על הבריחה והמציאה י״חOn Flight and Finding 18
א׳
1[94] Such are the reasons for the perpetrators of unintentional homicide taking refuge only in the cities of the Tabernacle attendants. We must next say what those cities are, and why they are six in number. It would seem, then, that the chiefest and surest and best mother-city something more than just a city, is the Divine Word, and that to take refuge first in it is supremely advantageous.
ב׳
2[95] The other five, colonies as it were, are powers of Him who speaks that Word, their leader being creative power, in the exercise of which the Creator produced the universe by a word ; second in order is the royal power, in virtue of which He that has made it governs that which has come into being; third stands the gracious power, in the exercise of which the Great Artificer takes pity and compassion on his own work; fourth 〈is the legislative power, by which He prescribes duties incumbent on us; and fifth〉 that division of legislation, by which He prohibits those things which should not be done.
ג׳
3[96] Right goodly cities are they, and exceeding strong in their ramparts, noblest refuges for souls meet to be in safety for ever: kind and beneficent is the ordinance, with power to stimulate and brace to hopefulness. What ordinance could better shew the rich abundance of these beneficial powers adapted to the differences in the victims of involuntary lapses, so various both in their strength and in their weakness?
ד׳
4[97] The man who is capable of running swiftly it bids stay not to draw breath but pass forward to the supreme Divine Word, Who is the fountain of Wisdom, in order that he may draw from the stream and, released from death, gain life eternal as his prize. One less swift-footed it directs to the power to which Moses gives the name “God,” since by it the Universe was established and ordered. It urges him to flee for refuge to the creative power, knowing that to one who has grasped the fact that the whole world was brought into being a vast good accrues, even the knowledge of its Maker, which straightway wins the thing created to love Him to whom it owes its being.
ה׳
5[98] One who is less ready it urges to betake himself to the kingly power, for fear of the sovereign has a force of correction to admonish the subject, where a father’s kindness has none such for the child. For him who fails to reach the posts just mentioned, because he thinks them too far distant, another set of goals have been set up nearer the starting-point—the gracious power, the power which enjoins duties, and that which forbids offences; those in fact which are indispensable.
ו׳
6[99] For he that has made sure that the Godhead is not inexorable, but kindly, owing to gentleness of nature, even if he have first sinned, afterwards repents in hope of forgiveness; and he that has taken in the thought that God is Lawgiver, will by obeying all His injunctions attain happiness; while the last of the three will gain a third and last refuge, the averting of ills, even if he fail to obtain a share of God’s principal good gifts.