על השכר והעונש כ׳On Rewards and Punishments 20
א׳
1[118] So much for the external blessings promised, victories over enemies, successes in wars, establishments of peace and abundant supplies of the good things of peace, honours and offices and the eulogies accompanying the successful, who receive praise from the lips of all, friends and enemies, praises prompted by goodwill in the one case and by fear in the other. But we must also speak of a more personal matter, the blessings bestowed on the body.
ב׳
2[119] He promises that those who take pains to cultivate virtue and set the holy laws before them to guide them in all they do or say in their private or in their public capacity will receive as well the gift of complete freedom from disease, and if some infirmity should befall them it will come not to do them injury but to remind the mortal that he is mortal, to humble his over-weening spirit and to improve his moral condition. Health will be followed by efficiency of the senses and the perfection and completeness of every part, so that without impediment they may render each the services for which it was made.
ג׳
3[120] For God thought it meet to grant as a privilege to the man of worth that his body, the congenital house of the soul, should be a house well built and well compacted from foundation to roof, to provide the many things which are necessary or useful for life and particularly for the sake of the mind of which we are speaking, a mind purged clean of every spot.
ד׳
4[121] This mind, the initiate of the holy mysteries, the fellow traveller of the heavenly bodies as they revolve in ordered march, has been honoured with the gift of quietude by God, who willed that it should be undistracted, never affected by any of the troublesome sensations which the distresses of the body engender, subjecting it to a domination unduly usurped by such sensations. For if anything over-chills or over-heats it, the house becomes warped and dried up or contrariwise wet and damp, and all these make the mind incapable of guiding the course of its own life aright.
ה׳
5[122] But if it resides in a healthy body it will have full ease to live there devoting its leisure to the lore of wisdom, thus gaining a blessed and happy life. This mind it is that drinks deep of the strong wine of God’s beneficent power and feasts on holy thoughts and doctrines.
ו׳
6[123] This it is in which God, so says the prophet, “walks” as in a palace, for in truth the wise man’s mind is a palace and house of God. This it is which is declared to possess personally the God who is the God of all, this again is the chosen people, the people not of particular rulers, but of the one and only true ruler, a people holy even as He is holy.
ז׳
7[124] This it is which but now lay under the yoke of many pleasures and many lusts and the innumerable distresses which its vices and lusts entail, but has been redeemed into freedom by God, who broke asunder the miseries of its slavery. This it is which received a benefaction not named with bated breath but noised abroad and proclaimed on every side because of the mightiness of its champion, whereby it was not dragged down tailwards but lifted up to the head.
ח׳
8[125] These last words contain an allegory and are figuratively expressed. For as in an animal the head is the first and best part and the tail the last and meanest, and in fact not a part which helps to complete the list of members, but a means of swishing off the winged creatures which settle on it, so too he means that the virtuous one, whether single man or people, will be the head of the human race and all the others like the limbs of a body which draw their life from the forces in the head and at the top.
ט׳
9[126] These are the blessings invoked upon good men, men who fulfil the laws by their deeds, which blessings will be accomplished by the gift of the bounteous God, who glorifies and rewards moral excellence because of its likeness to Himself. We must now investigate the curses delivered against the law-breakers and transgressors.
י׳
10On Curses
