Aaron flourished

This Hebrew poem is traditionally attributed to Hayya Ga’on, although the name Abraham is signed in the acrostic. The poet praises a noble named Aaron who may have been a kohen (priest), in part by alluding to a medieval legend that the rod the biblical Moses wielded actually belonged to his brother, Aaron. The foundation stone at the end of the poem refers to where creation took place. The son of Nun, Joshua, and the son of Jephunneh, Caleb, appear in Numbers 13:1–33 as the only two of the twelve spies sent into the land of Israel who returned optimistic that God would save the Israelites from their desert wanderings. The two became paradigms of faith in God, a trait that the poet associates with the object of his panegyric. The ellipsis indicates a lacuna in the manuscript.