על השכר והעונש כ״הOn Rewards and Punishments 25
א׳
1[143] Besides all this diseases of the body will overpower and devour each separate limb and part, as well as tearing the whole frame right through with hot fits, cold fits, wasting consumption, malignant scabs, jaundice, mortification of the eyes, ulcers suppurating and creeping till they spread over the whole skin, dysentery, disorders of the intestine, obstruction of the passages in the lungs so that the respiration cannot travel properly. If the tongue is crippled or the ears lose their hearing, or the eyes their sight, or the other senses are dulled or disorganized, we have conditions which though terrible in themselves lose their terrors if compared with these graver symptoms,
ב׳
2[144] when the blood in the veins has lost its life-giving power and the breath in the bronchia can no longer receive a salutary fusion from its natural partner the air outside, and the nerves are relaxed and unstrung.
ג׳
3[145] These are followed by a breaking up of the harmony and concord which unites the members. They have already laboured under the stream of the bitter briny rheumatic humour which steals within them, and when it is enclosed in narrow passages through which it has no easy outlet, undergoes and in its turn exerts a heavy pressure, producing bitter and almost intolerable pains. This again engenders affections of the feet and joints and distempers for which no curative remedy is known, nor can human ingenuity find any way of healing them.
ד׳
4[146] Such sights will make people ask in amazement how it is that persons who but now were plump and well clothed with flesh in the full bloom of robust health have so suddenly wasted away and shrunk into nothing but a set of sinews with a thin coating of skin; and how women who have lived in ease and comfort, the dainty product of the luxury that has grown up with them from their earliest years, have become wizened in body as well as in soul through the cruel ravages of disease.
ה׳
5[147] Then too the enemy will pursue and the sword will exact justice. They will fly to their cities and think that they have found safety, but a false hope has deceived them; the enemy will be there already lying in wait, and they will perish wholesale.
