על הנטיעה כ״חConcerning Noah's Work as a Planter 28
א׳
1[117] “And in the fourth year,” it says, “all its fruit shall be holy, for giving praise unto the lord” (Lev. 19:24). In many parts of the Lawgiving, but above all in the record of the creation of the universe, we see the prophetic word glorifying the number 4. For (Gen. 1:14) it ascribes to the fourth day the making of those things on which depends the soul’s chiefest good;
ב׳
2[118] the precious light of the senses, which gives us most sure knowledge of itself and all other objects; light’s parents, the sun and moon and that most holy choir of the stars; these by their risings and settings determined the bounds of months and years, and revealed number’s place in nature.
ג׳
3[119] And in the passage before us it has accorded highest honour to the number 4, by making the fruit of the trees an offering to God at no other time than in the fourth year from their planting.
ד׳
4[120] The number indeed involves deep principles both of physics and ethics. For the roots of the universe, out of which the world grows, are four—earth, water, air, fire. Of the same number are the seasons, Winter and Summer, and those that come between, Spring and Autumn.
ה׳
5[121] And, since it is the first of all numbers produced by squaring another number, it is in right angles that it presents itself to view, as is made evident by the geometrical figure. And right angles are clear pictures of rightness of reasoned thought, and right reason is an everflowing spring of virtue.
ו׳
6[122] Again, the sides of the square are necessarily equal: and equality is the mother of justice, empress and queen of the virtues. Thus the word of prophecy shews that this number is the symbol of equality, and righteousness, and every virtue in a way that the other numbers are not.
ז׳
7[123] The number 4 is also called “all” or “totality” because it potentially embraces the numbers up to 10 and 10 itself. That it so embraces those which precede it is plain to everyone: and it is easy to see by further reckoning that it so embraces the numbers that come after it also.
