Both editions are, with several notable exceptions, sufficiently alike, lines beginning and ending with the same words, so that it appears that the 1620 Ha-Kavvanot was the copybook for the 1624 edition. Moreover, the type is alike, although not identical. The likeness continues to 65a where the layout changes. Among the differences is, below the introduction, an approbation from R. Pethahiah ben Joseph co-signed by five rabbis from Frankfort am Main, in which the name of R. Benjamin ben Jekuthiel, an emissary from Jerusalem is credited with bringing the manuscript from Erez Israel and including a ban against unauthorized printing for ten years and a limitation of the price to one Reichthaler; and omitted are the pashtim (straightforward kavvanot) from the Ari preceding the index; and errata. The errata were written by Pethahiah to correct the numerous errors by the non-Jew who hastened to finish his work and because Benjamin, in haste to continue his mission, did not have time to properly edit the work, replete with errors. Pethahiah asks that if errors be found he be judged favorabl, for at the time he did the work he was incarcerated for twenty-three days in Frankfort (for reasons unknown). The errata are rare, missing from many copies.

The printed editions of Sefer ha-Kavvanot have been described as Sefer ha-Kavvanot is an aid to proper liturgy, individual and even more so traditional communal prayer. Gershom Scholem describes this understanding of liturgy as being a silken cord aiding the mind in its difficult path through the darkness to God. Mystical meditation via prayer discovers the stages of this passage into the deepest recesses of the soul. Furthermore, one’s kavvanah in prayer affects the spheres through which with one moves, achieving a spiritual tikkun. No two such prayers are alike, so that each individual’s meditation contributes to the overall tikkun. Achieving a true level of mystical achievement in prayer is not simple, for as Scholem observes, “I have had occasion in Jerusalem to meet men who to this day adhere to the practice of mystical meditation in prayer, as Luria taught it, for among the 80,000 Jews of Jerusalem there are still thirty or forty masters of mystical prayer who practice it after years of spiritual training.” It is Scholem’s opinion that Sefer ha-Kavvanot was primarily taken from the writings of R. Hayyim Vital, the leading student of the Ari and the foremost proponent of Lurianic Kabbalah.