על השיכרות ל״גOn Drunkenness 33
א׳
1[130] In a literal sense too, this command deserves our admiration. For surely it is seemly that men should come to prayers and holy services sober and with full control of themselves, just as on the other hand to come with both body and soul relaxed with wine is a matter for scorn and ridicule.
ב׳
2[131] We know that when servants are about to approach their masters, or sons their parents, or subjects their rulers, they will take careful thought to be sober that they may not transgress in word and deed, and thus either receive punishment for having shewn contempt for the dignity of their betters, or at the best become an object of scorn. And shall he who claims to serve the Lord and Father of all, instead of rising superior to food and drink and all other natural necessities, fall away to luxury and affect the life of the dissolute? Shall he, with his eyes heavy with wine and his head lolling and his neck bent awry, come belching from his intemperance, limp and flabby in every limb, to touch the holy water or the altars or the sacrifices? Nay, for such a one it were a sacrilege that he should even from a distance behold the sacred fire.
ג׳
3[132] But if we suppose that no actual tabernacle or altar is meant, that is the visible objects fashioned from lifeless and perishable material, but those invisible conceptions perceived only by the mind, of which the others are copies open to our senses, he will be still more lost in admiration at the ordinance.
ד׳
4[133] For since the Creator made both the pattern and the copy in all that He made, virtue was not excepted: He wrought its archetypal seal, and He also stamped with this an impression which was its close counterpart. The archetypal seal is an incorporeal idea, but the copy which is made by the impression is something else—a material something, naturally perceptible by the senses, yet not actually coming into relation with them; just as we might say that a piece of wood buried in the deepest part of the Atlantic ocean has a natural capacity for being burnt, though actually it will never be consumed by fire because the sea is around and above it.
