על השכר והעונש כ״זOn Rewards and Punishments 27
א׳
1[153] When the cities have been thus consumed by fire and the country made desolate, the land will begin to take breath and raise its head—that land so long roughly handled in the grip of the intolerable violence shown by the inhabitants, who chased the virgin Sevens into banishment both from the country and from their thoughts. For the sole, or to speak more cautiously, the chief feasts appointed by nature are the recurrence of the sevenths in days and years, days to give rest to men, years to the country.
ב׳
2[154] But they have closed their eyes to the whole of this law, to the salt, to the libations, to the altar of mercy, to the common hearth, all which have served as bonds of friendship and goodwill, all of them produced by Seven and embraced in Seven. On men they have laid a heavy burden, the stronger oppressing the weaker, by making the tasks which they impose continuous and unbroken: on the fields, by ever pursuing unjust gains in the coveteousness of their hearts, lust at the base and on it impulses to action unjust and unrestrained, which never can be satisfied.
ג׳
3[155] Instead of granting to men who in absolute truth were their brethren, children of one mother their common nature, the appointed holiday after every six days, and to the land after every six years its time of release from the burden of sowing and planting lest it become exhausted by repeated labours,
ד׳
4[156] they set at nought their kindly admonitions which call to gentleness. They oppressed the souls and bodies of all whom they could with perpetual hardships and undermined the strength of the deep soiled field while they accumulated wealth insatiably by levying tributes greater than it could bear and broke it down utterly through its whole extent by tolls exacted not only annually but daily.
ה׳
5[157] For this they themselves will receive the full measure of curses and penalties named above, but the land unstrung by the numberless mishandlings which it has undergone will now be relieved, disburdened of the heavy weight of its impious inhabitants. And when she looks around and sees none of the destroyers of her former pride and high name, sees her market places void of turmoil and war and wrongdoing, but full of tranquillity and peace and justice, she will renew her youth and bloom and take her rest calm and serene during the festal seasons of the sacred Seven, rallying her strength like a wrestler after his first bout.
ו׳
6[158] Then like a fond mother she will pity the sons and daughters whom she has lost, who in death and still more when in life were a grief to their parents. Young once more she will be fruitful and bear a blameless generation to redress the one that went before. For she that is desolate, says the prophet, will have children many and fine, a saying which also is an allegory of the history of the soul.
ז׳
7[159] For when the soul is “many,” full that is of passions and vices with her children, pleasures, desires, folly, incontinence, injustice, gathered around her, she is feeble and sick and dangerously near to death. But when she has become barren and ceases to produce these children or indeed has cast them out bodily she is transformed into a pure virgin.
ח׳
8[160] Then receiving the divine seed she moulds it into shape and brings forth new life in forms of precious quality and marvellous loveliness, wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, holiness, piety and the other virtues and good emotions. Not only is it well that these goodly children should be brought to the birth, but good also is the expectation of this birth, the forecast cheering the soul’s weakness with hope.
ט׳
9[161] Hope is joy before joy, falling short of the perfection of the other yet superior to its successor in two ways, one that it relaxes with its unction the aridity of our cares, the other that it goes before as a harbinger of the plenitude of good which is to be.
