על הבריחה והמציאה י״דOn Flight and Finding 14
א׳
1[71] Wherefore also, while in the former case the expression used was “let us make man,” as though more than one were to do it, there is used afterwards an expression pointing to One, “God made the man” (Gen. 1:27). For of the real man, who is absolutely pure Mind, One, even the only God, is the Maker; but a plurality of makers produce man so-called, one that has an admixture of sense-perception.
ב׳
2[72] That is why he who is man in the special sense is mentioned with the article. The words run “God made the man,” that invisible reasoning faculty free from admixture. The other has no article added; for the words “let us make man” point to him in whom an irrational and rational nature are woven together.
ג׳
3[73] In adherence to the same principle he ascribes the blessing of the good and the cursing of the guilty to different persons. Both, it is true, receive praise, but blessing those worthy of blessing enjoys the prerogative which belongs to eulogies, while the laying of curses on the evil occupies but a second place. Therefore of those appointed for this purpose, the chiefs of the race, twelve in number, whom we are accustomed to call tribe-leaders, he set the six best over the blessing, Symeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin; and the other six over the cursing, the first and the last of the sons of Leah, Reuben and Zabulon, and the four bastard-born of the handmaids (Deut. 27:12 f.).
ד׳
4[74] For the leaders of the royal and of the priestly tribe hold a position in the former list, Judah and Levi. Quite naturally, then, does He give up for punishment into the hands of others those who commit acts deserving death. He wishes to teach us that the nature of evil is far removed from the Divine Company, inasmuch as even the good thing which imitates evil, punishment, is ratified by means of others.
ה׳
5[75] The terms in which the announcement “I will give thee a place where the” unintentional “slayer shall take refuge” is made, seem to me to be excellently chosen. For here He uses the word “place,” not of a space entirely filled by a body, but symbolically of God Himself, since He contains and is not contained, and because He is the Refuge for the whole universe.
ו׳
6[76] It is lawful, therefore, for one who feels that he has fallen into an unintentional offence, to say that the offence came about as God ordained, a statement which the deliberate wrongdoer may not make. Further He says that He “will give” not to the slayer but to him whom He is addressing, which shews that the dweller in the place is a different person from him who escapes thither. For to His Word, as to one indigenous, God has given His knowledge as a fatherland to dwell in, but to one who has fallen into unintentional offences He has given it as a place of refuge, as a strange land to an alien, not as a fatherland to one with a citizen’s rights.