על הנטיעה א׳Concerning Noah's Work as a Planter 1
א׳
1CONCERNING NOAH’s WORK AS A PLANTER
[1] We have said in the former book all that the occasion called for regarding the husbandman’s art in general. In this book we shall give such an account as we can of the art of a vine-dresser in particular. For Moses introduces the righteous man not as a husbandman only, but specially as a vine-dresser; his words are: “Noah began to be a husbandman tilling the ground, and he planted a vineyard” (Gen. 9:20).
[1] We have said in the former book all that the occasion called for regarding the husbandman’s art in general. In this book we shall give such an account as we can of the art of a vine-dresser in particular. For Moses introduces the righteous man not as a husbandman only, but specially as a vine-dresser; his words are: “Noah began to be a husbandman tilling the ground, and he planted a vineyard” (Gen. 9:20).
ב׳
2[2] It is incumbent on one, who is going to discourse on the work of planters and husbandmen as carried on in this or that place, to begin by marking well the plants set in the universe, those most perfect of all plants, and their great Planter and Overseer. It is the Lord of all things that is the greatest of planters and most perfect Master of His art. It is this World that is a plant containing in itself the particular plants all at once in their myriads, like shoots springing from a single root.
ג׳
3[3] For, when the Framer of the World, finding all that existed confused and disordered of itself, began to give it form, by bringing it out of disorder into order, out of confusion into distinction of parts, He caused earth and water to occupy the position of roots at its centre; the trees, that are air and fire, He drew up from the centre to the space on high; the encircling region of ether He firmly established, and set it to be at once a boundary and guard of all that is within. (Apparently its name “Heaven” is derived from the former word.) And (surpassing wonder!) this Doer of wondrous works caused earth, a dry substance in danger of being dissolved by water, to be held by water, and air, of itself coldest of all things, to be held by fire whose very nature is heat.
ד׳
4[4] How can it be other than a prodigy that the dissolving element should be held together by that which it dissolves, water by earth; and that on the coldest element the hottest should be seated unquenched, fire upon air?
ה׳
5The elements of which we have spoken are the perfect branches of the whole, but the stock, far greater and more productive than all of them, is this world, of which the growths that have been mentioned are offshoots.
