על החלומות, ספר ב כ״זOn Dreams, Book II 27
א׳
1[181] Let us say then to one whose business is one form of belly-gorging, namely deep-drinking, that is to the chief butler, “Why in this evil plight, thou fool? Thou thinkest that thy preparations conduce to gladness of mind, but in reality thou kindlest the flame of lack of mind and lack of continence and feedest it with fuel in lavish abundance.”
ב׳
2[182] But he, perhaps, may answer: “Do not upbraid me so rashly, without first considering how I stand. My appointed task is to be cup-bearer, not to one invested with self-control and piety and the other virtues, but to one steeped in greed, licentious, unjust, priding himself on his impiety, he who once dared to say, ‘I know not the Lord’ (Ex. 5:2). Naturally I, on my side, have busied myself with what gives him pleasure.”
ג׳
3[183] And wonder not that God and Pharaoh, the mind which usurps the place of God, find gladness in things opposite to each other. Who then is God’s cup-bearer? He who pours the libation of peace, the truly great high priest who first receives the loving-cups of God’s perennial bounties, then pays them back when he pours that potent undiluted draught, the libation of himself.
ד׳
4Mark how the differences between the cup-bearers correspond to those whom they serve.
ה׳
5[184] Thus I, the servant of that Pharaoh who keeps his stubborn incontinent thinking in an intensity of looseness, am an eunuch (Gen. 40:7), gelded of the soul’s generating organs, a vagrant from the men’s quarters, an exile from the women’s, a thing neither male nor female, unable either to shed or receive seed, twofold yet neuter, base counterfeit of the human coin, cut off from the immortality which, through the succession of children and children’s children, is kept alight for ever, roped off from the holy assembly and congregation. “For he that hath lost the organs of generation is absolutely forbidden to enter therein” (Deut. 23:1).