זוהר שמות — דף קיה ע”א

Before his repentance, Moses was in the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The staff entrusted to him belonged to that tree — Metatron for good, Samael for evil — and thus he sinned at the rock. After repentance, the staff will become the Tree of Life, and it will be fulfilled in him: "He will never let the righteous fall." The forty-nine faces correspond to the forty-nine letters of Shema Israel and Barukh Shem. Fifty gates of Binah were given to Moses minus one, and in the future the aleph will return to him. The commandments "raise up, you shall raise" and "abandon, you shall abandon" allude to lifting the letter heh and helping it rise from exile.