אליגוריות החוקים, ספר גAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book III
א׳
1[1] “And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God in the midst of the forest of the garden” (Gen. 3:8). He introduces a doctrine showing that the bad man is an exile. For if virtue is a city peculiar to the wise, the man who has no capacity to partake of virtue has been driven away from the city, in which the bad man is incapable of taking part. It is accordingly the bad man only who has been driven away and sent into exile. But the exile from virtue has by incurring such exile hidden himself from God. For if the wise, as being His friends, are in God’s sight, it is evident that all bad men slink away and hide from Him, as is to be expected in men who cherish hatred and ill-will to right reason.
ב׳
2[2] The prophet, moreover, finds proof that the bad man is without city or dwelling-house, in the account of Esau, the hairy man, crafty in wickedness, when he says, “Esau was skilled in hunting, a countryman” (Gen. 25:27); for vice, that hunts after the passions, is by nature unfit to dwell in the city of virtue. Rather, in utter senselessness, it follows after rustic grossness, the life of the untrained. Jacob, the man full of wisdom, belongs to a city, and as a dwelling-house he occupies virtue. The prophet says of him: “But Jacob was a simple man dwelling in a house” (ibid.).
ג׳
3[3] It accords with this too that the midwives, since they feared God, made houses for themselves (Exod. 1:21); for such(souls) as make a quest of God’s hidden mysteries—and this is what is meant by “saving the males’ lives” or “bringing the males to the birth”—build up the cause of virtue, and in this they have elected to have their abode. By these instances it has been made clear how the bad man is without a city or home, being an exile from virtue, while the good man has received it as his lot to have wisdom for both city and dwelling.
ד׳
4[4] Let us see next how a man is said actually to hide himself from God. Were one not to take the language as figurative, it would be impossible to accept the statement, for God fills and penetrates all things, and has left no spot void or empty of His presence. What manner of place then shall a man occupy, in which God is not? The prophet elsewhere bears witness of this saying, “God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath and there is none else but He” (Deut. 4:39). And again, “Here stand I before thou (wert made)” (Exod. 17:6); for before every created thing God is, and is found everywhere, so that no one could possibly hide himself from God. And why should we marvel at this?
ה׳
5[5] Whatever should happen, we could never escape or hide ourselves from those, even among things created, that are essential elements of creation. For instance, let a man fly, if he can, from earth or water or air or sky or the world at large. A man must needs have all these round him, for no one shall ever be able to escape out of the world.
ו׳
6[6] Then, seeing a man is powerless to hide himself from the parts of the world or from the world itself, would he be able to escape the eye of God? By no means. Why then does it say “they hid themselves”? The bad man thinks that God is in a place, not containing but contained; and for this reason he imagines that he can hide from Him, fancying that God, the Author of all things, is not in that part, which he has chosen for his lurking-place.
ז׳
7[7] It is possible to take it in this way. In the bad man the true opinion concerning God is hidden in obscurity, for he is full of darkness with no divine radiance in him, whereby to investigate realities. Such an one is in banishment from the divine company, like the leper and the man with an issue. The former combines as joint causes God and creation, which are natures mutually hostile, for he shows two different colours, whereas there is one single Cause, even He who doeth all. The man with an issue, on the other hand, deriving everything from the world, and making it return into the world, imagines that nothing has been created by God, associating himself with the opinion of Heracleitus, in his advocacy of such tenets as “fullness and want,” “the universe one,” and “all things interchange.”
ח׳
8[8] So the divine word saith, “Let them send forth out of the holy soul every leper, and everyone that hath an issue, and everyone that is unclean in soul, both male and female (Numb. 5:2), and eunuchs with the generative organs of the soul cut away, and fornicators, deserters from the rule of One, to whom entrance into the assembly of God is absolutely forbidden (Deut. 23:2).
ט׳
9[9] But wise reasonings, so far from hiding themselves, are keenly desirous to be manifest. Do you not see that Abraham “was still standing before the Lord and drew nigh and said, ‘Destroy Thou not the just man together with the impious one’ ” (Gen. 18:22 f.), the one that is manifest and known to Thee together with him who shuns and avoids Thee? For this one is impious, but he that stands before Thee and avoids Thee not is just. For the only justice is that Thou, O Master, shouldst be honoured.
י׳
10[10] A pious man is not found with the same ease as an impious one. We have to be content with a just man. This is why he says, “Destroy not a just together with an impious man.” For no one honours God as He deserves but only as is just. It is impossible to requite even our parents with boons equal to those which we have received from them—for it is out of the question to requite by becoming their parents. How must it not be impossible to recompense or to praise as He deserves Him who brought the universe out of non-existence? For it was an exercise towards us of every virtue.
י״א
11[11] Through three seasons, then, O soul, that is throughout the whole of time with its threefold divisions, make thyself ever manifest to God, not dragging after thee the weak feminine passion of sense-perception, but giving forth as incense the manly reasoning schooled in fortitude. For the sacred word (Deut. 16:16) enjoins that at three seasons of the year every male is to show himself before the Lord the God of Israel.
י״ב
12[12] For this reason Moses also, when he is being established as one standing open before God, avoids Pharaoh, the symbol of dispersion, for he boasts saying that he knows not the Lord (Exod. 5:2). “Moses,” we read, “withdrew from Pharaoh’s presence and settled in the land of Midian” (Exod. 2:15), or in the examination of the things of nature, “and sat on the well,” waiting to see what draught God would send to quench the thirst of his soul in its longing for that which is good.
י״ג
13[13] So he withdraws from the godless opinion of Pharaoh, which the passions follow as their leader, and withdraws into Midian, the sifting-place, to inquire whether he is to be still or to dispute again with the evil man for his destruction; he considers whether, if he attack him, he shall prevail to win the victory, and so he is kept there waiting upon God, as I have said, to see whether He will bestow upon a deep reasoning faculty free from shallowness a stream sufficient to drown the onrush of the king of the Egyptians, the onrush, that is, of his passions.
י״ד
14[14] And he is deemed worthy of the boon: for, having taken the field in the cause of virtue, he does not abandon the warfare till he beholds the pleasures prostrate and out of action. This is why Moses does not fly from Pharaoh, for that would have been to run away and not return, but, like an athlete taking an interval to regain his breath, “withdraws,” that is, brings about a cessation of arms, until he shall by divine words have raised forces of wisdom and every other virtue to aid him in renewing the attack with irresistible power.
ט״ו
15[15] But Jacob, “Supplanter” that he is, acquiring virtue with great toil by wiles and artifices, his name having not yet been changed into “Israel,” runs away from Laban and all his belongings, tints and shapes and material bodies generally, whose nature it is to inflict wounds on the mind through the objects of sense. For since when facing them he was not able completely to vanquish them, he flies, fearing defeat at their hands. And in doing so he is thoroughly deserving of praise; for Moses says, “Ye shall make the sons of the seeing one cautious” (Lev. 15:31), not bold and aiming at what is beyond their capacity.
ט״ז
16[16] “And Jacob stole away unawares to Laban the Syrian, in that he told him not that he fled. So he fled with all that he had; and passed over the river, and set his face toward the mountain of Gilead” (Gen. 31:20 f.). It is thoroughly in accordance with true principles that he is said to have concealed the fact that he is running away and not made it known to Laban, who represents the way of thinking governed by objects of sense. For instance, if thou hast caught sight of beauty and been captivated by it, and if it is like to be a cause of stumbling to thee, fly secretly from the vision of it, and give no further report of it to thy mind, that is to say, do not give it another thought or ponder it: for to keep on recalling anything is the way to engrave on the mind distinct outlines of it, which injure the mind and often bring it to ruin against its will.
י״ז
17[17] The same principle holds in the case of every kind of attraction by the avenue of whatever sense it may reach us; for here safety lies in secret flight; but recalling the attractive object in memory, telling of it, turning it over, spells conquest and harsh slavery for our reasoning faculty. If, therefore, O my mind, thou art in imminent danger of falling a prey to some object of sense that has shown itself, never report it to thyself, never dwell on it, lest thou be overcome and plunged into misery. Nay, rush forth at large, make thy escape, choose the freedom of the wild rather than the slavery of the tame.
י״ח
18[18] Now(let us ask) why, as though Jacob were not aware that Laban was a Syrian, does he say, “Jacob kept Laban the Syrian in the dark”? In this likewise there is a point not without pertinence. For “Syria” means “Highlands.” Jacob, therefore, the mind in training, when he sees passion grovelling low before him, awaits its onset calculating that he will master it by force, but when it is seen to be lofty, stately, weighty, the first to run away is the mind in training, followed by all his belongings, being portions of his discipline, readings, ponderings, acts of worship, and of remembrance of noble souls, self-control, discharge of daily duties; he crosses the river of objects of sense, that swamps and drowns the soul under the flood of the passions, and, when he has crossed it, sets his face for the lofty high-land, the principle of perfect virtue:
י״ט
19[19] “for he set his face towards the mountain of Gilead.” The meaning of this name is “migration of witness”; for God caused the soul to migrate from the passions that are represented by Laban, and bore witness to it how greatly to its advantage and benefit its removal was, and led it on away from the evil things that render the soul low and grovelling up to the height and greatness of virtue.
כ׳
20[20] For this reason Laban, the friend of the senses and the man whose actions are regulated by them and not by the mind, is vexed, and pursues him, and says, “Why didst thou run away secretly” (Gen. 31:26), but didst not remain in the company of bodily enjoyment and of the teaching that gives the preference to bodily and external good things? But in addition to fleeing from this view of life, thou didst carry off my soundness of sense as well, Leah and Rachel to wit. For these, while they remained with the soul, produced in it sound sense, but when they removed elsewhither they left behind to it ignorance and indiscipline. This is why he adds the words “thou didst rob me” (ibid.), that is, didst steal my good sense.
כ״א
21[21] What, then, his good sense was, he is going to explain; for he adds “and didst carry away my daughters as prisoners of war: and if thou hadst told me, I would have sent thee forth” (ibid.). Thou wouldst not have sent forth those at variance one with another; for hadst thou really sent forth and liberated the soul, thou wouldst have stripped from it all voices belonging to the body and senses: for it is in this way that the understanding is delivered from vices and passions. But as it is, thou sayest that thou art ready to send her forth free, but by thy actions thou ownest that thou wouldst have detained her in prison; for if thou hadst sent her on her way with “music and tabrets and harp” and the pleasures that suit each several sense, thou wouldst not really have sent her forth at all.
כ״ב
22[22] For it is not from thee only, O Laban, friend of bodies and of tints, that we are running away, but from all too that is thine: and this includes the voices of the senses sounding in harmony with the operations of the passions. For we have made our own, if so be that we are under virtue’s training, a study absolutely vital which was Jacob’s study also, to consign to death and destruction the gods that are alien to the soul, the gods moulded in metal, the making of which Moses has forbidden (Lev. 19:4); and these are a means of dissolving virtue and well-being, and a means of forming and giving fixity to wickedness and passions, for that which undergoes moulding, if dissolved, grows fixed and firm again.
כ״ג
23[23] We read as follows: “And they gave Jacob the strange gods, which were in their hands, and the ear-rings which were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the terebinth that was in Shechem” (Gen. 35:4). These are bad men’s gods. And Jacob is not said to receive them, but to hide and destroy them. This is in every point perfectly accurate. For the man of sterling worth will take nothing to make him rich in the products of evil, but will hide them secretly and do away with them.
כ״ד
24[24] In like manner when the king of Sodom is artfully attempting to effect an exchange of creatures without reason for reasonable beings, of horses for men, Abraham says that he will take none of the things that are his but will “stretch out” his soul’s operation, which he figuratively called his “hand,” “to the Most High God” (Gen. 14:22), for that he would not take of all that was the king’s “from a cord even to a shoelace,” in order that he may not say that he has conferred wealth on the man whose eyes were open, by giving him poverty in return for his wealth of virtue.
כ״ה
25[25] The passions are always hidden away and placed under guard in Shechem—“shoulder” is the meaning of the name—for he that devotes toil to pleasures is prone to keep pleasures well guarded. But in the case of the wise man the passions perish and are destroyed, not for some short period but “even to this day,” that is, always. For the whole age of the world is made commensurate with to-day, for the daily cycle is the measure of all time.
כ״ו
26[26] For this reason too Jacob gives as a special portion to Joseph Shechem (Gen. 48:22), the things of the body and of the senses, as he is occupied in toiling at these things, but to Judah who openly acknowledges God he gives not presents, but praise and hymns and hallowed songs from his brethren (Gen. 49:8). Jacob receives Shechem not from God, but by dint of “sword and bow,” words that pierce and parry. For the wise man subjects to himself the secondary as well as the primary objects, but, having subjected them, does not keep them, but bestows them on him to whose nature they are akin.
כ״ז
27[27] Mark you not that, in the case of the gods also, though apparently receiving them, he has not really done so, but hid them and did away with them and “destroyed” them for ever from himself? What soul, then, was it that succeeded in hiding away wickedness and removing it from sight, but the soul to which God manifested Himself, and which He deemed worthy of His secret mysteries? For He says: “Shall I hide from Abraham My servant that which I am doing?” (Gen. 18:17). It is meet, O Saviour, that Thou displayest Thine own works to the soul that longs for all beauteous things, and that Thou hast concealed from it none of Thy works. That is why it is strong to shun evil and always to hide and becloud and destroy passion that works cruel havoc.
כ״ח
28[28] In what manner, then, the bad man is in banishment and hiding himself from God we have shown; let us consider now where he hides himself. “In the midst,” it says, “of the wood of the garden” (Gen. 3:8), that is in the centre of the mind, which in its turn is the centre of what we may call the garden of the whole soul: for he that runs away from God takes refuge in himself.
כ״ט
29[29] There are two minds, that of the universe, which is God, and the individual mind. He that flees from his own mind flees for refuge to the Mind of all things. For he that abandons his own mind acknowledges all that makes the human mind its standard to be naught, and he refers all things to God.
ל׳
30[30] On the other hand he that runs away from God declares Him to be the cause of nothing, and himself to be the cause of all things that come into being. The view, for instance, is widely current that all things in the world tear along automatically independently of anyone to guide them, and that the human mind by itself established arts, professions, laws, customs, and rules of right treatment both of men and animals on the part of the state and in our conduct whether as individual persons or as members of communities.
ל״א
31[31] But thou perceivest, O my soul, the difference of the two opinions; for the one turns its back on the particular being, created and mortal mind, and whole-heartedly puts itself under the patronage of the universal Mind, uncreate and immortal; the other opinion on the contrary, rejects God, and by a grievous error calls in to share its warfare the mind that is insufficient even to help itself.
