אליגוריות החוקים, ספר א כ״דAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book I 24
א׳
1[74] Now let us go on to look at our subject in this way. “Pheison” signifies ‘alteration of mouth,’ and “Evilat” ‘in travail’: and by these prudence is plainly indicated. For while most people deem the man prudent who can find sophistical arguments, and is clever at expressing his ideas, Moses knows such an one to be a lover of words indeed, but a prudent man by no means. For prudence is discerned in “alteration of the mouth,” that is in the word of utterance undergoing a transformation. This comes to the same thing as saying that prudence is not seen in speech but in action and earnest doings.
ב׳
2[75] And prudence surrounds with an encircling wall Evilat, or “folly in travail,” to besiege and overthrow it. “Travailing” is a name strictly appropriate to folly, because the foolish mind, being enamoured of things out of its reach, is evermore in travail pangs. This is so when it is enamoured of money, when of glory, when of pleasure, when of anything else.
ג׳
3[76] But, though in travail, it never brings to the birth, for the soul of the worthless man has not by nature the power to bring forth any offspring. What it seems to produce turn out to be wretched abortions and miscarriages, devouring half of its flesh, an evil tantamount to the death of the soul. Accordingly Aaron, the sacred word, begs of Moses, the beloved of God, to heal the change in Miriam, that her soul may not be in travail with evils; and so he says “Let her not become as one dead, as an abortion coming forth from the womb of a mother; consuming half of her flesh” (Num. 12:12).