על החלומות, ספר א כ״אOn Dreams, Book I 21
א׳
1[127] So much, then, for the praise of the lover of toil and virtue in the literal sense of the passage. We have still to explore its symbolic teaching. In doing so it is of importance to know that the divine “place” and the holy land is full of incorporeal “words”; and these words are immortal souls.
ב׳
2[128] Of these words he takes one, choosing as the best the topmost one, occupying the place which the head does in the whole body, and sets it up close to his understanding (Gen. 28:11); for the understanding is, we may say, the soul’s head. He does so professedly to sleep upon it, but in reality to repose on the divine word, and lay his whole life, lightest of burdens, thereon.
ג׳
3[129] The divine word readily listens to and accepts the athlete to be first of all a pupil, then when he has been satisfied of his fitness of nature, he fastens on the gloves as a trainer does and summons him to the exercises, then closes with him and forces him to wrestle until he has developed in him an irresistible strength, and by the breath of divine inspiration he changes ears into eyes, and gives him when remodelled in a new form the name of Israel—He who sees.
ד׳
4[130] It is then too that he confers on him the crown of victory. Now the crown has a strange and outlandish and perhaps ill-sounding name; for the name given it by the president of the contest is “numbness”; for we read that “the broad part grew numb” (Gen. 32:25), a guerdon the most wondrous of all awards ever announced in honour of a victor.
ה׳
5[131] For if the soul which had been made partaker of indomitable power, and has attained perfection in contests for the winning of virtues, and has reached the very limit of the good and beautiful, instead of being lifted up in arrogance and stepping high in vaunting mood, conscious of power to take long strides on sound feet, should turn numb and shrink in the broad limb enlarged by conceit, and then after thus voluntarily disabling itself go with limping gait, that so it might fall behind the incorporeal beings—though seemingly worsted it will be the victor.
ו׳
6[132] For to give up prizes to one’s betters of free choice and not under compulsion is accounted highly profitable, since even the second prizes offered in this contest immeasurably transcend in greatness of honour the first prizes in all other contests.