על השיכרות ד׳On Drunkenness 4
א׳
1[14] Now when Moses set up those who would properly plead the cause of an offender, namely his father and mother, to appear as his accusers, thus providing that those who might be expected to preserve him against all others should actually work his ruin, he shewed his desire that these natural supporters should be converted into enemies. “For if anyone,” he says, “has a disobedient and contentious son who does not listen to the voice of his father and mother, and they discipline him and he does not hearken to them, his father and mother shall take him and bring him forth to the assembly of the elders of his city and to the gate of his place, and shall say to the men of their city, ‘This our son is disobedient and contentious, he does not listen to our voice, he is a riotous liver and a wine-bibber,’ and the men of the city shall stone him with stones and thou shalt remove the evil one from among yourselves” (Deut. 21:18–21).
ב׳
2[15] We see then that the accusations are four in number, disobedience, contentiousness, participation in riotous feasting and drunkenness. But the last is the chief, rising to a climax from the first, disobedience. For when the soul has begun to cast off the reins and taken its onward course through strife and dissension, it reaches its utmost limit in drunkenness, which produces frenzy and madness. We must take these accusations one by one and observe their full meaning, beginning with the first.