ל״ב
32[32] This is the ground for Moses’ words, “If the thief be found where he has just broken through and be smitten and die, there is no blood-guiltiness for him: but if the sun have risen upon him,(then he) is liable, he shall die in requital” (Exod. 22:1 f.). For if a man cleave and break through the tenet that stands firm in its soundness and uprightness, testifying of unlimited power as belonging to God alone, and he be found where he has broken through, that is, in the pierced and cloven doctrine that is conscious of a man’s own mind at work but not of God, he is a thief abstracting what belongs to another;
ל״ג
33[33] for all things are God’s possessions, so that he who assigns anything to himself is appropriating what is another’s, and he receives a blow grievous and hard to be healed, even self-conceit, a thing akin to boorish ignorance. Moses does not make distinct mention of the man who strikes, for he is no other than the man who is struck; just as the man who rubs himself is also rubbed, and the man who stretches himself is also stretched; for in his own person he is at the same time active and passive, employs the force and submits to its effect. Even so he that steals what is God’s and assigns it to himself, is the victim of the outrage inflicted by his own impiety and self-conceit. A good thing it would be should he die when struck, that is to say permanently fail of the accomplishment of his purpose; for he must then be held to be less a sinner.
ל״ד
34[34] For wickedness presents itself now as stationary, now as moving. It is wickedness in motion that is ripe for filling up its full measure by carrying its designs to completion, and so it is worse than stationary wickedness.
ל״ה
35[35] If, therefore, the understanding which fancies itself and not God to be the cause of all that comes into existence die, that is, shrink into inactivity, blood-guiltiness does not pertain to it; it has not gone the full length of abolishing the living doctrine which ascribes to God the totality of powers. But if the sun shall have risen, that is the mind that shines so brilliantly in us, and shall have conceived the notion that it discerns all things, and decides all things, and that nothing ever escapes it, he is guilty, he shall die in requital for the living doctrine which he destroyed, which acknowledges God as the sole Cause. For he is found futile and dead indeed in himself; he has come forward as the author of a lifeless, mortal, and erroneous doctrine.
ל״ו
36[36] In keeping with this the sacred word pronounces a curse on one setting up in secret a graven or molten image, the work of the hands of the craftsman (Deut. 27:15). For why, O mind, dost thou hoard and treasure in thyself those wrong opinions, that God is as the graven images are, of this or that kind, God the Being that is without kind, and that He the incorruptible is, as the molten images are, corruptible? Why dost thou not rather bring them forth into the open, to the end that thou mayest be taught the things which it behoves thee to learn from those who study the truth? For thou fanciest thyself one versed in science because thou hast conned over methods of persuasion unworthy of an educated man, wherewith to combat the truth. But thy science proves itself no science, in that thou refusest to submit to healing treatment of thy soul’s sore malady of ignorance.
ל״ז
37[37] That the bad man sinks down into his own incoherent mind as he strives to avoid Him that is, we shall learn from Moses who “smote the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exod. 2:12). This means that he took full account of the man who maintains that the things of the body have the pre-eminence and holds the things of the soul to be naught, and regards pleasures as the end and aim of life.
ל״ח
38[38] For having noted the toil imposed by the king of Egypt on him who sees God—and the king is wickedness whose lead the passions follow—he sees the Egyptian man, that is, human and perishable passion, beating and outrageously treating the seeing one; and having looked round upon the whole soul in this direction and in that, and seen no one standing, save God who IS, but all other things tossing in wild confusion, after smiting and thoroughly reckoning up the lover of pleasure, he hides him in his mind, which is a congeries of disconnected grains, devoid of cohesion and union with the beautiful and noble. So this man has been hidden away in himself.
ל״ט
39[39] But the man of a character the reverse of his flies indeed from himself but takes refuge in the God of those that are.
מ׳
40And for this reason he says, “He led him forth abroad and said, Look up to heaven and count the stars” (Gen. 15:5). These we would fain take in in one all-encompassing view, being insatiable in our love of virtue, but we are powerless to take the measure of the riches of God.
מ״א
41[40] Yet thanks be to the Lover of Giving, for telling us in-this way that He has set for Himself in the soul seeds farshining, radiant, full charged with meaning, as he has set the stars in heaven. But is not “abroad” a superfluous addition to “led him forth”? For who is ever led forth within? But it may be that this is what he means; He led him forth to outermost space, not just to one of the outside spaces, one that can be encompassed by others. For just as in our houses the women’s apartments have the men’s quarters outside them and the passage inside them, and the courtyard door is outside the court but inside the gateway, even so, in the case of the soul too, that which is outside one part can be inside another part.
מ״ב
42[41] We must take what he says in this way; He led forth the mind to the outermost bound. For what advantage would it have been for it to leave the body behind and take refuge in sense-perception? What gain in renouncing sense-perception and taking shelter under the uttered word? For it behoves the mind that would be led forth and let go free to withdraw itself from the influence of everything, the needs of the body, the organs of sense, specious arguments, the plausibilities of rhetoric, last of all itself.
מ״ג
43[42] For this reason he glories elsewhere saying “The Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, who took me out of my father’s house” (Gen. 24:7); for it is not possible that he whose abode is in the body and the mortal race should attain to being with God; this is possible only for him whom God rescues out of the prison.
מ״ד
44[43] For this reason Isaac also, the soul’s gladness, when he meditates and is alone with God, goes forth, quitting himself and his own mind; for it says, “Isaac went forth into the plain to meditate as evening was drawing near” (Gen. 24:63). Yes, and Moses, the word of prophecy, says, “When I go forth out of the city,” the soul to wit (for this too is the city of the living being giving him laws and customs), “I will spread out my hands” (Exod. 9:29), and I will spread open and unfold all my doings to God, calling Him to be witness and overseer of each one of them, from whom evil cannot hide itself, but is forced to remove all disguises and be plainly seen.
מ״ה
45[44] When the soul in all utterances and all actions has attained to perfect sincerity and godlikeness, the voices of the senses cease and all those abominable sounds that used to vex it. For the visible calls and summons the sense of sight to itself, and the voice calls the sense of hearing, and the perfume that of smell, and all round the object of sense invites the sense to itself. But all these ceases when the mind goes forth from the city of the soul and finds in God the spring and aim of its own doings and intents.
מ״ו
46[45] For truly are “the hands of Moses heavy” (Exod, 17:12); for inasmuch as the bad man’s doings are light and windy, those of the wise man will be weighty and immovable and not easily shaken. Accordingly they are steadied by Aaron, the Word, and Hor, which is “Light”; and life has no clearer light than truth. The prophet’s aim therefore is to show thee by means of symbols that the doings of the wise man are upheld by the most essential of all things, the Word and Truth. And so, when Aaron dies, that is, when he is made perfect, he goes up into Hor, which is “Light” (Numb. 20:25); for the end of the Word is Truth, which casts a beam more far-reaching than light. To this it is the earnest endeavour of the Word to attain.
מ״ז
47[46] Mark you not, that when he had received from God (Exod. 33:7) the Tent, namely, wisdom, in which the wise man tabernacles and dwells, he fixed and made it fast and strongly established it, not in the body, but outside it? For to represent the body he uses the figure of a camp, the quarters of an army full of wars and all the evils that war produces, a place that has no part in peace. “And it was called ‘the tent of testimony,’ ” wisdom testified to by God. Yes, for “everyone that sought the Lord went out to it.” Right finely is this said.
מ״ח
48[47] For if thou art seeking God, O mind, go out from thyself and seek diligently; but if thou remainest amid the heavy encumbrances of the body or the self-conceits with which the understanding is familiar, though thou mayest have the semblance of a seeker, not thine is the quest for the things of God. But whether thou wilt find God when thou seekest is uncertain, for to many He has not manifested Himself, but their zeal has been without success all along. And yet the mere seeking by itself is sufficient to make us partakers of good things, for it always is the case that endeavours after noble things, even if they fail to attain their object, gladden in their very course those who make them.
מ״ט
49[48] Thus it is that while the bad man, who shuns virtue and hides himself from God, takes refuge in his own mind, a sorry resource, the good man, on the other hand, who runs away from himself, returns to the apprehension of the One, thus winning a noble race and proving victor in this grandest of all contests.
נ׳
50[49] “And the Lord God called Adam and said to him, ‘Where art thou?’ ” (Gen. 3:9). Why is Adam alone called, his wife having hid herself with him? Well, first of all we must say, that the mind is called even there where it was, when it receives reproof and a check is given to its defection. But not only is the mind itself called, but all its faculties as well, for without its faculties the mind by itself is found naked and not even existent; and one of the faculties is sense-perception, the which is woman.
נ״א
51[50] Included then in the call of Adam, the mind, is that of sense-perception, the woman; but God does not call her with a special call; why? because, being irrational, she has no capacity derived from herself to receive reproof. For neither sight nor hearing nor any of the senses is susceptible of instruction, so that it cannot perform the act of apprehending subjects. But He who made sense-perception made it capable of distinguishing between material forms only: but the mind it is that receives instruction, and that is why He challenged it but not sense-perception.
נ״ב
52[51] The words ποῦ εἶ, “Where art thou?” can be accounted for in many different ways, first as not being interrogative but declarative, as equivalent to “thou art in a place,” ποὺ receiving the grave accent. For whereas thou thoughtest that God walked in the garden and was contained by it, learn that there was something amiss with thee in thinking this, and listen to a most true utterance from the mouth of God who knoweth, to the effect that God is not somewhere (for He is not contained but contains the universe), but that which came into being is in a place, for it must of necessity be contained but not contain.
נ״ג
53[52] A second account is this: What is said is equivalent to “Where hast thou arrived, O soul?” In the place of how great goods, what evils hast thou chosen for thyself? When God had invited thee to participate in virtue, art thou going after wickedness, and when He had provided for thy enjoyment the tree of life, that is of wisdom, whereby thou shouldst have power to live, didst thou gorge thyself with ignorance and corruption, preferring misery the soul’s death to happiness the real life?
נ״ד
54[53] Thirdly, there is the interrogative sense, to which two answers might be made. One answer to the question, “Where art thou?” is “Nowhere,” for the soul of the bad man has no place where to find footing or upon which to settle. Owing to this the bad man is said to be “placeless”—“placeless” is used of an evil that defies placing (in any known category). Such is the man that is not good, always restless and unstable, drifting this way and that like a chopping wind, attaching himself absolutely to no fixed principle whatever.
נ״ה
55[54] A second answer might be given to this effect. Adam in fact gave it. “Hear where I am; where those are who are incapable of seeing God; where those are who do not listen to God; where those are who hide themselves from the Author of all things; where are those that shun virtue, where are the destitute of wisdom, where those are who owing to unmanliness and cowardice of soul live in fear and trembling. For when Adam says, “I heard Thy voice in the garden and was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself” (Gen. 3:10), he discovers all the traits just enumerated, as I have fully shown in former sections.
נ״ו
56[55] Nevertheless Adam is not naked now: “they made for themselves girdles” are the words that occur a little further back. Even by this it is the prophet’s wish to teach thee, that he understands by nakedness not that of the body, but that by which the mind is found unprovided and unclothed with virtue.
נ״ז
57[56] “The woman,” he says, “whom Thou gavest with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). It is well his not saying, “the woman whom Thou gavest to me,” but “with me”; for Thou gavest not sense to me as a possession, but it too Thou didst leave free and at large, in some respects not subservient to the behests of my understanding. For instance, should the mind choose to bid the sight not to see, the sight will none the less see what lies before it. The hearing again, when a sound has reached it, will assuredly give it entrance, even if the mind resolutely command it not to hear. And the sense of smell, when odours have found their way in to it, will smell them, even though the mind forbid it to welcome them.
נ״ח
58[57] Owing to this God did not give sense-perception to the living being, but with the living being. What “giving with” means is this. Sense becomes aware of all things with our mind and simultaneously with it. For instance, the visible object arrests simultaneously the attention of the sight and of the mind; for the eye caught sight of the material substance, and at once the mind took in the thing that had been seen, took in that it was black or white or yellow or red or triangular or square or round, or some other colour or shape. Again the hearing received the impression of the sound and the mind with it: in proof that it did, it immediately judged of the sound, pronouncing it weak or loud, tuneful and rhythmical, and on the other hand whether it is out of tune and a discord. We find the same thing in the case of the other senses.
נ״ט
59[58] Quite excellent is the addition of the words “she gave me of the tree.” For no one, except sense-perception, ever gives to the mind the tree with its sensibly-discerned bulk. For who gave to the mind the possibility of recognizing the body or whiteness? Did not sight? Who gave it the sound? Did not the hearing? Who the odour? Did not the sense of smell? Who the savour? Did not the taste? Who the rough and the soft? Did not the touch? Rightly and with perfect truth was it said by the mind ‘sense-perception alone gives me opportunities of apprehending bodies.’
ס׳
60[59] “And God said to the woman, ‘What is this thou hast done?’ And she said, ‘The serpent beguiled me and I ate’ ” (Gen. 3:13). God puts a question to sense-perception touching one point, she gives an answer touching another point: for God asks something about the man; she speaks not about him, but says something about herself, for her words are “I ate,” not “I gave.”
ס״א
61[60] Perhaps, then as we read the passage figuratively, we shall solve the puzzle and show that the woman gives a very pertinent answer to the question put to her. For it is a matter of necessity that when she ate, the man too should eat. For when sense-perception, meeting with the object of sense, is filled with the presentation of it, forthwith the mind also is in contact, takes hold and in a way absorbs the sustenance which it provides. This, then, is what she says: My giving it to the man was by no act of will, for even as I struck upon the object, he (so swift is he to move) received the image and impression of it himself.
ס״ב
62[61] Now observe that, whereas the man says that the woman gave, the woman says not that the serpent gave but that he beguiled; for to give is characteristic of sense-perception but to cheat and beguile of pleasure with its serpent-like subtilty. For instance, sense-perception gives to the mind that which is by its nature white and that which is black, that which is hot and that which is cold, quite truthfully and with no deception. For, in the opinion of most people who do not overdo precision in their natural philosophy, objects are such as the appearance of them which meets the eye. But pleasure does not report the object to the mind such as it is, but artfully falsifies it, representing as something advantageous that which is of no benefit at all:
ס״ג
63[62] even as it is possible to see repulsive courtesans applying pigments to their faces and painting under their eyes to conceal their ugliness. We can note also the immoderate man inclined to gluttony: this man welcomes as a good thing the abundance of strong drink and the well-spread board, though taking harm from them both in body and soul.
ס״ד
64[63] Again we may see those who are in love, often quite crazy over women most hideous to behold, while pleasure beguiles them; you might almost say that she assures them of the beauty of form and colouring, the fullness and symmetry, that mark those who are characterized by traits the very reverse of these. Indeed they overlook those endowed with really faultless beauty, and pine for those whom I have mentioned.
ס״ה
65[64] All kinds of consummate deception, then, are most proper to pleasure, while giving is the characteristic of sense-perception: pleasure outwits and misleads the mind, showing objects not as they are, but as they are not, whereas sense-perception simply gives the material forms just as nature has made them, without trickery or counterfeit.
