על השכר והעונש י״בOn Rewards and Punishments 12
א׳
1[67] We have discussed typical examples of the rewards assigned in the past to the good both individually and in common with others, from which anyone can easily discern those which have been left unnoticed. We have next to consider in their turn the punishments appointed for the wicked, but in a general way since this is not the time to describe particular cases.
ב׳
2[68] At the very beginning when the human race had not yet multiplied arose a fratricide. He it was who first fell under a curse, who first brought the monstrous pollution of human blood upon the still pure earth, who first, when it was giving birth and growth to every kind of animals and plants and was bright with all the products of its fruitfulness, set a bar to that fruitfulness, who first armed dissolution against generation, death against life, sorrow against joy and evil against good.
ג׳
3[69] What then could be done to him by which he would pay the penalty he deserved, he who in a single action included everything that is violent and impious? Slay him, perhaps you will say. That is a man’s idea—man who has no eyes for the great court of justice,—for men think that death is the termination of punishment but in the divine court it is hardly the beginning.
ד׳
4[70] Since then the deed was without precedent, the punishment devised had to be also without precedent. What is this punishment? That he should live for ever in a state of dying and so to speak suffer a death which is deathless and unending. For there are two kinds of death, one consists in being dead, which is something either good or indifferent, the other consists in dying and that is entirely bad, more painful because more durable.
ה׳
5[71] Death thus remains with him perpetually; observe how that is effected. There are four passions in the soul, two concerned with the good, either at the time or in the future, that is pleasure and desire, and two concerned with evil present or expected, that is grief and fear. The pair on the good side God tore out of him by the roots so that never by any chance he should have any pleasant sensations or desire anything pleasant, and engrafted in him only the pair on the bad side, producing grief unmixed with cheerfulness and fear unrelieved.
ו׳
6[72] For he says that he laid a curse upon the fratricide that he should ever “groan and tremble.” And he set a sign upon him that no man should slay him so that he should not die once but continue perpetually dying, as I have said, dying with anguish and distress and sufferings unceasing, and most grievous of all should be sensible of his own evil plight, feeling the weight of the present ills and foreseeing the onrush of those yet to come against which he could not guard. For hope had been torn from him, hope which God has sown in mankind that they should have a comforter to be part of their nature and give relief to the distress of all whose deeds are not beyond atonement.
ז׳
7[73] So as a man carried away by a torrent dreads the stream around him in which he is swept along but dreads still more the onrush of the flood from above propelling him violently and ceaselessly, but also towering high over him and threatening to engulf him, so too the ills close at hand are painful but more grievous are those which flow from fear, fear which supplies abundance of sorrows as from a fountain.
