אליגוריות החוקים, ספר ג פ״הAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book III 85
א׳
1[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).
ב׳
2[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?
ג׳
3[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).