על הנטיעה י״אConcerning Noah's Work as a Planter 11
א׳
1[43] We need, then, be at no loss to know why there are brought in into the ark, which was built at the time of the great Flood, all the kinds of wild beasts, but into the Garden no kind at all. For the ark was a figure of the body, which has been obliged to make room for the savage and untamed pests of passions and vices, whereas the garden was a figure of the virtues; and virtues entertain nothing wild, nothing (we may say outright)that is irrational.
ב׳
2[44] It is with deliberate care that the lawgiver says not of the man made after God’s image, but of the man fashioned out of earth, that he was introduced into the garden. For the man stamped with the spirit which is after the image of God differs not a whit, as it appears to me, from the tree that bears the fruit of immortal life: for both are imperishable and have been accounted worthy of the most central and most princely portion: for we are told that the tree of Life is in the midst of the Garden (Gen. 2:9). Nor is there any difference between the man fashioned out of the earth and the earthly composite body. He has no part in a nature simple and uncompounded, whose house and courts only the self-trainer knows how to occupy, even Jacob who is put before us as “a plain man dwelling in a house” (Gen. 25:27). The earthy man has a disposition of versatile subtlety, fashioned and concocted of elements of all sorts.
ג׳
3[45] It was to be expected, then, that God should plant and set in the garden, or the whole universe, the middle or neutral mind, played upon by forces drawing it in opposite directions and given the high calling to decide between them, that it might be moved to choose and to shun, to win fame and immortality should it welcome the better, and incur a dishonourable death should it choose the worse.