על הנטיעה ל׳Concerning Noah's Work as a Planter 30
א׳
1[126] Quite appropriately does Moses speak of the fruit of instruction as being not only “holy” but “for praise”; for each of the virtues is a holy matter, but thanksgiving is pre-eminently so. But it is not possible genuinely to express our gratitude to God by means of buildings and oblations and sacrifices, as is the custom of most people, for even the whole world were not a temple adequate to yield the honour due to Him. Nay, it must be expressed by means of hymns of praise, and these not such as the audible voice shall sing, but strains raised and re-echoed by the mind too pure for eye to discern.
ב׳
2[127] Indeed there is an old story on men’s lips, the invention of wise men, and handed down by memory to succeeding generations of posterity, which has not escaped my ears which are for ever greedy for teaching. It is to this effect. When, they say, the Creator had finished the whole world, He inquired of one of His subordinates whether he missed as having failed to be created aught of created things beneath the earth or beneath the water, aught found in air’s high realm or heaven’s, furthest of all realms that are.
ג׳
3[128] He, it is said, made answer that all were perfect and complete in all their parts, and that he was looking for one thing only, namely the word to sound their praises, which should make the surpassing excellence that marked even the most minute and inconspicuous among them the subject of announcement rather than of praise, seeing that the mere recounting of the works of God was in itself their all-sufficient praise, for they needed the embellishment of no extraneous additions, but possessed in the reality that could not lie their most perfect encomium.
ד׳
4[129] The story runs that the Author of the universe on hearing this commended what had been said, and that it was not long before there appeared the new birth, the family of the Muses and hymnody, sprung from the womb of one of His powers, even virgin Memory, whose name most people slightly change and call her “Mnemosyne.”
