In I Chronicles 29:11, King David praises God, saying: "Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty.” This eulogy supplies, in part, the order of the Sefirot. This list evolved to include Ten "aspects” of God: 1) Keter ("crown”); 2) Chokhmah ("wisdom”); 3) Binah ("intelligence”); 4) Gedullah ("greatness”) or Chesed ("love”); 5) Gevurah ("power”) or Din ("judgment”); 6) Tiferet ("beauty”) or Rachamim ("compassion”); 7) Netzach ("lasting endurance”); 8) Hod ("majesty”); 9) Tzaddik ("righteous one”) or Yesod Olam ("foundation of the world”); 10) Malkhut ("kingdom”).

The Sefirot have a formal structure, known as the "Tree of Emanation.” This is a cosmic tree, which grows downward from the first Sefirah (Keter). Opposed to this is the image of the Sefirot in the form of a man, whose head is properly placed at the top (a kind of "reversed tree”). Here the first three Sefirot represent the head; the fourth and the fifth, the arms; the sixth, the torso; the seventh and eighth, the legs; the ninth, the reproductive organ; the tenth, the all-embracing totality of the image. This is represented in the following pattern:

The arrangement of the Sefirot could be viewed on the model of the neoplatonic hierarchy; that is, the transition from the One to the many was accomplished through the stages of intellect, universal soul, and nature. This is symbolized through the upper three Sefirot, which represent the "intellectual” stage; the middle three Sefirot, which stand for the "psychic” stage; the lower three Sefirot, the "natural” stage.

More and more interpretations and readings of the meaning of the Sefirot have accumulated. Since the Sefirot were understood to be the manifestation of the Names of God, a pattern of these "names” emerged. According to the Kabbalah, these are the "ten names which must not be erased.” Yet despite the plethora of variations possible, the kabbalists held to the belief in a definite structure of the Sefirot. This idea, however, is immediately contrasted by another configuration which presents the Sefirot either as adjoining arcs of a single circle surrounding the central Emanator, or as ten concentric spheres with the power of emanation diminishing as it moves farther away from the center.