על השכר והעונש י״דOn Rewards and Punishments 14
א׳
1[79] … A clear testimony is recorded in the Holy Scriptures. We will cite first the invocations which he is accustomed to call benedictions. If, he says, you keep the divine commandment in obedience to his ordinances and accept his precepts, not merely to hear them but to carry them out by your life and conduct, the first boon you will have is victory over your enemies.
ב׳
2[80] For the commandments are not too huge and heavy for the strength of those to whom they will apply, nor is the good far away either beyond the sea or at the end of the earth, so that it requires of you a lingering and wearisome exile, nor has it suddenly left this earth to settle in Heaven, so that one can scarce reach them though he soar on high and wing his way thither. No, it is close by, very near, firmly set in three of the parts of which each of us is constituted, mouth and heart and hand, representing in a figure respectively speech and thought and action.
ג׳
3[81] For if our words correspond with our thoughts and intentions and our actions with our words and the three mutually follow each other, bound together with indissoluble bonds of harmony, happiness prevails and happiness is wisdom pure of all falsehood, the higher and the lower wisdom, the higher for the worship of God, the lower for the regulation of human life.
ד׳
4[82] Now while the commandments of the laws are only on our lips our acceptance of them is little or none, but when we add thereto deeds which follow in their company, deeds shown in the whole conduct of our lives, the commandments will be as it were brought up out of the deep darkness into the light and surrounded with the brightness of good fame and good report.
ה׳
5[83] For who, however spiteful his nature, would not admit that surely that nation alone is wise and full of knowledge whose history has been such that it has not left the divine exhortations voided and forsaken by the actions which are akin to them, but has fulfilled the words with laudable deeds?
ו׳
6[84] Such a race has its dwelling not far from God; it has the vision of etherial loveliness always before its eyes, and its steps are guided by a heavenward yearning. So that if one should ask “what manner of nation is great?”, others might aptly answer “a nation which has God to listen to its prayers inspired by true religion and to draw nigh when they call upon him with a clean conscience.”
