על הזיווג לשם ההשכלה (על לימודי היסוד) י״אOn Mating with the Preliminary Studies 11
א׳
1[54] The wicked, too, take to them as concubines, opinions and doctrines. Thus he says that Timna, the concubine of Eliphaz, the son of Esau, bore Amalek to Eliphaz (Gen. 36:12). How distinguished is the misbirth of him whose descent is here given! What the misbirth is you will see, if you cast away all thought that these words refer to men and turn your attention to what we may call the anatomy of soul-nature.
ב׳
2[55] It is then the unreasoning and unmeasured impulse or appetite of passion which he calls Amalek, for the word by translation means “people licking up.” For as the force of fire consumes the fuel laid before it, so too the boiling of passion licks up and destroys all that stands in its way.
ג׳
3[56] This passion is rightly declared to have Eliphaz for its father, for Eliphaz means “God hath dispersed me.” And is it not true that when God scatters and disperses the soul and ejects it with contumely from His presence unreasoning passion is at once engendered? The mind which truly loves God, that has the vision of Him, He “plants in,” as a branch of goodly birth, and He deepens its roots to reach to eternity and gives it fruitfulness for the acquisition and enjoyment of virtue.
ד׳
4[57] That is why Moses prays in these words, “Bring them in and plant them in” (Ex. 15:17), that the saplings of God’s culture may not be for a day but age-long and immortal. On the other hand he banishes the unjust and godless souls from himself to the furthest bounds, and disperses them to the place of pleasures and lusts and injustices. That place is most fitly called the place of the impious, but it is not that mythical place of the impious in Hades. For the true Hades is the life of the bad, a life of damnation and blood-guiltiness, the victim of every curse.