ס״ו
66[65] “And the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou from among all cattle and from among all the beasts of the earth. Upon thy breast and thy belly shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. He shall watch for thy head, and thou shalt watch for his heel” (Gen. 3:14 f.). For what reason does He curse the serpent without giving it the opportunity to defend itself, though elsewhere, as seems reasonable, He commands that “the two parties between whom the dispute is should stand forth” (Deut. 19:17) and that credit be not given to the one till the other be heard?
ס״ז
67[66] Yet you see, no doubt, that He did not thus give credit to Adam, and prejudge the case against the woman, but gives her opportunity to defend herself, when He inquires “What is this that thou hast done?” (Gen. 3:13), and she acknowledges that she failed owing to the deception practised on her by subtle serpent-like pleasure. When, then, the woman said “the serpent beguiled me,” what was there to prevent His inquiring here too from the serpent, whether he beguiled her, instead of prejudging the case and pronouncing the curse without listening to any defence?
ס״ח
68[67] We have to say, then, that sense-perception comes under the head neither of bad nor of good things, but is an intermediate thing common to a wise man and a fool, and when it finds itself in a fool it proves bad, when in a sensible man, good. Reasonably then, since it has no evil nature on its own account, but halts between good and evil, inclining to either side, it is not pronounced guilty till it has owned that it followed evil.
ס״ט
69[68] But the serpent, pleasure, is bad of itself; and therefore it is not found at all in a good man, the bad man getting all the harm of it by himself. Quite appropriately therefore does God pronounce the curse without giving pleasure an opportunity of defending herself, since she has in her no seed from which virtue might spring, but is always and everywhere guilty and foul.
ע׳
70[69] For this reason in the case of Er also God knows him to be wicked and puts him to death without bringing an open charge against him (Gen. 38:7). For He is well aware that the body, our “leathern” bulk (“leathern” is the meaning of “Er”), is wicked and a plotter against the soul, and is even a corpse and a dead thing. For you must make up your mind that we are each of us nothing but corpse-bearers, the soul raising up and carrying without toil the body which of itself is a corpse. And note, if you will, how strong the soul is.
ע״א
71[70] The most muscular athlete would not have strength to carry his own statue for a short time, but the soul, sometimes for as long as a hundred years, easily carries the statue of the human being without getting tired; for it is not now (at the last) that God slays Er; nay, but the body which He made and which Er represents was a corpse to begin with.
ע״ב
72[71] By nature, as I have said, it is wicked and a plotter against the soul, but it is not evident to all that it is so, but to God alone and to anyone who is dear to God; for we read “Er was wicked in the sight of the Lord.” For when the mind soars aloft and is being initiated in the mysteries of the Lord, it judges the body to be wicked and hostile; but when it has abandoned the investigation of things divine, it deems it friendly to itself, its kinsman and brother. The proof of this is that it takes refuge in what is dear to the body.
ע״ג
73[72] On this account there is a difference between the soul of an athlete and the soul of a philosopher. For the athlete refers everything to the well-being of the body, and, lover of the body that he is, would sacrifice the soul itself on its behalf; but the philosopher being enamoured of the noble thing that lives in himself, cares for the soul, and pays no regard to that which is really a corpse, the body, concerned only that the best part of him, his soul, may not be hurt by an evil thing, a very corpse, tied to it.
ע״ד
74[73] You see that Er is slain not by the Lord, but by God. For it is not as Ruler and Governor employing the absolute power of sovereignty that He destroys the body, but in the exercise of goodness and kindness. For “God” is the name of the goodness pertaining to the First Cause, and is so used that thou mayest know that He hath made the inanimate things also not by exercising authority but goodness, even as by goodness He hath made the living creatures. For it was necessary with a view to the clear manifestation of the superior beings that there should be in existence an inferior creation also, due to the same power, even the goodness of the First Cause. And that goodness is God.
ע״ה
75[74] When, then, O soul, wilt thou in fullest measure realize thyself to be a corpse-bearer? Will it not be when thou art perfected, and accounted worthy of prizes and crowns? For then shalt thou be no lover of the body, but a lover of God. And thou shalt win the rewards if Judah’s daughter-in-law become thy wife, even Tamar, which means a palm-tree, the sign of victory. Here is a proof of it. When Er has married her, he is immediately found to be wicked and slain. For we read, “And Judah took for Er his firstborn a wife whose name was Tamar” (Gen. 38:6), and the next words are, “And Er was wicked before the Lord, and God slew him” (ibid. 7). For when the mind has carried off the rewards of victory, it condemns the corpse-body to death.
ע״ו
76[75] Thou seest that God both curses the serpent without allowing him to defend himself—for he is pleasure—and slays Er without bringing an open charge against him; for he is the body. And if thou wilt consider, my friend, thou wilt find that God has made in the soul some natures faulty and blameworthy of themselves, and others in all respects excellent and praiseworthy, just as is the case with plants and animals.
ע״ז
77[76] Seest thou not that among the plants the Creator has made some repaying cultivation and useful and wholesome, and others wild and injurious and productive of disease and destruction, and the same with animals? As, doubtless, He has made the serpent, our present subject, for the creature is of itself destructive of health and life. What a serpent does to a man, that pleasure does to the soul, and therefore the serpent was taken to represent pleasure.
ע״ח
78[77] Exactly, then, as God has conceived a hatred for pleasure and the body without giving reasons, so too has he promoted goodly natures apart from any manifest reason, pronouncing no action of theirs acceptable before bestowing his praises upon them. For should anyone ask why the prophet says that Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord God (Gen. 6:8) when as yet he had, so far as our knowledge goes, done no fair deed, we shall give a suitable answer to the effect that he is shown to be of an excellent nature from his birth, for Noah means “rest” or “righteous.” But it cannot but be that he who rests from sinful and unrighteous acts and rests upon what is noble and lives in fellowship with righteousness, should find favour with God.
ע״ט
79[78] Now finding favour is not as some suppose equivalent only to being well-pleasing, but something of this kind besides. The righteous man exploring the nature of existences makes a surprising find, in this one discovery, that all things are a grace of God, and that creation has no gift of grace to bestow, for neither has it any possession, since all things are God’s possession, and for this reason grace too belongs to Him alone as a thing that is His very own. Thus to those who ask what the origin of creation is the right answer would be, that it is the goodness and grace of God, which He bestowed on the race that stands next after Him. For all things in the world and the world itself is a free gift and act of kindness and grace on God’s part.
פ׳
80[79] Melchizedek, too, has God made both king of peace, for that is the meaning of “Salem,” and His own priest (Gen. 14:18). He has not fashioned beforehand any deed of his, but produces him to begin with as such a king, peaceable and worthy of His own priesthood. For he is entitled “the righteous king,” and a “king” is a thing at enmity with a despot, the one being the author of laws, the other of lawlessness.
פ״א
81[80] So mind, the despot, decrees for both soul and body harsh and hurtful decrees working grievous woes, conduct, I mean, such as wickedness prompts, and free indulgence of the passions. But the king in the first place resorts to persuasion rather than decrees, and in the next place issues directions such as to enable a vessel, the living being I mean, to make life’s voyage successfully, piloted by the good pilot, who is right principle.
פ״ב
82[81] Let the despot’s title therefore be ruler of war, the king’s prince of peace, of Salem, and let him offer to the soul food full of joy and gladness; for he brings bread and wine, things which Ammonites and Moabites refused to supply to the seeing one, on which account they are excluded from the divine congregation and assembly. These characters, Ammonites deriving their nature from sense-perception their mother, and Moabites deriving theirs from mind their father, who hold that all things owe their coherence to these two things, mind and sense-perception, and take no thought of God, “shall not enter,” saith Moses, “into the congregation of the Lord, because they did not meet us with bread and water” (Deut. 23:3 f.) when we came out from the passions of Egypt.
פ״ג
83[82] But let Melchizedek instead of water offer wine, and give to souls strong drink, that they may be seized by a divine intoxication, more sober than sobriety itself. For he is a priest, even Reason, having as his portion Him that is, and all his thoughts of God are high and vast and sublime: for he is priest of the Most High (Gen. 14:18), not that there is any other not Most High—for God being One “is in heaven above and on earth beneath, and there is none beside Him” (Deut. 4:39)—but to conceive of God not in low earthbound ways but in lofty terms, such as transcend all other greatness and all else that is free from matter, calls up in us a picture of the Most High.
פ״ד
84[83] What good thing had Abram already done, that he bids him estrange himself from fatherland and kindred there and dwell in whatever land God Himself may give him? (Gen. 12:1). And that is a city good and large and very prosperous, for great and precious are God’s gifts. But this character also did God create in such a shape as to merit esteem, for “Abram” means “father high-soaring,” and both epithets are grounds for praise.
פ״ה
85[84] For when the mind does not, like a master, frighten the soul with threats, but governs it as a father, not granting it the things that are pleasant to it, but giving it even against its will the things that are good for it; when, in all matters turning away from what is base and from all that draws it to things mortal, it soars aloft and spends its time in contemplation of the universe and its different parts; when, mounting yet higher, it explores the Deity and His nature, urged by an ineffable love of knowledge; it cannot continue to entertain the principles it imbibed originally, but in its desire to improve itself seeks to change its abode for a better one.
פ״ו
86[85] Some even before their birth God endows with a goodly form and equipment, and has determined that they shall have a most excellent portion. Dost thou not see what He says concerning Isaac to Abraham when unable to trust that he shall ever become the father of such an offspring, nay when he actually laughed at the promise and said, “Shall it come to pass to him that is a hundred years old, and shall Sarah who is ninety years old bear a child?” (Gen. 17:17). He ratifies and confirms it saying, “Yes, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son and thou shalt call his name Isaac, and I will establish My covenant with Him for an everlasting covenant” (ibid. 19).
פ״ז
87[86] What is it, then, that has made this one too to be praised before his birth? Some good things benefit us when they have reached us and are present, as health, excellence of bodily senses, wealth perhaps, fame—for even these may be loosely called “good things”;—some again not only when they have come, but when their coming has been foretold. For instance joy, a happy condition of the soul, gladdens not only when it is present and in active operation, but, when still an object of hope, brings an anticipatory brightness. For here again is a peculiar advantage which it possesses. While other good things take effect in virtue of their own particular goodness only, joy is both a particular and a general good. See how it comes to add to and enrich them all. We rejoice over health, and over liberty, and over honour, and over the other good things, so that we say with literal truth that nothing is good unless joy be attached to it.
פ״ח
88[87] But we rejoice over the other good things not only when they have already come about beforehand and are present, but also when they are looked for in the future, as when we hope that we shall grow rich, or shall obtain office, or shall win praise, or shall discover a way of getting rid of disease, or shall obtain our share of health and strength, or shall be no longer ignorant, but men of knowledge, we are glad in no small measure. Seeing then, that joy, not only when present but when hoped for, causes the soul to overflow with gladness, God fitly held Isaac, even before he was begotten, worthy of his great name and therein of a vast endowment: for “Isaac” means laughter of soul and joy and gladness.
פ״ט
89[88] Once again, of Jacob and Esau, when still in the womb, God declares that the one is a ruler and leader and master, but that Esau is a subject and a slave. For God the Maker of living beings knoweth well the different pieces of his own handiwork, even before He has thoroughly chiselled and consummated them, and the faculties which they are to display at a later time, in a word their deeds and experiences. And so when Rebecca, the soul that waits on God, goes to inquire of God, He tells her in reply, “Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be separated from thy belly, and one people shall be above the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23).
צ׳
90[89] For in God’s judgement that which is base and irrational is by nature a slave, but that which is of fine character and endowed with reason and better is princely and free. And this not only when either is full-grown in soul, but even if their development is still uncertain. For it is universally the case that even a slight breath of virtue is an evidence not of liberty merely but of leadership and sovereignty, and on the other hand that the most casual beginning of wickedness enslaves the reasoning faculty, even if its offspring have not yet come forth fully developed.
צ״א
91[90] What led this same Jacob, when Joseph brought to him his two sons, the elder Manasseh and the younger Ephraim, to cross his hands and place his right hand on Ephraim the younger son and his left hand on Manasseh the elder; and when Joseph was distressed by it and imagined that his father had made an unintentional mistake in so placing his hands, to say it was no error, but “I know, my child, I know, this one too shall be a people, this one too shall be exalted, but his younger brother shall be greater than he”? (Gen. 48:19).
צ״ב
92[91] What, then, does it behove us to say but this, that two exceedingly necessary faculties were created in the soul by God, memory, and recollection? Of these memory is the better, recollection the inferior. For while the former keeps everything that it has apprehended fresh and distinct, so as to go wrong in nothing owing to ignorance, recollection is in all cases preceded by forgetfulness, a maimed and blind affair.
צ״ג
93[92] But the inferior of these, recollection, is discovered to be older than the superior one, memory: [while recollection has many gaps of forgetfulness, memory is] unbroken and uninterrupted. For when we are being first introduced to the various arts we are unable at once to master their principles; so finding ourselves liable to forgetfulness at the outset, we afterwards recollect, until as the result of repeated forgetting and repeated recollecting an unfailing memory shall subsequently win the day. Accordingly memory, being late-born, is formed as recollection’s younger sister.
צ״ד
94[93] So then Ephraim is the figurative name of Memory, meaning “fruit-bearing,” for the soul of the student has borne its proper fruit when it is able by means of memory to hold securely the principles of the art that is being learned. Manasseh, however, represents recollection, for the name is said to mean “out of forgetfulness” when translated, and he who escapes from forgetfulness necessarily recollects. Most rightly, therefore, does Jacob, the overthrower of the passions and the trained seeker of virtue, lay his right hand on Ephraim as fruitful memory, and count Manasseh, who is recollection, worthy of the second place.
צ״ה
95[94] Moses also, to take another case, awards special praise among the sacrificers of the Passover to those who sacrificed the first time, because when they had separated themselves from the passions of Egypt by crossing the Red Sea they kept to that crossing and no more hankered after them, but to those who sacrificed the second time he assigns the second place, for after turning they retraced the wrong steps they had taken and as though they had forgotten their duties they set out again to perform them, while the earlier sacrificers held on without turning. So Manasseh, who comes “out of forgetfulness,” corresponds to those who offer the second Passover, the fruit-bearing Ephraim to those who offer the earlier one.
צ״ו
96[95] This, moreover, is the reason of God’s proclaiming Bezalel by name, and saying that He has given him wisdom and knowledge, and that He will appoint him artificer and chief craftsman of all the works of the Tabernacle, that is of the soul (Exod. 31:2 ff.), though He has so far pointed to no work or deed of Bezalel’s, such as to win him even commendation. We must say, then, that here too we have a form which God has stamped on the soul as on the tested coin. What, then, the image impressed on it is we shall know if we first ascertain accurately the meaning of the name.
