על הבריחה והמציאה י״גOn Flight and Finding 13
א׳
1[65] The words, “not intentionally, but God delivered him into his hands,” are admirably employed of those who commit an unintentional homicide. The writer feels that intentional acts are acts of our own determination, and that unintentional acts are God’s acts: I mean not the sins, but, on the contrary, all acts that are a punishment for sins.
ב׳
2[66] For it is unbecoming to God to punish, seeing that He is the original and perfect Lawgiver: He punishes not by His own hands but by those of others who act as His ministers. Boons, gifts, benefits it is fitting that He should extend, since He is by nature good and bountiful, but punishments by the agency of others who are ready to perform such services, though not without his command given in virtue of his sovereignty.
ג׳
3[67] The Practiser testifies to what I say in the words, “God who nourishes me from youth, the Angel who delivers me out of all my evils” (Gen. 48:15 f.). He ascribes to God the more important good things, by which the soul is nourished, and the less important, which come about by escape from sins, to God’s minister.
ד׳
4[68] It is for this reason, I imagine, that Moses, when treating in his lessons of wisdom of the Creation of the world, after having said of all other things that they were made by God, described man alone as having been fashioned with the co-operation of others. His words are: “God said, let us make man after our image” (Gen. 1:26), “let us make” indicating more than one.
ה׳
5[69] So the Father of all things is holding parley with His powers, whom He allowed to fashion the mortal portion of our soul by imitating the skill shewn by Him when He was forming that in us which is rational, since He deemed it right that by the Sovereign should be wrought the sovereign faculty in the soul, the subject part being wrought by subjects.
ו׳
6[70] And He employed the powers that are associated with Him not only for the reason mentioned, but because, alone among created beings, the soul of man was to be susceptible of conceptions of evil things and good things, and to use one sort or the other, since it is impossible for him to use both. Therefore God deemed it necessary to assign the creation of evil things to other makers, reserving that of good things to Himself alone.