על השכר והעונש י״טOn Rewards and Punishments 19
א׳
1[111] This is what he means when he gives the prediction “thou shalt fulfil the number of thy days” and the exactness and aptness of the words which he uses is truly admirable. For the ignorant and lawless is of no account, as they say, and has no number, but he who can lay claim to instruction and holy laws has for his first boon that he is seen to be of high account and well approved and therefore gains a number and a place in an ordered line.
ב׳
2[112] Marvellously apt too is the phrase that the fulfilment is not of months or years but of days, signifying that every day of the man of worth must leave nothing void or empty where sin can come in, but have every part and space in it filled up with virtuous and excellent living, for virtue and excellence are judged not by quantity but by quality. Therefore he held that the wise man’s single day rightly spent is worth a whole life-time.
ג׳
3[113] This is what he suggests in another place where he says that such a man will be worthy of blessing both in his goings out and in his comings in, because in all his ways, moving or standing, the good man shows his merit both inside and outside, both as householder and as statesman, his household skill shown in right management within, his statesmanship in outside reforms as the welfare of the state requires.
ד׳
4[114] So then one such man in a city, if such be found, will be superior to the city, one such city to the country around, one such nation will stand above other nations, as the head above the body, to be conspicuous on every side, not for its own glory but rather for the benefit of the beholders. For to gaze continuously upon noble models imprints their likeness in souls which are not entirely hardened and stony.
ה׳
5[115] And therefore those who would imitate these examples of good living so marvellous in their loveliness, are bidden not to despair of changing for the better or of a restoration to the land of wisdom and virtue from the spiritual dispersion which vice has wrought.
ו׳
6[116] For when God is gracious He makes all things light and easy, and He does become gracious to those who depart with shame from incontinence to self-restraint and deplore the deeds of their guilty past, abhor the base illusive images which they imprinted on their souls and first earnestly strive to still the storm of the passions, then seek to lead a life of serenity and peace.
ז׳
7[117] So then just as God with a single call may easily gather together from the ends of the earth to any place that He wills the exiles dwelling in the utmost parts of the earth, so too the mind which has strayed everywhere in prolonged vagrancy, maltreated by pleasure and lust, the mistresses it honoured so unduly, may well be brought back by the mercy of its Saviour from the pathless wild into a road wherein it is resolved to flee straight on, a flight not the discredited flight of the outcast, but a flight of one banished from evil to salvation, a banishment which may be truly held to be better than a recall.
