על הבריחה והמציאה י״אOn Flight and Finding 11
א׳
1[56] She confirmed what she said by holy oracles also, one of them to this effect: “Ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive all of you at this day” (Deut. 4:4). For only those who have taken refuge in God and become His supplicants does Moses recognize as living, accounting the rest to be dead men. Indeed he evidently ascribes immortality to the former by adding “ye are alive ‘to-day.’ ”
ב׳
2[57] Now “to-day” is the limitless age that never comes to an end; for periods of months and years, and of lengths of time generally, are notions of men arising from the high importance which they have attached to number. But the absolutely correct name for “endless age” is “to-day.” For the sun never changes, but is always the same, going now above, now below, the earth; and through it day and night, the measures of endless age, are distinguished.
ג׳
3[58] Another oracle by which she verified her statement was this: “Behold, I have given before thy face life and death, good and evil” (Deut. 30:15). Accordingly, thou wisest of teachers, goodness and virtue is life, evil and wickedness is death. Again, elsewhere: “This is thy life and length of days, to love the Lord thy God” (Deut. 30:20). This is a most noble definition of deathless life, to be possessed by a love of God and a friendship for God with which flesh and body have no concern.
ד׳
4[59] It is thus that the priests Nadab and Abihu die in order that they may live, receiving an incorruptible life in exchange for mortal existence, and being translated from the created to the uncreate. Over them a proclamation is uttered betokening immortality, “They died before the Lord” (Lev. 10:2), that is “They came to life,” for a corpse may not come into God’s presence. And again, “This is that which the Lord hath said, ‘I will be sanctified in them that draw nigh unto me’ ” (Lev. 10:3), “But dead men,” as we hear in the Psalms, “shall not praise the Lord” (Psalm 115:17): for that is the work of living men.
ה׳
5[60] On the other hand, of Cain the accursed fratricide’s death no mention is found anywhere in the Books of the Law—nay, there is an oracle uttered concerning him which says, “The Lord God set a sign on Cain, even this, that no man that found him should kill him” (Gen. 4:15).
ו׳
6[61] Why so? Because, I suppose, impiety is an evil that cannot come to an end, being ever set alight and never able to be quenched, so that we may fitly apply to wickedness the poet’s words:
ז׳
7No mortal is she, but a deathless ill.
ח׳
8It is in life as we know it that it is “deathless,” for in relation to the LIFE in God it is a lifeless corpse, “more utter refuse than dung,” as one has said.