Wordplay on "law" and "wall"

This is from Allen Mandelbaum's Chelmaxioms.

And if a gate without a wall may seem

a wounded thing, consider well the shame

of walls without a gate, and Ishmael

considered that far more lamentable.

[. . .]

But all Rav Ishmael had ever meant:

Not every letter carries strict intent --

the speech of God, the speech of man, are loose;

do not use exegesis as a noose;

no maxim, axiom, maxiom, no law

must stand as if it were a gateless wall.

The /law/, the /wall/:

more phemes of Chelm

and not ephemeral.

And this is something I wrote in the early 2000s (posted here before in "A cross between two antlers, and the Liahona spindles"), before I had read anything by Mandelbaum. Call me Ishmael, I guess.

One of Jesus' one-liners, and far from his worse,

Says the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

In the tongue of the Angles, it means something more:

That the Law is a wall, but the Rood is a door.