צ״ז
97[96] Bezalel means, then, “in the shadow of God”; but God’s shadow is His Word, which he made use of like an instrument, and so made the world. But this shadow, and what we may describe as the representation, is the archetype for further creations. For just as God is the Pattern of the Image, to which the title of Shadow has just been given, even so the Image becomes the pattern of other beings, as the prophet made clear at the very outset of the Law-giving by saying, “And God made the man after the Image of God” (Gen. 1:27), implying that the Image had been made such as representing God, but that the man was made after the Image when it had acquired the force of a pattern.
צ״ח
98[97] Let us observe therefore what the character impressed is. The first men sought to find how we came to conceive of the Deity. Next those whose philosophy was reputed the best declared that it was from the world and its constituent parts and the forces subsisting in these that we gained our apprehension of the First Cause.
צ״ט
99[98] Should a man see a house carefully constructed with a gateway, colonnades, men’s quarters, women’s quarters, and the other buildings, he will get an idea of the artificer, for he will be of opinion that the house never reached that completeness without the skill of the craftsman;
ק׳
100[99] and in like manner in the case of a city and a ship and every smaller or greater construction. Just so anyone entering this world, as it were some vast house or city, and beholding the sky circling round and embracing within it all things, and planets and fixed stars without any variation moving in rhythmical harmony and with advantage to the whole, and earth with the central space assigned to it, water and air flowing in set order as its boundary, and over and above these, living creatures, mortal and immortal beings, plants and fruits in great variety, he will surely argue that these have not been wrought without consummate art, but that the Maker of this whole universe was and is God. Those, who thus base their reasoning on what is before their eyes, apprehend God by means of a shadow cast, discerning the Artificer by means of His works.
ק״א
101[100] There is a mind more perfect and more thoroughly cleansed, which has undergone initiation into the great mysteries, a mind which gains its knowledge of the First Cause not from created things, as one may learn the substance from the shadow, but lifting its eyes above and beyond creation obtains a clear vision of the uncreated One, so as from Him to apprehend both Himself and His shadow. To apprehend that was, we saw, to apprehend both the Word and this world.
ק״ב
102[101] The mind of which I speak is Moses who says, “Manifest Thyself to me, let me see Thee that I may know Thee” (Exod. 33:13); ‘for I would not that Thou shouldst be manifested to me by means of heaven or earth or water or air or any created thing at all, nor would I find the reflection of Thy being in aught else than in Thee Who art God, for the reflections in created things are dissolved, but those in the Uncreate will continue abiding and sure and eternal.’ This is why God hath expressly called Moses and why He spake to Him.
ק״ג
103[102] Bezalel also He hath expressly called, but not in like manner. One receives the clear vision of God directly from the First Cause Himself. The other discerns the Artificer, as it were from a shadow, from created things by virtue of a process of reasoning. Hence you will find the Tabernacle and all its furniture made in the first instance by Moses but afterwards by Bezalel, for Moses is the artificer of the archetypes, and Bezalel of the copies of these. For Moses has God for Instructor, as He says “thou shalt make all things according to the pattern that was shown to thee in the mount” (Exod. 25:40),
ק״ד
104[103] but Bezalel is instructed by Moses. And all this is just as we should expect. For on the occasion likewise of the rebellion of Aaron, Speech, and Miriam, Perception, they are expressly told “If a prophet be raised up unto the Lord, God shall be known unto him in a vision” and in a shadow, not manifestly; but with Moses, the man who is “faithful in all His house, He will speak mouth to mouth in manifest form and not through dark speeches” (Numb. 12:6–8).
ק״ה
105[104] Seeing then that we have found two natures created, undergoing moulding, and chiselled into full relief by God’s hands, the one essentially hurtful, blameworthy, and accursed, the other beneficial and praiseworthy, stamped the one with a counterfeit, the other with a genuine impression, let us offer a noble and suitable prayer, which Moses offered before us, “that God may open to us His own treasury” (Deut. 28:12) and that sublime reason pregnant with divine illumination, to which He has given the title of “heaven”; and that He may close up the treasuries of evil things.
ק״ו
106[105] For there are with God treasuries as of good things so also of evil things, as He saith in the great Song, “Are not these laid up in store with Me, sealed up in My treasuries in the day of vengeance, when their foot shall have slipped?” (Deut. 32:34 f.). You see that there are treasuries of evil things. And the treasury of good things is one, for since God is One, there is likewise one treasury of good things. But of evil things there are many treasuries, for countless too are those that sin. But here too observe the goodness of Him who IS. The treasury of good things He opens, those of evil things He closes. For it is God’s property to hold out good things and to be beforehand in bestowing them, but to be slow to inflict evil things.
ק״ז
107[106] But Moses, magnifying God’s love of giving gifts and granting favours, says that the treasuries of evil things are sealed up not only at other times, but also when the soul fails to direct its steps in keeping with the right principle; and yet then it might justly have been deemed worthy of punishment. For he says that the treasuries of evil things were sealed in the day of vengeance, the sacred word thus showing that not even against those who sin will God proceed at once, but gives time for repentance and for the healing and setting on his feet again of him who had slipped.
ק״ח
108[107] “And the Lord God said to the serpent, Cursed art thou from among all cattle and from among all the beasts of the earth” (Gen. 3:14). Just as joy, being a good condition of soul, deserves prayer, so pleasure, the passion par excellence, deserves cursing; it shifts the standards of the soul and renders it a lover of passion instead of a lover of virtue:—“Accursed,” says Moses in the Curses, “is he who removes his neighbour’s landmarks” (Deut. 27:17):—for God set as a landmark and law for the soul virtue, the tree of life. This is removed by the man who has fixed as landmark in its stead wickedness, the tree of death.
ק״ט
109[108] “Cursed again is he who causes a blind man to go astray in the way” (Deut. 27:18), “and he that smiteth his neighbour craftily” (ibid. 24). And these also are acts of pleasure, the utterly godless one; for sense by itself is a blind thing, inasmuch as it is irrational, for it is the reasoning faculty that confers sight. Accordingly it is with the reason only that we apprehend matters; sense does not carry us so far; for by means of sense we gain impressions only of the material forms of things.
ק״י
110[109] Pleasure, then, has cheated poor maimed sense of the power of apprehending matters, inasmuch as, when it could have had recourse to mind and have secured it for its charioteer, it has prevented it, leading it to what can be perceived externally only, and by giving it a craving for that which produces pleasure, to the end that sense, being a maimed thing, may follow a blind guide, namely that which sense can perceive, and that the mind, led by this pair of blind guides, may be brought to the ground and robbed of self-control.
קי״א
111[110] For if there had been any correspondence with what nature prescribes, it would have been incumbent upon the maimed faculties to follow the reasoning faculty which has eyes, for in this way the damage incurred would have been diminished. As it is, pleasure has organized such a shrewd device against the soul, that it has compelled it to employ blind guides, inducing it by delusive wiles to change virtue for evil things, and to surrender its innocence and receive wickedness in lieu of it.
קי״ב
112Such an exchange too is forbidden by the holy word, when it says, “Thou shalt not change good with evil” (Lev. 27:33).
קי״ג
113[111] Accursed on these grounds is pleasure. Let us see how appropriate the curses are which He pronounces upon it. He says that it is cursed from all cattle (Gen. 3:14). Our irrational faculty of sense-perception, then, is of the cattle kind, and each of our senses curses pleasure as a most deadly enemy: for it is in very deed hostile to sense, as is proved by the fact that, when we have glutted ourselves with immoderate pleasure, we cannot see nor hear nor smell nor taste nor feel with clearness, but our contact with objects of sense is dim and feeble.
קי״ד
114[112] This is what we experience when we have ceased from indulging in pleasure; but when we are in the very midst of the enjoyments it affords, we find ourselves utterly deprived of the support that we obtain through the co-operation of the senses, to such an extent that we seem to have been maimed. How, then, should not sense rightly lay curses on pleasure that maims it?
קי״ה
115[113] It is cursed also beyond all the wild beasts. By these I mean the passions of the soul, for by these the mind is wounded and destroyed, Why, then, is it accounted worse than the other passions? Because it is, we may say, at the bottom of them all, like a kind of starting-point and foundation. Lust comes into play through love of pleasure; pain arises as pleasure is withdrawn; fear again is engendered owing to a dread of being without pleasure. It is clear, then, that all the passions depend on pleasure, and these would perchance never have taken shape at all, if first there had not been deposited that which is productive of them, pleasure.
קי״ו
116[114] “On thy breast and belly shalt thou go” (Gen. 3:14). For passion has its lair in these parts of the body, the breast and the belly. When pleasure has the materials it needs to produce it, it haunts the belly and the parts below it. But when it is at a loss for these materials, it occupies the breast where wrath is; for lovers of pleasure when deprived of their pleasures grow bitter and angry.
קי״ז
117[115] Let us look still more carefully at the thing signified. Our soul consists of three parts, and has one part given to reasoning, a second to high spirit, a third to desire. Some philosophers have distinguished these parts from each other in regard to function, some in regard also to the places which they occupy. These have gone on to assign to the reasoning part the region of the head, saying that, where the king is, there are also his bodyguards, and that the senses which are in the region of the head are bodyguards of the mind, and that it follows that the king must be there too, having had it allotted to him, like a castle in a city, for his dwelling. To the spirited part they assign the breast, pointing out that nature has given that part firmness by means of a strong and solid array of continuous bones, as though she were arming a good soldier with shield and breastplate for defence against opponents. To the lustful portion of the soul they assign the quarter about the abdomen and the belly, for there it is that lust, irrational craving, has its abode.
קי״ח
118[116] If, therefore, O mind, thou art ever inquiring what quarter pleasure has for her portion, do not consider the place occupied by the head, where the reasoning faculty resides, for thou wilt assuredly not find it there, since reason is at war with passion, and cannot remain in the same place with it. For when reason prevails pleasure is gone, and when pleasure conquers, reason is an exile. But look for it in the breast and belly, where high spirit and desire are, portions of the irrational: for in the irrational is to be found alike our faculty of choice and the passions.
קי״ט
119[117] Well, there is nothing to prevent the mind from going out from the purely intellectual interests which are proper to it and giving itself up to its inferior. This happens when war prevails in the soul; for then reason, that is in us not as a combative but as a peaceful inmate, cannot fail to become a prisoner of war.
ק״כ
120[118] For look now: the Sacred Word knowing how strong is the impulse of either passion, of both high spirit and lust, puts a curb on each of them, by setting over them reason as a charioteer and pilot. And in the first place this is how it discourses concerning high spirit, aiming at curing and healing it:
קכ״א
121[119] “And thou shalt put on to the oracle of the judgements the Showing and the Truth, and it shall be upon Aaron’s breast, whenever he enters into the Holy Place before the Lord” (Exod. 28:30). The “oracle,” then, is in us the organ of speech, which is the uttered word:
קכ״ב
122[120] and this may either be rejected as spoken at random or may be approved as well-judged: but the sacred writer is leading us to think of the word spoken with judgement and discernment; for he tells us that the oracle is not the untested or counterfeit one, but “the oracle of the judgements,” an expression tantamount to “well tested and examined.” To this approved word he says that the two virtues belong, the highest possible, clearness and truthfulness. Quite rightly does he say so. For reason at the outset fell short of making matters clear and evident to another, since we have no power to exhibit the affection called out in the soul by external things nor to convey an idea of its character.
קכ״ג
123Wherefore we were compelled to resort to signs given by means of the voice, nouns and verbs, which cannot fail to be intelligible, that the other may get a clear and unmistakable idea of our meaning. (This was reason’s first inadequacy.) In the second place, it was inadequate to report things truly.
קכ״ד
124[121] For what is the good of giving a clear and distinct expression, if it be in other respects false? For under these circumstances the hearer must needs be deceived and incur a very great misfortune, being not merely ignorant but ill-taught into the bargain. For what if, pointing to the letter alpha I say to the boy clearly and distinctly that it is gamma, or to eta and tell him that it is omega? Or what if the music-master tells the beginner as he points to the enharmonic genus that it is the chromatic, or says of the chromatic that it is the diatonic, or of the note on the highest string that it is the central, or of the conjunct that it is the disjunct tetrachord, or of the highest tone in the tetrachord scale that it is the lowest?
קכ״ה
125[122] He will speak clearly and distinctly, it may be, but not truly. But in this way he will be a doer of evil—of the evil that belongs to speech. But when he attains both of these requisites, both clearness and truthfulness, he will render the word beneficial to the pupil, bringing into play its two virtues, perhaps the only virtues indeed which it possesses.
קכ״ו
126[123] It says, then, that the tested word, having the virtues which are peculiarly its own, was enthroned upon the breast (Aaron’s namely), that is, upon the spirited element, that this might first of all be guided by reason, and not injured by its own irrationality; in the next place by clearness, for it is not the nature of anger to be a friend of clearness. Do we not see in those who are enraged how not their understanding only but their words also are full of disturbance and confusion? It was appropriate therefore that anger’s lack of clearness should be set right again by clearness.
קכ״ז
127[124] It must be guided in the third place by truthfulness, for together with its other faults anger has this one also as peculiarly its own, that of lying. As a matter of experience, of those who give way to this passion, hardly one speaks the truth. They are victims of an intoxication not of body but of soul. These are antidotes for the region of anger; reason, clearness of speech, truth of speech. For the three are virtually one, since reason, accompanied by the two virtues of truthfulness and distinctness, acts as a healer of anger, that sore sickness of the soul.
קכ״ח
128[125] To whom, then, does it pertain to bear these? Not to my understanding or to that of any chance comer, but to that which exercises its priesthood and offers sacrifices in purity, that of Aaron, and not even to this always, for many a time it turns and fails, but when it continues free from turning, when it enters into the Holy Place, when the reasoning faculty enters in together with holy resolves and does not abandon these.
קכ״ט
129[126] But full often does the mind enter with these into sacred and holy and purified opinions, but these are mere human opinions, as for instance those concerning simple duties, those concerning high-standard actions, those concerning usages resting on human enactment, those concerning virtue conforming to human standards. Not even he who is in such case as this is sufficient to bear the oracle upon his breast with the virtues that belong to it, but he only who goes in in the sight of the Lord, that is he who does all things for God’s sake, and overvalues none of the things that are of less importance than God, but accords to these also all they deserve, not, however, stopping at them, but mounting up in the endeavour to acquaint himself with and know and honour the One.
ק״ל
130[127] For he who is in this case will have his spirited element charioteered by purified reason, which will abolish all that is irrational in him, and by clearness, which will heal all that is uncertain and confused, and by truthfulness, which will eliminate falsehood.
קל״א
131[128] Aaron, then, being inferior to Moses who cuts the breast, that is the spirited element, clean out—suffers it not to be carried away by random impulses, for he is afraid that, if it be given the rein, it may some day get unmanageable, as a horse does, and trample down all the soul. No, he curbs and controls it, first by reason, that being driven by an excellent charioteer it may not get too restive; next he employs the virtues of speech, distinctness, and truth. For if high spirit be trained in this manner, so as to yield to reason and distinctness, and also to exercise itself in eschewing falsehood, it will not only rid itself of much ferment, but will render the whole soul gentle.
