על עבודת האדמה כ״בOn Husbandry 22
א׳
1[96] Told in this way, these things are like prodigies and marvels, one serpent emitting a human voice and using quibbling arguments to an utterly guileless character, and cheating a woman with seductive plausibilities; and another proving the author of complete deliverance to those who beheld it.
ב׳
2[97] But when we interpret words by the meanings that lie beneath the surface, all that is mythical is removed out of our way, and the real sense becomes as clear as daylight. Well then, we say that the woman is Life depending on the senses and material substance of our bodies; that her serpent is pleasure, a crawling thing with many a twist, powerless to raise itself upright, always prone, creeping after the good things of earth alone, making for the hiding-places afforded to it by the body, making its lair in each of the senses as in cavities or dug-outs, giving advice to a human being, athirst for the blood of anything better than itself, delighting to cause death by poisonous and painless bites. We say that the serpent of Moses is the disposition quite contrary to pleasure, even steadfast endurance, which explains why it is represented as being made of very strong material like brass.
ג׳
3[98] He, then, who has looked with fixed gaze on the form of patient endurance, even though he should perchance have been previously bitten by the wiles of pleasure, cannot but live; for, whereas pleasure menaces the soul with inevitable death, self-control holds out to it health and safety for life; and self-mastery, that averter of ills, is an antidote to licentiousness.
ד׳
4[99] And the thing that is beautiful and noble, which assuredly brings health and salvation, is dear to every wise man. So when Moses prays, either that there may be for Dan, or that Dan himself may be, a serpent (for the words may be taken either way), he prays for a serpent corresponding to the one made by him, but not like Eve’s; for prayer is an asking for good things.
ה׳
5[100] And we know that endurance is of a good kind that brings immortality, a perfect good, while pleasure is of an evil kind that inflicts the greatest penalty, even death. Wherefore it says, “Let Dan become a serpent” not elsewhere than “on the road.”
ו׳
6[101] For lack of self-control, and gluttony, and all else that issues from the womb of those immoderate and insatiate pleasures that ever conceive by the abundance of external comforts, never allow the soul to go along the straight course by the highway, but compel it to fall into pits and clefts, until they have utterly destroyed it. But only the practice of endurance and temperance and other virtue secures for the soul a safe journey where there is no slippery object under foot upon which the soul must stumble and be laid low. Most fitly therefore did he say that temperance keeps to the right road, since the opposite condition, that of licentiousness, finds no road at all.