and insights, reverts to his day to day ‎routine, a residue of his experiences while he was on a higher ‎level remains, i.e. he is filled with ‎שפע‎, divinely transmitted ‎spiritual largesse. As a result he is able to perform the work ‎performed by embroiderers both on blue woolen fabrics, ‎תכלת‎, ‎and on purple and crimson coloured woolen fabrics, ‎ארגמן‎. ‎‎[The finished product of Oholiov’s handiwork reflected ‎that he had been divinely inspired. Ed.]‎