קל״ב
132[129] Well, Aaron, as I have said, having this passion, attempts to cure it by the saving medicines that have been mentioned. Moses, on the other hand, thinks it necessary to use the knife on the seat of anger in its entirety, and to cut it clean out of the soul, for no moderation of passion can satisfy him; he is content with nothing but complete absence of passion. That what I say is true Holy Writ testifies: for it says, “Moses took the breast and removed it as a crowning offering before the Lord from the ram of consecration and it became Moses’ portion” (Lev. 8:29). Very good; for it was the business of the man who loved virtue and was beloved of God, when he had contemplated the entire soul, to seize the breast, which is the spirited element, and to cut it off and take it away, in order that, through the excision of the warlike part, the remainder might have peace. He removes it, not from this or that animal, as it may happen, but from the ram of consecration, although there was a heifer offered too. But he passed this by and went to the ram, because it is a creature naturally prone to butt, owing to its being full of spirit and ready for the fray. It is owing to this that engineers make most of the engines of war in the shape of rams.
קל״ג
133[130] The part of us, then, that resembles a ram in his reckless readiness for a fight is the wrangling species; and wrangling is the mother of anger; accordingly it is those who contend most eagerly in debates and other gatherings that most easily lose their tempers. So Moses cuts out, as he needs must, anger, discordant offspring of the soul that loves wrangling and contention.
קל״ד
134[131] He does this that she may be rendered barren, and cease bearing hurtful progeny, and that that this may become a portion befitting the lover of virtue, not the breast nor the seat of high spirit, but the removal of these: for God assigned to the wise man a share of surpassing excellence, even the power to cut out the passions. You observe how the perfect man always makes perfect freedom from passion his study. But Aaron, the man who is making gradual progress, holding a lower position, practises moderation, as I have said;
קל״ה
135[132] for his power does not go so far as to enable him to cut out the breast and the high-spirited element, but he brings to it, as charioteer and guide, reason with the virtues attached to it, and this is the oracle on which is Clear-showing and Truth.
קל״ו
136[133] But he shall bring out the difference more clearly by means of the following words: “The breast of the offering put on, and the shoulder of the part removed, I have taken at the hands of the children of Israel from the sacrifices of your salvation, and have given to Aaron and his sons” (Lev. 7:34).
קל״ז
137[134] You see that these are not capable of taking the breast by itself, but must take it with the shoulder, whereas Moses takes it without the shoulder. Why is this? Because he, being perfect, has no small or petty aims, nor any desire to moderate his passions, but goes so far as to cut off all passions everywhere; while those others set out to wage war on the passions on an insignificant, not on a grand, scale, but seek to come to terms and arrange a truce with them, putting forward the word of pacification, that this like a charioteer may curb their excessive impetuosity.
קל״ח
138[135] Furthermore the shoulder is a symbol of toil and hardship; and this is the character of him who attends to and ministers in holy things, subject to toil and discipline. But the man on whom God bestows in overflowing measure his good things in perfection is free from toil. He who acquires virtue by toil is found to come short of full achievement, as compared with Moses, who received it easily and without toil from the hands of God. For, as toiling itself falls short of the toilless achievement and is inferior to it, so does the imperfect fall short of the perfect, and that which learns of that which is self-taught. This is why Aaron takes the breast with the shoulder, but Moses without the shoulder.
קל״ט
139[136] The reason why he calls it the breast of “the special offering put on” is that it is necessary that the reason should be put and set firmly on the seat of anger, as though it were a kind of charioteer keeping straight a stiff-necked and restive horse. But when he comes to the shoulder he speaks of it not as in the case of the breast, as belonging to “the offering put on,” but as belonging to “that which was removed.” The reason he does so is this. It is necessary that the soul should not ascribe to itself its toil for virtue, but that it should take it away from itself and refer it to God, confessing that not its own strength or power acquired nobility, but He who freely bestowed also the love of it.
ק״מ
140[137] Neither breast nor shoulder is taken except from the sacrifice of salvation. That is fitting. For only then does the soul begin to be saved, when the seat of anger has received reason as its charioteer, and toil has come to create in it, not self-satisfaction, but a readiness to yield the honour to God, the Bestower of the boon.
קמ״א
141[138] We have already mentioned that pleasure goes not only on its breast but also on its belly, and pointed out that the stomach is a place most appropriate to pleasure, for we may almost describe it as a reservoir of all the pleasures. For when the belly has been filled, cravings after the other pleasures also become vehement, but when it has been emptied, these are quieted and become more still.
קמ״ב
142[139] And so the prophet says in another passage, “Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever goeth all the time upon four feet, which hath many feet, is unclean” (Lev. 11:42). The lover of pleasure answers to this description, always going after the belly and the pleasures of the adjoining parts. With that which creepeth after the belly he has associated that which walketh upon four feet; and quite naturally; for the passions that come under the head of those in the realm of pleasure are four in number, as has been mentioned in a treatise specially devoted to that subject. Accordingly a man is unclean who is given up to the one thing, pleasure, as well as the man who has all four passions for his stay.
קמ״ג
143[140] Now that we have said this, note once more how a perfect man differs from one making gradual progress. We have already discovered the perfect man cutting out the seat of anger entirely from the wrangling soul, and so rendering it gentle and submissive and peaceable, and cheerfully ready to face every demand both in act and word; while the man of gradual improvement was found powerless to cut away the passion, for the breast is Aaron’s portion, but schooling it by well-tested speech, attended by two virtues, clearness and truth.
קמ״ד
144In a corresponding manner we shall now find Moses, the wise man, in his perfection, scouring away and shaking off pleasures, but the man of gradual improvement not so treating pleasure in its entirety, but welcoming simple and unavoidable pleasure, while declining that which is excessive and overelaborate in the way of delicacies.
קמ״ה
145[141] For in the case of Moses he uses this language: “And he washed with water the belly and the feet of the whole burnt-offering” (Lev. 9:14). It is excellently said; for the wise man consecrates his whole soul as being worthy to be offered to God, owing to its freedom from voluntary or involuntary blemish; and, being in this condition, he washes out and bathes away and scours off the whole belly and the pleasures that it and the parts adjoining it yield, not so dealing with some part of it, but filled with such contempt for the whole, that he rejects even necessary food and drink, being fed by the contemplation of things divine.
קמ״ו
146[142] And therefore witness is borne to him in another place also: “for forty days he ate no bread and drank no water” (Exod. 34:28), when he was in the holy mount and listened to the divine communications made by God as He declared His laws. But not only does he renounce the whole belly, but with it he scours away the feet, that is, the supports of pleasure; but the things that create pleasure are its supports,
קמ״ז
147[143] for the man of gradual improvement is said to wash the inwards and the feet (Lev. 1:9), not the whole belly: for he is not sufficient to thrust from him pleasure in its completeness, but is content if he can get rid of its inwards, that is, of the delicacies, produced by the elaborate skill of dainty cooks and confectioners, of which we are told by the epicures that they serve, if we may so speak, as a means of giving succulence to the principal pleasures.
קמ״ח
148[144] He lays further stress upon the mere moderating of passion in the man of gradual advance, by representing the wise man as declining without any bidding all the pleasures of the belly, while the man of gradual advance acts under orders; for in the wise man’s case what is said is “he washed with water the belly and the feet” (Lev. 9:14), spontaneously and unbidden, but in the case of the priests it is on this wise: “the inwards and the feet,” not “they washed” but “they shall wash” (Lev. 1:9). This shows great exactness. For it must needs be that while the perfect man moves of himself towards virtuous actions, the man who is practising should do so with the aid of reason which gives him guidance what he should do, obedience to whose directions is a noble thing.
קמ״ט
149[145] We must not fail to notice that Moses, when he refuses the entire belly, that is the filling of his stomach, practically renounces the other passions too. The lawgiver uses one portion to give from it a clear presentation of the whole; and having mentioned the most essential matter, virtually treats of the rest about which he has been silent.
ק״נ
150For the filling of the belly is the most essential matter, and the foundation, so to speak, of the other passions. None of them, as we see, can take shape unless it have the belly to support it, for nature has made the belly the basis of all things.
קנ״א
151[146] Hence it comes that when Leah’s sons, the good things of the soul, had been born before Jacob’s other sons, and had ceased with Judah, who is “praise” (Gen. 29:35), God, being about to create representatives of the forward striving of the body as well, causes Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, to bear children even before her mistress. Now Bilhah is “swallowing.” For the prophet knew that no part or organ of the body can subsist without “swallowing” and the belly, but this holds sway and sovereignty over all the body and over all the material frame whose concern is with mere living.
קנ״ב
152[147] Do not let any subtle point escape your notice, for you will not find a single pointless expression. Moses removes the breast; the belly he does not remove, but washes (Lev. 8:29, 9:14). Why is this? Because the perfect wise man can, by wholly renouncing anger, utterly avert and drive off the uprising of the spirited element in him, but to exscind the belly he is powerless. Even the man of fewest needs who scorns the very necessaries of life and trains himself in abstinence from them, is forced by nature to take necessary food and drink. Let him therefore wash the belly and cleanse it from superfluous and unclean provisions; for this too is a sufficiently great gift from God to the lover of virtue.
קנ״ג
153[148] It is owing to this that when treating of the soul suspected of adultery he says (Num. 5:27), that if it have forsaken the right principle, which is the lawful husband, and be discovered to have had intercourse with soul-defiling passion, “it will swell up in the belly,” which signified that it will have ever unfilled and insatiable the pleasures and desires of the belly, and will never cease to be insatiate owing to gross stupidity, but, with a countless throng of them pouring in, will keep its passion for ever.
קנ״ד
154[149] To cite an instance, I know many brought to such disaster over the craving of the belly, that after resorting to emetics they fly back again to strong drink and all the rest. For the craving of the soul that is out of control is not restricted as the bodily organs are by their size. These are vessels of a fixed capacity admitting nothing that exceeds it, but ejecting all that is superfluous. Desire is never filled up, but continues always thirsty and in want of more.
קנ״ה
155[150] This explains “the breaking up of the thigh,” being added as the sequel to the swelling of the belly. For then it is that the soul experiences the breaking up of the right principle, the principle that is the seed whence all noble things are begotten. We see this from the words that follow, “If she have not been defiled and be pure, she shall be free and shall conceive seed” (Numb. 5:28), if she have not been defiled by passion, but have been chaste and faithful to her lawful husband, the princely and wholesome principle, she will have a soul fruitful and productive, yielding the offspring of sound sense and righteousness and all excellence.
קנ״ו
156[151] Is it possible, then, that we, tied as we are to a body, should not comply with bodily requirements? How can it be possible? But look. The sacred guide tells the man who feels the pressure of bodily necessity the way to deal with it, namely, to comply with it only so far as he is actually obliged to do so. First he says, “Let there be to thee a place outside the camp” (Deut. 23:12), meaning by “the camp” virtue, in which the soul has pitched its camp. For good sense and indulgence of a bodily necessity cannot occupy the same quarters.
קנ״ז
157[152] Next he says, “Thou shalt go forth there without.” Why go forth? Because the soul cannot have dealings with any of the body’s friends while it abides with good sense and spends its days in the house of wisdom. For then it is nourished by food more divine, which it finds in all knowledge, and for the sake of this it actually disregards the flesh. For when it has gone forth from the sacred dwellings of virtue, it is then that it turns to material things which treat the body ill and weigh it down. How then shall I deal with them?
קנ״ח
158[153] “Let there be to thee, he says, a shovel upon thy girdle, and thou shalt dig with it” (Deut. 23:13), that is to say, reason shall be upon the passion digging it out, tucking it up, not suffering it to clothe thee about. For God would have us gird up our passions, not wear them flowing and loose.
קנ״ט
159[154] So at the crossing over from them, which is called Passover, He bids that their “loins should be girded up” (Exod. 12:11), in other words that their desires should be restrained. Let a shovel then, that is, reason, follow the passion, preventing it from spreading abroad, for by this means we shall comply only with demands which are urgent, but from all that goes beyond this we shall abstain.
ק״ס
160[155] When we are present at entertainments and are about to take and enjoy the viands provided, if we take our places at table with reason like some weapon to parry blows, we shall neither gorge ourselves with food beyond measure like cormorants, nor overdosed with unlimited strong drink shall we succumb to intoxication with its resultant foolish talk; for reason will curb and bridle the impetuous rush of the passion.
קס״א
161[156] I, to mention myself in proof of what I say, know by frequent experience how true it is. Many a time have I been present at a gathering with little that was sociable about it or at costly suppers. When I did not arrive with reason for my companion, I found myself the slave of the enjoyments provided, at the mercy of harsh masters, entertainments for eye and ear and all that brings pleasure by way of taste or smell. But whenever I arrive with convincing reason at my side, I find myself a master not a slave, and, putting forth all my strength, win the noble victory of endurance and self-mastery, in a vigorous and pertinacious encounter with everything that excites the unruly desires.
קס״ב
162[157] “Thou shalt dig,” you see he says, “with the shovel” (Deut. 23:13), that is, thou shalt lay bare and distinguish by means of reason, the nature which each passion possesses, eating, drinking, sexual indulgence, that thou mayest discern them and learn the truth about them. For then shalt thou know that in none of these is there the thing which is good, but that which is useful only and necessary.
קס״ג
163[158] “And bringing the shovel to bear on it then shalt thou cover thine unseemliness” (ibid.). ’Tis well said. Bring then, O soul, reason to bear on all things, wherewith all unseemliness of flesh and passion is covered, and hidden, and put out of sight. For all that is unaccompanied by reason is unsightly, just as that with which reason is present is comely. We get this result.
קס״ד
164[159] The lover of pleasure moves on the belly; the perfect man washes out the entire belly; the man who is making gradual progress washes out the contents of the belly, the man who is just beginning his training will go forth without, when he intends to curb passion by bringing reason (figuratively called a shovel) to bear upon the demands of the belly.
קס״ה
165[160] There is an excellent point in the next words too: “Thou shalt go upon thy breast and thy belly” (Gen. 3:14). For pleasure does not belong to the category of things becalmed and stationary, but to that of things moving and full of turmoil. For as the flame is in movement, so, not unlike a blazing thing, passion moving in the soul does not suffer it to be calm. Thus the prophet does not agree with those who say that pleasure is tranquil. For stillness pertains to a stone and a log and to everything without life, but it is alien to pleasure. For pleasure hankers after an excitement that is actually convulsive, and in some people so far from its being an experience of tranquillity, it is an indulgence in intense and violent movement.
