על החלומות, ספר ב ל״בOn Dreams, Book II 32
א׳
1[215] We have now explained the dreams of the two partners in the workshop of the palate, where both kinds of provender, drink and food, and these not of the necessary, but of the superfluous and intemperate kind, are produced. Our next immediate duty is to investigate the dreams of him who believed himself to be the king of these two, and the other faculties of the soul, namely Pharaoh.
ב׳
2[216] “In my sleep,” he says, “I thought I was standing by the edge of the river, and it was as though from the river came up seven kine of choice flesh and well favoured, and they fed in the reed grass. And, lo, seven other kine came up behind them from the river, evil and ugly to look on, and lean-fleshed, such that I never saw uglier in all Egypt.
ג׳
3[217] And the lean and ugly kine ate up the seven first kine, the choice and well favoured, and they passed into their bellies. But it could not be seen that they had passed into their bellies, and their looks remained ugly as at the first.
ד׳
4[218] And after I had waked I slept, and saw again in my sleep that seven ears of corn came up on one stalk, full and good, and other seven ears thin and wind-blasted grew up beside them, and the seven ears swallowed up the good and full ears” (Gen. 41:17–24).
ה׳
5[219] You note the opening words of the self-lover, who, in body and soul alike, is the subject of movement and turning and change. “I thought I stood,” he says, and does not reflect that to be unswerving and stable belongs only to God and to such as are the friends of God.
ו׳
6[220] God’s unswerving power is proved most clearly by this world which ever remains the same unchanged, and, since the world is firmly balanced, its maker must needs be steadfast. We have other infallible witnesses in the sacred oracles,
ז׳
7[221] for we have these words with God as speaker: “Here I stand there before thou wast, on the rock in Horeb” (Ex. 17:6), which means, “This I, the manifest, Who am here, am there also, am everywhere, for I have filled all things. I stand ever the same immutable, before thou or aught that exists came into being, established on the topmost and most ancient source of power, whence showers forth the birth of all that is, whence streams the tide of wisdom.”
ח׳
8[222] For I am He “Who brought the fountain of water from out the steep rock,” as it says elsewhere (Deut. 8:15). And Moses too gives his testimony to the unchangeableness of the deity when he says “they saw the place where the God of Israel stood” (Ex. 24:10), for by the standing or establishment he indicates his immutability.