אליגוריות החוקים, ספר א י״דAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book I 14
א׳
1[43] “And God planted a pleasaunce in Eden toward the sun-rising, and placed there the man whom He had formed” (Gen. 2:8). By using many words for it Moses has already made it manifest that the sublime and heavenly wisdom is of many names; for he calls it “beginning” and “image” and “vision of God”; and now by the planting of the pleasaunce he brings out the fact that earthly wisdom is a copy of this as of an archetype. Far be it from man’s reasoning to be the victim of so great impiety as to suppose that God tills the soil and plants pleasaunces. We should at once be at a loss to tell from what motive He could do so. Not to provide Himself with pleasant refreshment and comfort.
ב׳
2[44] Let not such fables even enter our mind. For not even the whole world would be a place fit for God to make His abode, since God is His own place, and He is filled by Himself, and sufficient for Himself, filling and containing all other things in their destitution and barrenness and emptiness, but Himself contained by nothing else, seeing that He is Himself One and the Whole.
ג׳
3[45] Well then, God sows and plants earthly excellence for the race of mortals as a copy and reproduction of the heavenly. For pitying our race and noting that it is compact of a rich abundance of ills, He caused earthly excellence to strike root, to bring succour and aid to the diseases of the soul. It is, as I said before, a copy of the heavenly and archetypal excellence, to which Moses gives many names. Virtue is figuratively called “pleasaunce,” and the locality specially suited to the pleasaunce “Eden,” which means “luxury”; excellence to be sure has for its fit adjuncts peace and welfare and joy, in which true luxury consists.
ד׳
4[46] Again the planting of the pleasaunce is “towards the sun-rising,” for right reason does not set nor is quenched, but its nature is ever to rise, and, I take it, just as the sun when it has risen fills the gloom of the atmosphere with light, so virtue also, when it has risen in the soul, illumines its mist and disperses its deep darkness.
ה׳
5[47] “And He placed there” it says, “the man whom He had formed.” For God, being good and training our race to virtue as the operation most proper to it, places the mind amid virtue, evidently to the end that as a good gardener it may spend its care on nothing else but this.