אליגוריות החוקים, ספר ג צ׳Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book III 90
א׳
1[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.
ב׳
2[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.
ג׳
3[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.”