על הנטיעה כ״זConcerning Noah's Work as a Planter 27
א׳
1[113] And yet it says, “The fruit shall remain uncleansed for three years; it shall not be eaten,” as though it were the custom to cleanse it regularly as a matter of course. Let me say, then, that this again is one of the points to be interpreted allegorically, the literal interpretation being quite out of keeping with facts. The sentence can be taken in two ways. Read in one way, it means something of this kind, “Its fruit shall be for three years”; then, as an independent sentence, “it shall not be eaten uncleansed.” Read in another way, “Its fruit shall be uncleansed for three years,” and then the words “it shall not be eaten.”
ב׳
2[114] Led by the sense yielded by the former punctuation, we arrive at this result. We take the three years to represent time in its natural threefold division into past, present, and future. The fruit of instruction—so we understand the words—shall be, subsist, remain free from interference, through all the divisions of time. This is equivalent to saying that throughout eternity it is exempt from corruption; for the nature of good is incorruptible. “But uncleansed fruit shall not be eaten.” This is due to the fact that right teaching, having submitted to a cleansing which makes it wholesome, nourishes the soul and makes the mind grow; while teaching of a contrary sort is devoid of nourishment, and lets loose upon the soul corruption and disease. An illustration will help us to see the senses which the other arrangement of the words may convey.
ג׳
3[115] An argument is called “indemonstrable,” either when it has such inherent difficulties that it is hardly capable of demonstration, or when its force is recognized at once by its mere statement, when it relies for its certainty not on any proof drawn from elsewhere, but from its self-evident character; the kind of argument which Logic usually employs in formal syllogisms. Just so can the word “without cleansing” be used either of fruit that needs cleansing and has not received it, or of fruit that is perfectly bright and brilliant.
ד׳
4[116] Such is the fruit of education “through three years,” that is through past, present, and future, that is all eternity, wholly pure and bright, bedimmed by no hurtful thing, utterly exempt from need of washings or lustrations or anything else whatever whose purpose is to cleanse.