על החלומות, ספר ב י״חOn Dreams, Book II 18
א׳
1[123] Not long ago I knew one of the ruling class who when he had Egypt in his charge and under his authority purposed to disturb our ancestral customs and especially to do away with the law of the Seventh Day which we regard with most reverence and awe. He tried to compel men to do service to him on it and perform other actions which contravene our established custom, thinking that if he could destroy the ancestral rule of the Sabbath it would lead the way to irregularity in all other matters, and a general backsliding.
ב׳
2[124] And when he saw that those on whom he was exercising pressure were not submitting to his orders, and that the rest of the population instead of taking the matter calmly were intensely indignant and shewed themselves as mournful and disconsolate as they would were their native city being sacked and razed, and its citizens being sold into captivity, he thought good to try to argue them into breaking the law.
ג׳
3[125] “Suppose,” he said, “there was a sudden inroad of the enemy or an inundation caused by the river rising and breaking through the dam, or a blazing conflagration or a thunderbolt or famine, or plague or earthquake, or any other trouble either of human or divine agency, will you stay at home perfectly quiet?
ד׳
4[126] Or will you appear in public in your usual guise, with your right hand tucked inside and the left held close to the flank under the cloak lest you should even unconsciously do anything that might help to save you?
ה׳
5[127] And will you sit in your conventicles and assemble your regular company and read in security your holy books, expounding any obscure point and in leisurely comfort discussing at length your ancestral philosophy?
ו׳
6[128] No, you will throw all these off and gird yourselves up for the assistance of yourselves, your parents and your children, and the other persons who are nearest and dearest to you, and indeed also your chattels and wealth to save them too from annihilation.
ז׳
7[129] See then,” he went on, “I who stand before you am all the things I have named. I am the whirlwind, the war, the deluge, the lightning, the plague of famine or disease, the earthquake which shakes and confounds what was firm and stable; I am constraining destiny, not its name but its power, visible to your eyes and standing at your side.”
ח׳
8[130] What shall we say of one who says or even merely thinks these things? Shall we not call him an evil thing hitherto unknown: a creature of a strange land or rather one from beyond the ocean and the universe —he who dared to liken to the All-blessed his all-miserable self?
ט׳
9[131] Would he delay to utter blasphemies against the sun, moon and the other stars, if what he hoped for at each season of the year did not happen at all or only grudgingly, if the summer visited him with scorching heat or the winter with a terrible frost, if the spring failed in its fruit-bearing or the autumn shewed fertility in breeding diseases?
י׳
10[132] Nay, he will loose every reef of his unbridled mouth and scurrilous tongue and accuse the stars of not paying their regular tribute, and scarce refrain from demanding that honour and homage be paid by the things of heaven to the things of earth, and to himself more abundantly inasmuch as being a man he conceives himself to have been made superior to other living creatures.