על הבריחה והמציאה כ״בOn Flight and Finding 22
א׳
1[119] Having now said all that was called for on the subject of fugitives, we will go on to treat of what comes next in natural sequence. The next words are “An angel of the Lord found her” (Gen. 16:7)—the angel who decreed a return home to a soul whose shame was like to lead into wandering, and well-nigh was its escort back to the frame of mind which wanders not.
ב׳
2[120] It will be an advantage that the lawgiver’s reflections about finding and seeking should not be passed over. He represents some as neither seeking nor finding anything, others as succeeding in both, some as having mastered one but not the other, either seeking and not finding, or finding without having sought.
ג׳
3[121] Those with no desire either to find or to seek grievously impair their faculty of reason, by refusing to train and exercise it, and, though capable of being keen-sighted, become blind. This is his meaning when he says that “Lot’s wife turned backwards and became a pillar” (Gen. 19:26), and here he is not inventing a fable but indicating precisely a real fact.
ד׳
4[122] For a man who is led by innate and habitual laziness to pay no attention to his teacher neglects what lies in front of him, which would enable him to see and hear and use his other faculties for the observation of nature’s facts. Instead he twists his neck and turns his face backwards, and his thoughts are all for the dark and hidden side—of life, that is, not of the body and its parts, and so he turns into a pillar and becomes like a deaf and lifeless stone.
ה׳
5[123] Speaking of such characters as these Moses says that they did not get “a heart to understand, and eyes to see, and ears to hear” (Deut. 29:4), but wrought out for themselves a life that was no life, blind and deaf and unintelligent and in every way maimed, setting themselves to nothing that demands their thoughts.