על החלומות, ספר א י״גOn Dreams, Book I 13
א׳
1[72] The lawgiver further states the reason why Jacob “meta” a place: “for the sun was set,” it says (Gen. 28:11), not this sun which shews itself to our eyes, but the light of the supreme and invisible God most brilliant and most radiant. When this shines upon the understanding, it causes those lesser luminaries of words to set, and in a far higher degree casts into shade all the places of sense-perception; but when it has gone elsewhither, all these at once have their dawn and rising.
ב׳
2[73] And marvel not if the sun, in accordance with the rules of allegory, is likened to the Father and Ruler of the universe: for although in reality nothing is like God, there have been accounted so in human opinion two things only, one invisible, one visible, the soul invisible, the sun visible.
ג׳
3[74] The soul’s likeness to God the lawgiver has shewn elsewhere, by saying “God made man, after the image of God made He him” (Gen. 1:27), and again, in the law enacted against murderers, “he that sheddeth man’s blood, in requital for his blood shall there blood be shed, because in the image of God made I man” (Gen. 9:6); while the sun’s likeness to God he has indicated by figures.
ד׳
4[75] In other ways also it is easy to discern this by a process of reasoning. In the first place: God is light, for there is a verse in one of the psalms, “the Lord is my illumination and my Saviour” (Ps. 27[28]:1). And He is not only light, but the archetype of every other light, nay, prior to and high above every archetype, holding the position of the model of a model. For the model or pattern was the Word which contained all His fullness—light, in fact ; for, as the lawgiver tells us, “God said, ‘let light come into being’ ” (Gen. 1:3), whereas He Himself resembles none of the things which have come into being.
ה׳
5[76] Secondly: as the sun makes day and night distinct, so Moses says that God kept apart light and darkness; for “God,” he tells us, “separated between the light and between the darkness (Gen. 1:4). And above all, as the sun when it rises makes visible objects which had been hidden, so God when He gave birth to all things, not only brought them into sight, but also made things which before were not, not just handling material as an artificer, but being Himself its creator.