על השכר והעונש י״זOn Rewards and Punishments 17
א׳
1[98] These are the first blessings which he tells us will fall to the lot of those who follow God and always and everywhere cleave to His commandments and so fasten them to every part of life that no part can go astray into new and unwholesome ways. The second blessing is wealth which necessarily follows peace and settled authority.
ב׳
2[99] Now the simple wealth of nature is food and shelter. Its food is bread and the spring water which gushes up in every part of the inhabited world. Shelter is of two kinds, raiment and housing, to save us from the injuries which cold and heat bring in their train, and both of these, if anyone is willing to eliminate costly and superfluous extravagance,
ג׳
3[100] are very easily obtainable. Yet those who pursue the above-named wealth, who welcome the gifts of nature and not those of empty seeming, who practise frugality and self-restraint, will possess also abundance and more than abundance of another wealth in the shape of delectable food, and that without effort on their part. For it will spring to meet them as best fitted to receive it and as men of serious purpose who will know how to use it aright, and it will gladly flee from association with men of profligacy and violence, lest it should minister its boons to those who live to harm their neighbours and pass by those who serve the common weal.
ד׳
4[101] For there is a divine promise that on those who keep the sacred ordinances Heaven will shower timely rains, and the earth will bear abundance of every kind of food, the lowlands of sown grain, the highlands of tree fruits, and no season will be left without some measure of beneficence, but so continuous will be the succession of the gifts of God “that the reaping will overtake the vintage and the vintage the seed time.”
ה׳
5[102] Thus in ceaseless and unbroken order they will gather in the former harvest and hope for the latter, one set waiting to follow another, so that the beginnings of the later may join on to the ends of the earlier and move round and round in a procession from which no good thing is withheld.
ו׳
6[103] For the multitude of things produced will suffice both for immediate use and enjoyment and to provide a generous surplus for the future, as the new crops ripen over the old and fill up what is lacking in them. Sometimes so vast will be the fertility that no one will take any thought for the harvest that is past but will leave it unhusbanded and unhoarded for all who wish to use it without fear or scruple.
ז׳
7[104] For those who possess stored up in Heaven the true wealth whose adornment is wisdom and godliness have also wealth of earthly riches in abundance. For under the providence and good care of God their store-houses are ever filled, because the impulses of their minds and the undertakings of their hands are never hindered in carrying out successfully the purposes which they ever zealously pursue.
ח׳
8[105] But those who through injustice and impiety have no heavenly portion cannot prosper in acquiring earthly goods either, and if any such acquisition comes their way it speedily springs away as if its coming at all were not to benefit its possessor but to make the distress which necessarily follows on lack of means weigh more heavily upon him.
