Victoria Cleverby

Sefer Yetzirah describes how the 22 Hebrew letters, together with the 10 sefirot, constitute the primordial force, the smallest building blocks of creation that God engraved as paths when he set creation in motion. The Hebrew verb meaning “to engrave,” חקק (chakak), carries connotations of removing material, and its root לקח (lakach) means “to take away” or “to remove.” Thus, God needed to begin by removing material before he could create. When God subsequently created the world, he did so through three different spheres, all formed from the root ספר (SFR).