קס״ו
166[161] The sentence “Earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” (Gen. 3:14) is an apt one. For the food of the body brings pleasures of earth; and fitly so, it would seem. For there are two things of which we consist, soul and body. The body, then, has been formed out of earth, but the soul is of the upper air, a particle detached from the Deity: “for God breathed into his face a breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). It is in accordance with reason, therefore, that the body fashioned out of earth has food akin to it which earth yields, while the soul being a portion of an ethereal nature has on the contrary ethereal and divine food; for it is fed by knowledge in its various forms and not by meat and drink, of which the body stands in need.
קס״ז
167[162] That the food of the soul is not earthly but heavenly, we shall find abundant evidence in the Sacred Word. “Behold I rain upon you bread out of heaven, and the people shall go out and they shall gather the day’s portion for a day, that I may prove them whether they will walk by My law or not” (Exod. 16:4). You see that the soul is fed not with things of earth that decay, but with such words as God shall have poured like rain out of that lofty and pure region of life to which the prophet has given the title of “heaven.” To proceed.
קס״ח
168[163] The people, and all that goes to make the soul, is to go out and gather and make a beginning of knowledge, not all at once but “the day’s portion for a day.” For to begin with it will be unable to contain all at once the abundant wealth of the gracious gifts of God, but will be overwhelmed by them as by the rush of a torrent. In the second place it is better, when we have received the good things sufficient of themselves as duly measured out to us, to think of God as Dispenser of those that still remain. He that would fain have all at once earns for himself lack of hope and trust, as well as great lack of sense.
קס״ט
169[164] He lacks hope if he expects that now only but not in the future also will God shower on him good things; he lacks faith, if he has no belief that both in the present and always the good gifts of God are lavishly bestowed on those worthy of them; he lacks sense, if he imagines that he will be, though God will it not, a sufficient guardian of what he has gathered together; for the mind that vaingloriously ascribes to itself sureness and security has many a time been rendered by a slight turn of the scale a feeble and insecure guardian of all that it looked on as in its safe-keeping.
ק״ע
170[165] Gather together, therefore, O soul, what is adequate of itself and suitable, and neither more than sufficient so as to be excessive, nor on the other hand less so as to fall short, that dealing in right measures thou mayest do no wrong. For thou art required also, when making it thy study to cross over from the passions and when sacrificing the Passover, to take the forward step, whose symbol is the lamb, not without measure, for he says “each man shall reckon what suffices for him as a lamb” (Exod. 12:4).
קע״א
171[166] Both in the case of manna then, and in the case of every boon which God confers upon our race, it is good to take what is fixed by strict measure and reckoning and not that which is above and beyond us; for to do this is to be over-reaching. Let the soul, then, gather the day’s portion for a day (Exod. 16:4), that it may declare not itself but the bountiful God guardian of the good things.
קע״ב
172[167] And the reason for the injunction we are considering seems to me to be this. The day is a symbol of light, and the light of the soul is training. Many, then, have acquired the lights in the soul for night and darkness, not for day and light; all elementary lessons for example, and what is called school-learning and philosophy itself when pursued with no motive higher than parading their superiority, or from desire of an office under our rulers. But the man of worthy aims sets himself to acquire day for the sake of day, light for the sake of light, the beautiful for the sake of the beautiful alone, not for the sake of something else. And this is why he goes on with the words: “that I may prove them whether they will walk in My law or no” (Exod. 16:4); for this is the divine law, to value excellence for its own sake.
קע״ג
173[168] The right principle, therefore, tests all aspirants as one does a coin, to see whether they have been debased in that they refer the soul’s good to something external, or whether, as tried and approved men, they distinguish and guard this treasure as belonging to thought and mind alone. Such men have the privilege of being fed not with earthly things but with the heavenly forms of knowledge.
קע״ד
174[169] He gives a further elucidation of this point, when he says, “in the early morning when the dew ceased it appeared all round the camp, and lo! upon the face of the wilderness a fine thing as it were coriander seed, white like hoar-frost on the ground. And when they saw it, they said one to another, ‘What is this?’ for they knew not what it was. And Moses said unto them, ‘This bread, which the Lord hath given us to eat, is this word, which the Lord hath prescribed’ ” (Exod. 16:13 ff.). You see of what sort the soul’s food is. It is a word of God, continuous, resembling dew, embracing all the soul and leaving no portion without part in itself. But not everywhere does this word show itself, but on the wilderness of passions and wickednesses, and it is fine and delicate both to conceive and be conceived, and surpassingly clear and transparent to behold, and it is as it were coriander seed. Tillers of the soil say that if you cut a coriander seed and divide it into countless pieces, each of the portions into which you cut it, if sown, grows exactly as the whole seed could have done. Such too is the word of God, able to confer benefits both as a whole and by means of every part, yes any part you light upon.
קע״ה
175It is possible that a resemblance between the word of God and the pupil of the eye, is also intended.
קע״ו
176[170] For as the pupil of the eye is a very small part of it and sees the zones of the universe in their completeness, and the boundless ocean, and the vast expanse of air and of the infinite heaven, all that is bounded by the rising and the setting sun, so the word of God also has keenest sight, and is able to survey all things, … wherewith they shall clearly see all that is worth beholding.
קע״ז
177[171] Accordingly it is also white; for what could be brighter or more far-shining than the divine word, by communion with which even other things dispel their mist and their gloom, eagerly desiring to become sharers in the light of the soul?
קע״ח
178[172] An affection peculiar to it is produced by this word. When it has summoned the soul to itself, it brings about a congealment in all that part of us that is earthly, bodily, sense-bound; and this accounts for the words “as it were hoar-frost on the earth” (Exod. 16:14). For we also find that when he that sees God is studying flight from the passions, the waves become fixed as if frozen, that is to say the rush and growth and vainglory of the passions; “for the waves became solid in the midst of the sea” (Exod. 15:8), in order that he that seeth Him that IS might pass beyond passion.
קע״ט
179[173] The souls, therefore, that have indeed already had experience of the word, but are not able to answer the question, inquire one of another “What is it?” (Exod. 16:15). For it often happens that on finding a sweet taste in our mouths we are uncertain as to the flavour which has given rise to it, and that when we catch the scent of pleasant odours we do not know what they are. In the same way then the soul, when it has been gladdened, is often unable to say what the thing that gladdens it is. But it is taught by the hierophant and prophet Moses: he will tell it, This bread (ibid.) is the food which God hath given to the soul, for it to feed on His own utterance and His own word; for this bread, which He hath given us to eat, is “this word.”
ק״פ
180[174] He says in Deuteronomy also: “And He afflicted thee and made thee weak by hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that He might proclaim to thee, that not on bread alone shall man live, but on every word that goeth forth through the mouth of God” (Deut. 8:3). This afflicting is propitiation; for on the tenth day also by afflicting our souls He makes propitiation (Lev. 16:30). For when we are being deprived of pleasant things, we think we are being afflicted, but in reality thereby we have God propitious to us.
קפ״א
181[175] He occasions famine also to us, not a famine of virtue, but a famine of the creations of passion and wickedness. We have a proof of this in His feeding us with His own most “generic” word; for “manna” means “something,” and this is the most generic of all terms. And the word of God is above all the world, and is eldest and most all-embracing of created things. This word “the fathers knew not.” This does not mean the real forefathers, but those whose hair was grey from age who said, “Let us appoint a leader and let us return to Egypt,” that is, “to passion” (Numb. 14:4).
קפ״ב
182[176] Let God then proclaim to the soul, “Not on bread only shall men live, but on every utterance that goeth forth through the mouth of God,” that is to say he shall be fed both by all the word and by a part of it; for the mouth is a symbol of utterance or speech, and the statement is a part of speech. The soul of the most perfect is fed by the word as a whole; we may well be content should we be fed even by a portion of it.
קפ״ג
183[177] Now those of whom we have been speaking pray to be fed with the word of God. But Jacob, looking even higher than the word, says that he is fed by God Himself. He speaks on this wise: “The God to Whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac were well-pleasing, the God Who feedeth me from my youth up unto this day, the Angel who delivereth me out of all my ills, bless these boys” (Gen. 48:15 f.). How beautiful is his tone and temper! He looks on God as feeding him, not His Word; but the Angel, who is the Word, as healer of ills.
קפ״ד
184[178] This is the language of a true philosopher. He thinks it meet and right that He that IS should Himself in His own Person give the principal boons, while His Angels and Words give the secondary gifts; and secondary are such as involve riddance from ills. For this reason, I think, God bestows health in the simplest sense, preceded by no illness in our bodies, by Himself only, but health that comes by way of escape from illness He bestows both through medical science and through the physician’s skill, letting both knowledge and practitioner enjoy the credit of healing, though it is He Himself that heals alike by these means and without them. Now His mode of dealing is the same in the case of the soul. The good things, the food, He Himself bestows with His own hand, but by the agency of Angels and Words such as involve riddance of ills.
קפ״ה
185[179] In offering this prayer Jacob passed a censure on Joseph the statesman, who had ventured to say “I will nourish thee there.” His words were, “Make haste and go up to my father and say to him ‘thus saith’ ” and so on, and then “come down to me and tarry not,” finishing with “and I will nourish thee there, for there shall be famine for five years” (Gen. 45:9, 11). So Jacob at once chides and instructs the man wise in his own conceit when he says: “You must know, fine Sir, that the foods which nourish the soul are various forms of knowledge, and that these are not bestowed by the word of bodily sense but by God. He who reared me from youth and early prime to full-grown manhood (cf. Gen. 48:15) will Himself satisfy my needs.”
קפ״ו
186[180] Joseph therefore went through the same experience as his mother Rachel. She too imagined that a created being has some power, for she says “Give me children” (Gen. 30:1). But the Supplanter will find fault with her and say, ‘Thou hast greatly erred, for I am not in the place of God, who alone hath power to open the wombs of souls, and to sow virtues in them, and to make them pregnant with noble things, and to give birth to them. Take note of Leah thy sister, and thou wilt find her receiving seed and offspring out of no created being but by God’s own gift’; “for the Lord, when he saw that Leah was hated, opened her womb, but Rachel was barren” (Gen. 29:31).
קפ״ז
187[181] But note again the delicate subtilty here. God opens the wombs of virtue, sowing in them noble doings, but the womb, after receiving virtue at God’s hand, does not bear to God—for He that IS is in need of no one—but bears sons to me Jacob; for it may well be that it was for my sake, not for His own sake that God sowed seed in virtue. Accordingly One is found to be husband to Leah, who is passed over in silence, and another to be father of the children born of Leah. For He that openeth the womb is husband, but father of the children is he to whom she is said to bear these.
קפ״ח
188[182] “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman” (Gen. 3:15). In reality pleasure is a foe to sense, albeit thought by some to be a close friend. But just as no one would call the flatterer a comrade, since flattery is friendship diseased, and no one would say that the courtesan is kindly to her lover, since her tenderness is not for him but for his presents, so when you put pleasure to the test you will find that she is disguised under a counterfeit semblance of friendship with sense.
קפ״ט
189[183] You know how when we have surfeited ourselves with pleasure, our organs of sense relax their vigour. Or do you not observe men intoxicated with wine or love, how seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear and how they are deprived of the power to exercise their other senses with any precision? It sometimes happens that owing to much overeating the vigour of all the senses is relaxed as sleep overtakes the man. Indeed sleep got its name from this relaxing of the senses. For at such a time the organ of perception grows slack, just as when we wake up its intensity is heightened, and the impressions which we receive from without are no longer dull, but are clear and ringing, and carry the sound all the way to the mind; for the mind has to become cognizant of what is without by receiving a blow, and so to gain a vivid impression of it.
ק״צ
190[184] Observe that the words are not “I will set enmity for thee and the woman,” but “between thee and the woman.” Now why is it put so? Because it is over that which is between pleasure and sense, over that which lies in their boundary so to speak, that the warfare of these two arises. But what is between them both are drinkables, eatables, what is adapted to all such purposes, each one of them being both an object of sense and a thing productive of pleasure. When pleasure, therefore, has indulged immoderately in these, it forthwith inflicts injury on sense.
קצ״א
191[185] The expression again “between thy seed and her seed” is full of philosophical truth: for every seed is a starting-point of existence, but the starting-point of pleasure is passion, an irrational impulse, that of sense the mind; for from the mind as from a fountain the faculties of sense flow forth and extend. This is certainly taught by Moses, the holy prophet, who says that the woman was fashioned out of Adam, sense.(that is) out of mind. What pleasure, then, is to sense, that passion is to mind. Since, therefore, the former pair are mutually hostile, the latter must also be at war with each other.
קצ״ב
192[186] And their warfare is patent. When mind is victorious, devoting itself to immaterial things its proper object, passion quits the scene: and on the other hand, when passion has won an evil victory, mind gives in, being prevented from giving heed to itself and to all its own occupations. Moses elsewhere says, “Whenever Moses lifted up his hands, Israel prevailed, but when he dropped them, Amalek prevailed” (Exod. 17:11), showing that when the mind lifts itself up away from mortal things and is borne aloft, that which sees God, which is Israel, gains strength, but when it has lowered its special powers and grown weak, immediately passion, named “Amalek,” which means “a people licking out,” will become strong: for in very deed it eats up the whole soul and licks it out, leaving behind in it no seed or spark of virtue.
קצ״ג
193[187] In keeping with this are the words “Amalek the first of the nations” (Numb. 24:20), because passion rules and lords it over promiscuous hordes that have drifted together without purpose or meaning. Through passion all the war of the soul is fanned into flame, and so God promises to minds to which He vouchsafes the gift of peace, that He will blot out “the memorial of Amalek from under heaven” (Exod. 17:14).
קצ״ד
194[188] The sentence “he shall watch thy head, and thou shalt watch his heel” (Gen. 3:15) is a barbarism, but has a perfectly correct meaning. It is addressed to the serpent concerning the woman, but the woman is not “he” but “she.” What is to be said then? He has left off speaking about the woman and passed on to her seed and origin; but the mind is the origin of sense; and mind is masculine, in speaking of which we should use the pronouns “he” and “his” and so on. Rightly, then, is it said to Pleasure, “the Mind shall watch thy chief and principal doctrine, and thou shalt watch it, the Mind, as it acts and rests upon its accepted tenets.” This basing of conduct and principle on tenets is naturally represented by the word “heels.”
קצ״ה
195[189] The word “shall watch” has two meanings, one like “shall guard and preserve,” the other equivalent to “shall watch for to destroy.” Now the mind must needs be either bad or good. The foolish mind will show itself a guardian and steward of pleasure, seeing that its delight is in pleasure; but the good mind will prove its enemy, watching eagerly for the moment when it shall set upon it and achieve its utter destruction. And mark this: Pleasure on the other hand watches over and preserves the procedure of the foolish mind, but endeavours to break up and destroy the way of life of the wise mind, holding that the latter is planning her ruin, while the former is devising the best means to preserve her.
