על הבריחה והמציאה ט׳On Flight and Finding 9
א׳
1[48] Similar instructions are given him by his father, with slight additions; for he says, “Rise up and flee away into Mesopotamia, to the house of Bethuel thy mother’s father, and take to thee thence a wife from the daughters of Laban thy mother’s brother” (Gen. 28:2).
ב׳
2[49] Notice here again how he too, when speaking of Laban as intended to become a connexion by marriage with the Practiser, called him not “Syrian” but “brother of Rebecca.” “Flee away,” he says, “into Mesopotamia,” into the midst, that is, of the torrent of life’s river, and take care that thou be not overwhelmed by it and drowned, but set thyself firmly, and beat back with vigour the current of affairs as it comes dashing upon thee with utmost violence, from above and from either side and from all directions.
ג׳
3[50] For thou shalt find the house of wisdom a calm and fair haven, which will welcome thee kindly as thou comest to thy moorings in it; and it is wisdom’s name that the holy oracles proclaim by “Bethuel,” a name meaning in our speech “Daughter of God”; yea, a true-born and ever-virgin daughter, who, by reason alike of her own modesty and of the glory of Him that begot her, hath obtained a nature free from every defiling touch.
ד׳
4[51] He called Bethuel Rebecca’s father. How, pray, can Wisdom, the daughter of God, be rightly spoken of as a father? Is it because, while Wisdom’s name is feminine, her nature is manly? As indeed all the virtues have women’s titles, but powers and activities of consummate men. For that which comes after God, even though it were chiefest of all other things, occupies a second place, and therefore was termed feminine to express its contrast with the Maker of the Universe who is masculine, and its affinity to everything else. For pre-eminence always pertains to the masculine, and the feminine always comes short of and is lesser than it.
ה׳
5[52] Let us, then, pay no heed to the discrepancy in the gender of the words, and say that the daughter of God, even Wisdom, is not only masculine but father, sowing and begetting in souls aptness to learn, discipline, knowledge, sound sense, good and laudable actions. It is from this household that Jacob the Practiser seeks to win a bride. To what other place than to the house of wisdom shall he go to find a partner, a faultless judgement, with whom to spend his days for ever?