על הבריחה והמציאה ל״וOn Flight and Finding 36
א׳
1[197] And now we have to speak of the supreme and most excellent Spring, which the All-Father declared by the mouth of prophets. For He said in a certain place: “Me they forsook, a spring of Life, and dug for themselves broken cisterns, which shall fail to hold water” (Jer. 2:13).
ב׳
2[198] God, therefore, is the chiefest spring, and well may He be so called, for this whole universe is a rain that fell from Him. But I bow in awe when I hear that this spring is one of Life: for God alone is the Cause of soul and life, and preeminently of the rational soul, and of the Life that is united with wisdom. For matter is a dead thing, but God is something more than Life, an ever-flowing Spring of living, as He Himself says.
ג׳
3[199] But the impious flee from Him, persist in leaving untasted the water of immortality, and dig in their madness for themselves but not for God, putting their own works above the celestial gifts of heaven, and the results of forethought above those which come spontaneously and ready for their use.
ד׳
4[200] That is their first folly. In the next place they dig, not as did the wise, Abraham and Isaac, wells (Gen. 21:30, 26:18), deep sources of knowledge from which draughts of reason are drawn, but cisterns, having no excellent thing of their own to afford nourishment, but needing the inflow from without, that must come from teaching, as the instructors keep on pumping in unbroken stream into the ears of their pupils the principles and conclusions which constitute knowledge, that they may both grasp what is imparted to them with their intelligence and treasure it in their memory.
ה׳
5[201] As it is the “cisterns” are “broken,” that is to say, all the receptacles of the ill-conditioned soul are crushed and leaking, unable to hold in and keep the inflow of what might do them good.