קצ״ו
196[190] But in spite of her expecting to throw and cheat the good mind, she shall herself be thrown by Jacob who is practised in wrestling, not the bodily wrestling but that in which the soul engages against dispositions that are her antagonists, fighting as she does with passions and wickednesses. And Jacob shall not let go the heel of his adversary, passion, till it has given in, and acknowledged that it has been twice thrown and vanquished, both in the matter of the birthright and in the blessing. For says Esau, “Rightly was his name called Jacob, for he hath supplanted me twice already; then he took my birthright, and now he has taken my blessing” (Gen. 27:36).
קצ״ז
197[191] The bad man regards bodily things as more worshipful, the good man the things of the soul, as they are in reality, not in age but in value and dignity more worshipful, and really first, as is a magistrate in a city; and it is the soul that is sovereign over our composite being.
קצ״ח
198[192] He therefore that is first in virtue has received the things that are first, which indeed were his portion; for he has received the blessing also accompanied by perfect prayers. But vainly deeming himself wise is he who says, “My blessings and my birthright hath he taken”: not thine, man, does he take, but those which are opposite to thine; for those which are thine have been accounted meet for slavery, but his for lordship.
קצ״ט
199[193] And if thou shalt consent to become a slave of the wise one, thou shalt cast from thee ignorance and boorishness, plagues of the soul, and be partaker of admonition and correction. For in his prayer thy father says to thee, “To thy brother shalt thou be a slave” (Gen. 27:40); but not now shall this be, for he will not put up with thy restiveness, but when thou shalt have loosed the yoke from thy neck” (ibid.), casting from thee vaunting and insolence which thou didst acquire by yoking thyself to a chariot of passions, of which folly was the driver.
ר׳
200[194] Now indeed thou art a slave of the harsh and insufferable masters within thee, to whom it is a fixed law to set no one free. But if thou escape and abandon these, a master to whom his slaves are dear shall welcome thee, holding out bright hopes of liberty and shall not give thee up again to thy former masters. For he has learned from Moses a lesson and rule inviolable, “that a man deliver not up to his master a servant who has been handed over to him by the Lord; for he shall dwell with him in whatever place it liketh him best” (Deut. 23:15 f.).
ר״א
201[195] But so long as thou hast not run away, but art still governed by the bit and bridle of thine old masters, thou art unworthy to be slave to a wise man. Thou affordest most sure proof of a servile character unworthy of a free man by saying “my birthright and my blessings” (Gen. 27:36); for these utterances are those of men who are sunk in boundless ignorance, seeing that to speak of “Mine” befits God only, for all things are in reality the property of Him alone.
ר״ב
202[196] For this reason He shall also testify, when he says, “Thou shalt preserve My gifts, My grants, My fruits” (Numb. 28:2), that “gifts” excel “grants.” For the term “gifts” brings out the sense of great and perfect boons, which God bestows upon the perfect; “grants” have shrunk to a very meagre compass: these are for those of natural excellence who practise and make progress.
ר״ג
203[197] Because this is so, Abraham also in harmony with the will of God retains the property which had come to him from God, but gets rid of the horses of the king of Sodom (Gen. 14:21 ff.), as also of the possessions of the concubines. Moses, moreover, thinks fit to judge the weightiest cases and issues, but the investigation of the insignificant questions he commits to inferior officers (cf. Exod. 18:26).
ר״ד
204[198] Whoever dares to say that anything is his own will thereby have registered himself a slave in perpetuity, even as the man who says “I have come to love my master and my wife and my children: I decline to go away free” (Exod. 21:5). It is well that he acknowledged himself a slave; for how can the man be other than a slave who says “mine is the master, even mind,” that is its own master and absolute lord; “mine also is sense-perception,” a means of judging material forms that is dependent upon none; “mine also are the offspring of these,” Mind’s proper objects being Mind’s offspring, and sensible objects the offspring of sense; “for in my power it is to exercise mind and to exercise the senses.”
ר״ה
205[199] But let him not only give evidence against himself. Let him be condemned also by God, and submit to a slavery eternal and inexorable when God bids his ear to be pierced, in order that it may not admit words of virtue, and bids him be slave for ever to Mind and to Sense, bad and pitiless masters.
ר״ו
206[200] And to the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrows and thy groaning” (Gen. 3:16). Woman, who is, as we have seen, Sense, is the subject of an experience peculiarly her own, namely grief, which is called “sorrow”; for there is a quarter of our being in which gladness takes rise, and in that same quarter does grief also take rise: but it is through the senses that we feel gladness, so that of necessity we feel grief also through them. But the excellent and cleansed Mind grieves least, for the senses assail him least. But the foolish Mind experiences grief abundantly, having no antidote in the soul, with which to repel the deadly ills that come from the senses and their objects.
ר״ז
207[201] The athlete and the slave take a beating in different ways, the one submissively giving in and yielding to the stripes, while the athlete opposes and withstands and shakes off the blows that are falling upon him. You crop a man in one way, a (sheep’s) fleece in another. The sheep has the role of mere passivity, whereas, in the man’s case, there is not only an active reciprocity, but his very submission is, so to speak, also reciprocal, as he adapts his position and posture to the process of being cropped.
ר״ח
208[202] Just in the same way the man who does not reason yields to another as slaves do, and submits to sorrows as intolerable mistresses, and is powerless to look them in the face, not able to draw forth free and manly reasonings, and accordingly a vast mass of painful experiences pours in upon him through the senses. The man of knowledge on the contrary, stepping out like an athlete to meet all grievous things with strength and robust vigour, blows a counter-blast to them, so that he is not wounded by them, but regards each of them with absolute indifference; and, methinks, he might with youthful spirit address to grief the proud vaunt in the play, saying:
ר״ט
209Burn me, consume my flesh, drink my dark blood,
Take fill of me; for sooner shall the stars
Go ’neath the earth, and earth go up to sky,
Than thou shalt from these lips hear fawning word.
Take fill of me; for sooner shall the stars
Go ’neath the earth, and earth go up to sky,
Than thou shalt from these lips hear fawning word.
ר״י
210[203] Now as for sense God has appointed all woeful things in larger measure, so on the earnest soul has He bestowed without stint an abundance of good things. For example in the case of perfect Abraham He speaks in this wise: “By Myself I have sworn, saith the Lord, for Whose sake thou hast done this thing, and on My account hast not spared thy son, thine only son, verily blessing will I bless thee, and multiplying will I multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is by the sea shore” (Gen. 22:16 f.). Good is it both that He confirmed the promise by an oath, and that He did so by an oath befitting God; you mark that God swears not by some other thing, for nothing is higher than He, but by Himself, who is best of all things.
רי״א
211[204] Some have said, that it was inappropriate for Him to swear; for an oath is added to assist faith, and only God and one who is God’s friend is faithful, even as Moses is said to have been found “faithful in all His house” (Numb. 12:7). Moreover, the very words of God are oaths and laws of God and most sacred ordinances; and a proof of His sure strength is that whatever He saith cometh to pass, and this is specially characteristic of an oath. It would seem to be a corollary from this that all God’s words are oaths receiving confirmation by accomplishment in act.
רי״ב
212[205] They say indeed that an oath is a calling God to witness to a point which is disputed; so if it is God that swears, He bears witness to Himself, which is absurd, for he that bears the witness must needs be a different person from him on whose behalf it is borne. What then must we say? First that there is nothing amiss in God bearing witness to Himself. For who else would be capable of bearing witness to Him? Secondly He Himself is to Himself all that is most precious, kinsman, intimate, friend, virtue, happiness, blessedness, knowledge, understanding, beginning, end, whole, everything, judge, decision, counsel, law, process, sovereignty.
רי״ג
213[206] Besides if we once take “by Myself have I sworn” in the right way, we shall quit this excessive quibbling. Probably then the truth of the matter is something like this. Nothing that can give assurance can give positive assurance touching God, for to none has He shown His nature, but He has rendered it invisible to our whole race. Who can assert of the First Cause either that It is without body or that It is a body, that It is of such a kind or that It is of no kind? In a word who can make any positive assertion concerning His essence or quality or state or movement? Nay He alone shall affirm anything regarding Himself since He alone has unerringly exact knowledge of His own nature.
רי״ד
214[207] God alone therefore is the strongest security first for Himself, and in the next place for His deeds also, so that He naturally swore by Himself when giving assurance as to Himself, a thing impossible for another than He.
רי״ה
215It follows that men who say that they swear by God should be considered actually impious; for naturally no one swears by Him, seeing that he is unable to possess knowledge regarding His nature. No, we may be content if we are able to swear by His Name, which means (as we have seen) the interpreting word. For this must be God for us the imperfect folk, but, as for the wise and perfect, the primal Being is their God.
רי״ו
216[208] Moses too, let us observe, filled with wonder at the transcendency of the Uncreate, says, “and thou shalt swear by His Name” (Deut. 6:13), not “by Him,” for it is enough for the created being that he should be accredited and have witness borne to him by the Divine word: but let God be His own most sure guarantee and evidence.
רי״ז
217[209] The words, “for Whose sake thou hast done this thing” (Gen. 22:16) are a token of piety; for it is pious to do all things for the sake of God only. That is why we are unsparing of that only child of virtue, even the happiness we have attained, surrendering it to the Creator, deeming such offspring meet to be reckoned a possession of God, but not of any created being. Beautifully significant are the words, “blessing I will bless” (ibid. 17);
רי״ח
218[210] for there are some people who do many things that are of the nature of benedictions, when their underlying character is not fraught with blessing. Why, even the bad man does some things that it is his duty to do without acting from a dutiful character. Yes, and the drunken man and the madman now and then utter sober words and do sober deeds, but not from a sober mind; and those who are still quite young children not from a fixedly rational state (for nature has not yet trained them to be rational), do and say many things that rational men do and say. But the lawgiver wishes the wise man to be accounted a man of benediction not as the outcome of a passing mood, or of being easily led by others, or as though by chance, but as the result of a fixed state and disposition charged with benediction.
רי״ט
219[211] To return to our text. It was not enough for ill-starred sense to experience sorrows in large measure, it must indulge in “groaning” also. Groaning is intense and excessive sorrow. For we often grieve without groaning; but when we groan over them, we let our sorrows bring on us a very storm of trouble and distress. Now groaning is of two kinds. One kind is found in men who desire and long for opportunities of wrongdoing and cannot get them, and this a bad kind. Another kind is that which is seen in those who repent and are vexed over their defection in former days and cry “Hapless we, how long a time had we, as is now evident, been ill all unaware of it with the illness of folly and senselessness and unrighteousness in our conduct.”
ר״כ
220[212] But this does not come about unless the king of Egypt, the godless and pleasure-loving disposition, shall have met his end and died out of the soul: “for after those many days the king of Egypt died.” Then straightway when wickedness has died, he that seeth God groans over his own failure, “for the children of Israel groaned by reason of their material and Egyptian works” (Exod. 2:23). For while the king and pleasure-loving temper is alive in us it induces the soul to rejoice over the sins it is committing, but when he has died, it groans.
רכ״א
221[213] And thus it is that it cries out to the Master beseeching that it may turn no more nor receive its consummation imperfectly. For many souls have desired to repent and not been permitted by God to do so, but have gone away backward as though drawn by a change of current. This befell Lot’s wife, who became stone owing to her being enamoured of Sodom and reverting to the characters that had been overthrown by God.
רכ״ב
222[214] Now, however, he says “their cry ascended to God” (Exod. 2:23), bearing witness by so saying to the grace of the existent One; for had He not powerfully called to Himself the suppliant word, it would not have ascended, that is, it would not have been caused to mount, and have grown in volume and begun to soar on high after escaping from the baseness of the things of the earth. Wherefore in the sequel He says, “Behold, the cry of the children of Israel hath come to Me” (Exod. 3:9).
רכ״ג
223[215] Very beautiful is it that the entreaty reached as far as God: but it would not have reached so far, but for the kindness of Him that called. Some souls He anticipates and goes forth to meet: “I will come to thee and will bless thee” (Exod. 20:24). Thou seest how great is the grace of the First Cause, as He is beforehand with our hesitation, and anticipates and meets us, bringing unlimited gain to the soul. And what is said is a divine intimation full of instruction. For if a thought of God come into the mind, He forthwith blesses it and heals all its sicknesses.
רכ״ד
224[216] Sense, however, is always sorrowing and groaning, and with pangs and incurable pain bringing forth perception, as God Himself says, “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children” (Gen. 3:16); sight brings forth seeing, the ear hearing, taste tasting, in a word sense perceiving: but not without sore distress to the foolish one does she do each of these things, for to such an one pain is caused as he sees and hears and tastes and smells and generally exercises any sense.
רכ״ה
225[217] On the other hand, you will find virtue full of exceeding joy at her pregnancy, and the good man begetting with laughter and a glad heart, and the offspring of them both laughter itself. That the wise man begets with joy not sorrow, the Divine word shall testify in these words, “God said to Abraham, Sarai thy wife shall not be called Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name: I will bless her and will give thee a child of her” (Gen. 17:15 f.); then he says further, “And Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said, Shall he that is a hundred years old have a son, and shall Sarah who is ninety years old bear?” (ibid. 17).
רכ״ו
226[218] Abraham evidently rejoices and laughs, because he is to beget Isaac (who is), Happiness; and Sarah, who is Virtue, laughs also. The same book shall witness to this when it says, “It ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women, and she laughed in her mind and said, Not yet hath happiness befallen me till now but my Lord (the divine Word) is greater (Gen. 18:11 f.), to whom this must needs belong and whom I must believe when he promises good.” Moreover, the offspring is laughter and joy, for that is what “Isaac” means. Let sense-perception therefore be sorrowful, but let virtue always rejoice:
רכ״ז
227[219] for again when Happiness has been born she says with pride “the Lord hath made laughter for me; for whosoever shall hear of it will rejoice with me” (Gen. 21:6). Therefore, O ye initiate, open your ears wide and take in holiest teachings. The “laughter” is joy, and “made” is equivalent to “beget,” so that what is said is of this kind, the Lord begat Isaac; for He is Himself Father of the perfect nature, sowing and begetting happiness in men’s souls.
רכ״ח
228[220] “And to thy husband,” He says, “shall be thy resort” (Gen. 3:16). Sense has two husbands, the one lawful, the other a seducer. After the fashion of a seducing husband the thing seen acts on the sight, the sound on the hearing, the flavour on the palate, and so with the rest one by one. And these turn away and invite to themselves the irrational sense and get the mastery of it and domineer over it. Beauty enslaves the sight, the pleasant savour the palate, and the several objects of sense enslave the sense corresponding to them.
רכ״ט
229[221] Look at that glutton, what a slave he is to the dishes prepared by the skill of cooks and confectioners. Mark that one wild with excitement over music, how he is swayed and held spellbound by harp or flute or it may be by a good singer. But to sense that has been turned from all else to Mind, her lawful husband, vast benefit befalls.
