על יוסף כ״הOn Joseph 25
א׳
1[148] Again there is a symbolic meaning in saying that Joseph mounts on the king’s second chariot, and the reason is this. The statesman takes a second place to the king, for he is neither a private person nor a king, but something between the two. He is greater than a private person but less than a king in absolute power, since he has the people for his king, and to serve that king with pure and guileless good faith is the task he has set before him.
ב׳
2[149] He rides, too, aloft seated on a chariot, raised on high both by the affairs he handles and the multitude around him, especially when everything great and small goes as he would have it, when from none comes any counterblast or opposition, and under the safe pilotage of God all is well with the voyage.
ג׳
3And the ring which the king gives is the clearest sign of the good faith which the king-people places in the statesman and the statesman in the king-people.
ד׳
4[150] The golden chain around his neck seems to indicate both high fame and punishment, for while affairs of state fare well in his hands he is proud and dignified and honoured by the multitude, but when disaster befalls him, not indeed of his set purpose which would imply guilt, but by chance which is a venial matter, he is all the same dragged down to the dust by the decoration round his neck, and as he falls you may almost hear his master say: “I gave you this neck circlet both as a decoration when my business prospers and as a halter when it goes amiss.”