על הזיווג לשם ההשכלה (על לימודי היסוד) כ׳On Mating with the Preliminary Studies 20
א׳
1[110] It is on the same principle, as it seems to me, that Moses, after choosing rulers of thousands and hundreds and fifties, appointed rulers of tens last of all (Ex. 18:25), so that if the mind could not be bettered through the work of the senior ranks, it might get purification through the hindermost.
ב׳
2[111] And that is the high truth, too, which the servant of the lover of learning had mastered when he went as ambassador on that splendid errand, wooing for the man of self-taught wisdom the bride most suited to him, constancy (Gen. 24:10); for out of the many or rather countless memories of his lord, he takes “ten camels,” that is the “reminding” which right instruction figured by the ten produces.
ג׳
3[112] He takes too of “his goods,” clearly meaning not gold or silver or any others which are found in perishable materials, for Moses never gave the name of good to these; but genuine goods, which are soul-goods only, he takes for his journey’s provisions and his trading wares,—teaching, progress, earnestness, longing, ardour, inspiration, prophecy, and the love of high achievement.
ד׳
4[113] By practice and exercising himself in these, when the time comes for him to leave the seas, so to speak, and anchor in harbour, we shall find that he takes two ear-rings, drawing a weight of a drachma, and bracelets of ten weights of gold for the hands of the bride, whom he courts for his master (Gen. 24:22). Truly a glorious adorning, first that the thing heard should be a single drachma, a unit without fractions whose nature is to draw, for it is not well that hearing should devote itself to aught save one story only, a story which tells in noble words the excellences of the one and only God; secondly, that the undertakings of the hands should be of ten weights of gold, for the actions of wisdom rest firmly on perfect numbers and each of them is more precious than gold.