אליגוריות החוקים, ספר ג ע״הAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book III 75
א׳
1[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.”
ב׳
2[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.
ג׳
3[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.