אליגוריות החוקים, ספר ב י״טAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book II 19
א׳
1[76] What need to illustrate my point from the pleasures of the table? There are, we may roughly say, as many varieties of pleasure, as there are of dishes set before us stirring our senses with their delicious flavours. Pleasure being, then, a thing so variable, was it not fitly compared to a tortuous animal, the serpent?
ב׳
2[77] For this reason, too, when the part of us that corresponds to the turbulent mob of a city, pines for the dwellings in Egypt, that is, in the corporeal mass, it encounters pleasures which bring death, not the death which severs soul from body, but the death which ruins the soul by vice. For we read, “And the Lord sent among the people the deadly serpents, and they bit the people, and much people of the children of Israel died” (Numb. 21:6). For verily nothing so surely brings death upon a soul as immoderate indulgence in pleasures.
ג׳
3[78] That which dies is not the ruling part in us, but the part that is under rule, the part that is like the vulgar herd. And so long will it incur death, as it fails to repent and acknowledge its fall. For they came to Moses saying, “We have sinned in that we spake against the Lord, and against thee. Pray therefore to the Lord, and let Him take away the serpents from us” (ibid. 7). ’Tis well that they say, not “We spake against, we sinned” but “We sinned, we spake against.” For it is when the mind has sinned and ceased to cleave to virtue, that it blames God’s ways, fastening its own defection on God.