אליגוריות החוקים, ספר ג ס״אAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book III 61
א׳
1[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.
ב׳
2[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).
ג׳
3[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.