אליגוריות החוקים, ספר א ב׳Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book I 2
א׳
1[2] “And God finished on the sixth day His works which He had made” (Gen. 2:2). It is quite foolish to think that the world was created in six days or in a space of time at all. Why? Because every period of time is a series of days and nights, and these can only be made such by the movement of the sun as it goes over and under the earth: but the sun is a part of heaven, so that time is confessedly more recent than the world. It would therefore be correct to say that the world was not made in time, but that time was formed by means of the world, for it was heaven’s movement that was the index of the nature of time.
ב׳
2[3] When, then, Moses says, “He finished His work on the sixth day,” we must understand him to be adducing not a quantity of days, but a perfect number, namely six, since it is the first that is equal to the sum of its own fractions ½, ⅓, and /6, and is produced by the multiplication of two unequal factors, 2×3; and see, the numbers 2 and 3 have left behind the incorporeal character that belongs to 1, 2 being an image of matter, and being parted and divided as that is, while 3 is the image of a solid body, for the solid is patient of a threefold division.
ג׳
3[4] Nay more, the number 6 is akin to the movements of animals provided with instrumental limbs, for the body equipped with such instruments is so constituted by nature that it can move in six directions, forwards and backwards, upwards and downwards, to the right and to the left. Moses’ wish, therefore, is to exhibit alike the things created of mortal kind and those that are incorruptible as having been formed in a way corresponding to their proper numbers. As I have just said, he makes mortal things parallel with the number six, the happy and blessed things with the number seven.
ד׳
4[5] First of all, then, on the seventh day the Creator, having brought to an end the formation of mortal things, begins the shaping of others more divine.