על החלומות, ספר א ל״חOn Dreams, Book I 38
א׳
1[219] Let this stand as my description of the great High Priest marked with the three seals aforesaid, the thorough-white, the variegated, and the ashy-sprinkled. The man whose desires are set on human statecraft, Joseph by name, lays claim, as we can see, neither to the first nor to the third of these marks, but to the intervening one, the variegated, only.
ב׳
2[220] For we are told that he had a coat of varied colours (Gen. 37:3). He did not besprinkle himself with lustral rites, from which he would have learned that he was an amalgam of ashes and water, and was incapable of touching the all-white and gleaming vestment, which is virtue, but arrayed himself in the woven robe of statecraft, a robe richly variegated, containing but a most meagre admixture of truth, but many large portions of false, probable, plausible, conjectural matter, out of which sprang up all the sophists of Egypt, augurs, ventriloquists, soothsayers, proficients in decoying, charming, and bewitching, whose insidious artifices it is no easy task to escape.
ג׳
3[221] So Moses shews the insight of a philosopher in introducing this coat all blood-stained (Gen. 37:31), since the whole life of the statesman is stained, warring and being warred upon, receiving blows and shots from the mishaps which befall it.
ד׳
4[222] Search then the man who is thoroughly immersed in public business, the man on whom the interests of the state depend, and do not be daunted by those who hold him in admiration. You will find many a disease lurking in him, many a baneful thing fastened upon him, each one of them violently gripping his soul and invisibly wrestling with it, striving to overthrow it and cast it down, either because the multitude are dissatisfied with his leadership, or because a more powerful rival is attacking him.
ה׳
5[223] Envy again is a grievous foe, difficult to shake off, a growth which always settles on what men call “doing well,” and hard it is to escape from.