ר״ל
230[222] Let us observe in the next place how he discourses respecting Mind itself when acted upon in violation of the right principle. “To Adam God said, ‘Because thou hast listened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee not to eat [of it thou hast eaten], cursed is the ground in respect of thy labours’ ” (Gen. 3:17). Most profitless is it that Mind should listen to Sense-perception, and not Sense-perception to Mind: for it is always right that the superior should rule and the inferior be ruled;
רל״א
231[223] and Mind is superior to Sense-perception. When the charioteer is in command and guides the horses with the reins, the chariot goes the way he wishes, but if the horses have become unruly and got the upper hand, it has often happened that the charioteer has been dragged down and that the horses have been precipitated into a ditch by the violence of their motion, and that there is a general disaster. A ship, again, keeps to her straight course, when the helmsman grasping the tiller steers accordingly, but capsizes when a contrary wind has sprung up over the sea, and the surge has settled in it.
רל״ב
232[224] Just so, when Mind, the charioteer or helmsman of the soul, rules the whole living being as a governor does a city, the life holds a straight course, but when irrational sense gains the chief place, a terrible confusion overtakes it, just as when slaves have risen against masters: for then, in very deed, the mind is set on fire and is all ablaze, and that fire is kindled by the objects of sense which Sense-perception supplies.
רל״ג
233Moses, moreover, gives intimations of such a conflagration of the mind as this, occasioned by the senses, when he says:
רל״ד
234[225] “And the women kindled yet further a fire in Moab.” For “Moab” means “out of a father,” and our father is the Mind, His words are, “Then shall they that propound riddles say, Come to Heshbon that it may be built, and that the city of Sihon may be constructed. For a fire hath gone forth from Heshbon and a flame from the city of Sihon, and it devoured as far as Moab and drank up the boundaries of Arnon. Woe to thee, Moab, thou art undone, O people of Chemosh. Their sons were given up as fugitives, and their daughters as prisoners of war to Sihon, king of the Amorites, and their seed shall perish, Heshbon unto Dibon, and their women yet further kindled a fire against Moab” (Numb. 21:27–30).
רל״ה
235[226] “Heshbon” means “reasonings”: and “reasonings” are riddles full of obscurity. Look at a doctor’s reasonings: “I will purge the patient, I will feed him up, I will prescribe medicines and put him on a diet that will make him well, I will operate, I will cauterize.” But many a time has nature either brought recovery without these means being used, or brought death when these have been resorted to, proving all the doctor’s calculations to be vain dreams, nothing but guesswork in the dark. Again, the farmer says,
רל״ו
236[227] “I will sow, I will plant, the plants will grow, seeds and plants will yield crops, not only useful as affording food that we cannot do without, but so abundant as to give us enough and to spare.” Then all of a sudden a fire, or a storm, or persistent rain spoils everything. Sometimes all that he had reckoned on comes to pass, but the reckoner dies first without having had the benefits of them, and his expectation of enjoying the fruits of his toil proves a vain one.
רל״ז
237[228] So then it is best to trust God and not our dim reasonings and insecure conjectures: “Abraham believed God and was held to be righteous” (Gen. 15:6); and the precedence which Moses takes is testified to by the words he is “faithful in all My house” (Numb. 12:7). But if we repose our trust in our own reasonings, we shall construct and build up the city of Mind that corrupts the truth: for “Sihon” means “corrupting.”
רל״ח
238[229] Accordingly the dreamer finds on rising up that all the movements and exertions of the foolish man are dreams void of reality. Yea Mind itself turned out to be a dream. And this is so, because to trust God is a true teaching, but to trust our vain reasonings is a lie. An irrational impulse issues forth and goes its rounds, both from our reasonings and from Mind that corrupts the truth; wherefore also he says, “There went forth a fire from Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon” (Numb. 21:28). In this way trust in plausible reasonings or in Mind corrupting that which is true, is irrational.
רל״ט
239[230] “It devours even as far as Moab,” that is to say as far as Mind. For whom else does false opinion deceive but wretched Mind? It devours and eats up yea and swallows down the boundary-stones in it, that is, each particular thought or judgement, which are graved and chiselled as though upon a boundary-stone. The stones are Arnon, which means “their light,” since it is in reasoning that each matter is elucidated.
ר״מ
240[231] This is how he begins the dirge over the headstrong and selfish Mind: “Woe to thee, Moab: thou art undone”; for if thou heedest guesses made according to what is probable, thou hast lost truth. “The people of Chemosh,” that is thy people and its power has been found to be maimed and blinded; for “Chemosh” means “as a groping,” and groping is characteristic of one who cannot see.
רמ״א
241[232] These find their sons, each particular reasoning, fugitives, while their judgements, corresponding to daughters, are captives of war to the king of the Amorites, that is “the lecturer of men fond of talking”; for the Amorites, if we translate the name, are “men fond of talking,” being a figure of the uttered word, and the prince of these is the lecturer or sophist clever at searching after verbal artifices, and those who transgress the boundary of truth place themselves at the mercy of his quibbling.
רמ״ב
242[233] Sihon, therefore, the corrupter of the healthy rule of the truth, “and his seed shall perish together with Heshbon” (that is) the quibbling riddles “as far as Dihon,” a name given to going to law, and quite appropriately, for probabilities and plausible arguments involve no knowledge concerning truth, but trial and disputation and wrangling conflict and contentiousness and everything of that sort.
רמ״ג
243[234] It was not, however, enough for Mind to have the troubles that are peculiar to it and belong to its own sphere, but over and above these the women, the senses, that is, lit a fire, a huge conflagration, to add to its disasters. Prythee see what I mean by this. It often happens in the night when we are actively employing no single one of our senses, that we entertain strange notions on many different subjects, for the soul is perpetually in movement and can turn ten thousand different ways. This being so, what it produces by itself would have been sufficient for its corruption.
רמ״ד
244[235] But as it is, the mob of the senses has introduced into it from outside an untold host of mischiefs, drawn partly from visible objects, partly from sounds, as well as from savours and scents that touch the sense of smell; and we may say that the flame arising from them affects the soul more disastrously than the flame that is kindled in it by the soul itself without calling in the organs of sense to assist it.
רמ״ה
245[236] One of these women is the wife of Potiphar, Pharaoh’s head-cook (Gen. 39:1 ff.). How, being a eunuch, he comes to have a wife, is a point to be considered: for those, who are occupied with the literal wording of the law rather than with its figurative interpretation, will find that it involves what appears to such a difficulty. For the Mind, that is really an eunuch and chief cook, dealing not in the simple pleasures only but in excessive ones also, deserves the title of eunuch as one who is incapable of begetting wisdom, seeing that he serves as eunuch none other than Pharaoh, the disperser of noble things. For you must bear in mind that from another point of view to become an eunuch would be a very good thing, if so our soul should be able to escape wickedness and unlearn passion.
רמ״ו
246[237] So Joseph too, the self-controlling character, when pleasure says to him “Sleep with me” (Gen. 39:7) ‘and being human indulge human passions and enjoy the delights that come in life’s course,’ refuses to comply with her saying, ‘I shall be sinning against God the Lover of virtue, were I to show myself a lover of pleasure; for this is a wicked deed.’
רמ״ז
247[238] And now he is merely skirmishing, but before long he is stoutly fighting it out, when the soul has entered into her own house, and falling back on her own energies has renounced all that is regulated by the body, and has set to work at business properly belonging to her inasmuch as they are activities of the soul. He goes neither into Joseph’s house nor into that of Potiphar, but “into the house.” He does not go on to say whose house, that you may think and interpret. He simply adds, “to do his business” (Gen. 39:11).
רמ״ח
248[239] The house then is the soul, into which he retires, abandoning all that is outside, to the end that he may, as we say, get within himself. The “business” of the man of self-control is, we may take it, done by God’s will; for indeed, among all the reasonings wont to have their abode in the soul within, there was not one such uncongenial reasoning found there. Meanwhile pleasure does not desist from struggling, but laying hold of his garments says “Sleep with me.” As clothes are coverings of the body, so are food and drink of the living being. This is what she says, “Why do you decline pleasure, without which you cannot live?
רמ״ט
249[240] See, I seize and carry off part of what goes to produce her, and I declare that you would be unable to exist without using something productive of pleasure.” What does the man of self-control do? “If,” he says, “I am going to be a slave to passion for the sake of the matter that is productive of it, I will even leave passion behind and go forth outside”; for “leaving his garments in her hands he fled and went forth outside” (Gen. 39:12).
ר״נ
250[241] “Who,” someone may ask, “goes forth within?” Do not many? Or have not some who have avoided the robbing of temples stolen goods from a private house, and some who have not been father-beaters, committed violence on a stranger? These people do indeed come forth from the sins mentioned, but they come into others. But he that exercises perfect self-control must shun all sins, both the greater and the lesser, and be found implicated in none whatever.
רנ״א
251[242] Joseph, however, being but a youth and lacking strength to contend with the Egyptian body and vanquish pleasure, runs away. But Phinehas the priest, who was zealous with the zeal for God, has secured his own safety, not by flight, but grasping the “spear,” i.e. the spirit of zeal, he will not desist before he has “pierced the Midianitish woman,” the nature that has been sifted out of the sacred company, “through her womb” (Numb. 25:7 f.), that she may never be able to cause plant or seed of wickedness to shoot up:
רנ״ב
252in recompense for this, for the cutting out of folly, the soul obtains a twofold portion as its reward, peace and priesthood (ibid. 12 f.), virtues as near of kin as sisters.
רנ״ג
253[243] To such a woman, therefore, we must not hearken, wicked sense I mean. For “God dealt well with the midwives” (Exod. 1:20), because disregarding the injunctions of Pharaoh, the scatterer, they “saved alive” the male offspring of the soul which he wished to destroy; for, enamoured of what is material and female, he knows not the First Cause and says, “I know Him not” (Exod. 5:2).
רנ״ד
254[244] Quite a different woman claims our compliance, a woman such as Sarah is seen to have been, even paramount virtue. The wise Abraham complies with her when she recommends the course to follow. For at an earlier time, when he had not yet become perfect but, before his name had been changed, was still only inquiring into supramundane things, being aware that he could not beget seed out of perfect virtue, she advises him to beget children out of the handmaiden, that is school-learning, even Hagar (Gen. 16:2 ff.). This name means “Sojourning,” for he that is studying to make his home in perfect virtue, before he is registered as a member of her city, sojourns with the subjects learned in the schools, that he may be led by these to apply his unfettered powers to virtue.
רנ״ה
255[245] Afterwards, when she sees him brought to perfection, and capable now of begetting … And if he, filled with gratitude towards the education by means of which he was brought into union with virtue, thinks it harsh to reject it, he shall be brought to compliance by an oracle of God bidding him, “In all that Sarah saith to thee listen to her voice” (Gen. 21:12). Let that which seems good to virtue be law for each one of us; for if we choose to hearken to all that virtue recommends, we shall be happy.
רנ״ו
256[246] The words “and thou didst eat of the tree of which alone I commanded thee not to eat” are equivalent to “thou didst consent to wickedness, which it is thy duty to keep off with all thy might”: because of this “cursed”—not “art thou” but “is the earth in thy works” (Gen. 3:17). What then was the reason of this? The serpent, we saw, was pleasure, an irrational elation of soul. She is accursed on her own account, but mark well that she attaches herself only to the worthless man, not to any good man. Adam is the neutral mind, which now proves better, now worse.
רנ״ז
257[247] For in so far as he is mind, his nature is neither bad nor good, but under the influence of virtue and vice it is his wont to shift towards good and bad. It is then just as we should expect, that he is not accursed on his own account, inasmuch as he is neither wickedness nor conduct with wickedness for its rule, but the earth is accursed in his works; for the doings of which the whole soul, to which is here given the name of “earth,” is the means and occasion, are blameworthy and faulty when he allows wickedness to regulate them in each case. Accordingly he goes on “in sorrow shalt thou eat of it.” This is tantamount to “thou shalt sorrowfully get the benefit of being alive.” For in pain does the bad man all his life long avail himself of his own vitality. He has no motive for joy. Such a motive is in the nature of things supplied by righteousness and good sense and the virtues that share her throne.
רנ״ח
258[248] “Thorns therefore and burrs shall it cause to spring up for thee” (Gen. 3:18). Nay, what does grow and shoot up in the soul of a foolish man, but the passions which goad and wound it? To these, using figures, he has given the name of thorns. These the irrational impulse like a fire meets first, and ranging herself with them burns up and consumes all the soul’s possessions. For this is what is said: “If a fire break out and find thorns and go on to burn threshing-floor or standing corn or field; he that kindled the fire shall make restitution” (Exod. 22:6).
רנ״ט
259[249] You see that the fire, the irrational impulse, when it has broken out does not burn the thorns but finds them; for being a searcher after the passions it finds what it wanted to get; and when it has found them it burns up these three things, perfect virtue, gradual progress, goodness of natural disposition. Virtue he likens to the contents of the threshing-floor, for as the grain has been gathered together on it, so in the soul of the wise man have been gathered noble things. To the standing corn he likens gradual advance, since either is incomplete and is earnestly set on its completeness. He likens goodness of natural disposition to the field, because it is receptive of the seeds of virtue.
ר״ס
260[250] He calls each of the passions “burrs” or “three-spiked caltrops,” because they are threefold, the passion itself, that which produces it, and the finished result of these. For instance, pleasure, the pleasant, feeling pleasure; desire, the desirable, desiring; sorrow, the sorrowful, feeling sorrow; fear, the fearful, fearing.
רס״א
261[251] “And thou shalt eat the grass of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread” (Gen. 3:18 f.). He uses the terms grass and bread as synonyms; the thing meant is the same. Grass is food of an irrational creature; and such is a bad man with the right principle cut out of him; irrational also are the senses, being a part of the soul. But the mind striving to attain the objects of sense by means of the irrational senses, makes this striving not without toil and sweat. For exceeding painful and burdensome is the life of the foolish man, as he pursues with greedy desire all things that are productive of pleasures and of all things that wickedness loves to bring about.
רס״ב
262[252] And how long is this to be? “Until,” He says, “thou shalt turn back into the earth, from which thou wert taken” (Gen. 3:19). For, having forsaken the wisdom of heaven, is he not now ranked with things earthly and chaotic? How then he turns back yet further, we have to consider. But perhaps what he means is of this kind, that the foolish mind has indeed always turned back from the right principle, but has been taken not from the sublime nature but from the more earthly substance, and, whether staying still or in movement, is the same and devoted to the same interests.
רס״ג
263[253] And that is why he goes on to say, “Earth thou art and into earth shalt thou depart” (ibid.), which amounts to what I have already said. It signifies this also, “thine origin and thine end are one and the same, for thou tookest thine origin from earth’s decaying bodies, and into them shalt thou again come to thine end, after treading the way of life that comes between, along no high road but on a rough path, full of brambles and burrs whose nature is to prick and wound.”