אליגוריות החוקים, ספר א ט״וAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book I 15
א׳
1[48] Now the question might be asked, “Why, seeing that to imitate God’s works is a pious act, am I forbidden to plant a grove by the altar, while God plants the pleasaunce?” For it says, “Thou shalt not plant thyself a grove: thou shalt not make to thyself any wood by the side of the altar of the Lord thy God” (Deut. 16:21). What then are we to say? That it becomes God to plant and to build virtues in the soul,
ב׳
2[49] but that the mind shows itself to be without God and full of self-love, when it deems itself as on a par with God; and, whereas passivity is its true part, looks on itself as an agent. When God sows and plants noble qualities in the soul, the mind that says “I plant” is guilty of impiety. Thou shalt not plant, therefore, whensoever God is tending His plants. But if thou dost set plants in the soul, O mind, set only fruit-bearing plants. Set not a grove, for in a grove there are both wild and cultivated trees. And to plant in the soul barren wickedness by the side of cultivated and fruit-yielding virtue is like leprosy with its twofold growths and blending of discordant hues.
ג׳
3[50] If, however, thou dost bring into the same place things heterogeneous and incapable of mixture, let them be separate and distinct from the pure and unsullied growth that offers up fruits free from blemish to God. And it is such a growth that is meant by the altar of sacrifice: for it is a violation of this to say that anything is the (independent) work of the soul, since there is nothing there that has not reference to God.
ד׳
4[51] To say that is to mingle the barren with the fruit-bearing. And this is a blemish, whereas only things without blemish are offered to God. If then thou transgress in any of these respects, O soul, thou wilt injure thyself, not God; that is why it says “thou shalt not plant to thyself”; for to God no one does such tillage, above all when the plants are bad ones; and it goes on to say, “thou shalt not make to thyself.” It says also in another case, “Ye shall not make together with Me gods of silver, and gods of gold ye shall not make to yourselves” (Exod. 20:23). For he that thinks either that God belongs to a type, or that He is not one, or that He is not unoriginate and incorruptible, or that He is not incapable of change, wrongs himself not God; for it says, “to yourselves ye shall not make”; for we must deem that He belongs to no type, and that He is One and incorruptible and unchangeable. He that does not so conceive infects his own soul with a false and godless opinion.
ה׳
5[52] Do you not see that, even if He bring us into virtue and even if, when brought in, we plant no fruitless thing but “every tree good for food,” He yet commands us “thoroughly to cleanse its uncleanness” (Lev. 19:23)? And this means the notion that we are planting, for it is the cutting away of self-conceit that He demands, and self-conceit is in its nature unclean.