על השיכרות ט״וOn Drunkenness 15
א׳
1[63] But we who are still under the sway of habit, the unmanly and womanish habit, whose concern is with the senses and the objects of sense and the passions, cannot stand up against phenomena in any form, but all of them, even those of the common sort, draw us on sometimes with our free will, sometimes without it.
ב׳
2[64] Yet if our battalion be unable to do service to the father’s commands and thus suffer defeat, it will none the less have an ally in the mother, the lower education, who enacts from city to city the ordinances which custom and opinion approve, her legislation differing with the different peoples.
ג׳
3[65] But there are also some who despise the mother’s bidding, but cling with all their might to the father’s words, and these right reason has judged worthy of the highest honour, the priesthood. And if we describe their deeds, for which they were thus rewarded, we shall perhaps incur the mockery of many, who are deceived by the semblances that lie ready before their eyes but do not descry the values which are unseen and wrapt in shadow.
ד׳
4[66] For they into whose charge the work of prayer and sacrifice and all the worship of the temple was given, are actually—strange paradox—homicides, fratricides, slayers of the bodies which are nearest and dearest to them, though they should have come to their office, pure in themselves and in their lineage, having had no contact with any pollution even involuntary, far less voluntary.
ה׳
5[67] For we read “slay each his brother and each his neighbour and each him that is nearest to him. And the children of Levi did as Moses spake, and there fell of the people on that day up to three thousand men” (Exod. 32:27, 28). And he praises those who had slain this great multitude with these words, “ye have filled your hands to-day unto the Lord, each in his son or in his brother, that blessing should be given upon you” (Exod. 32:29).
