על בריאת העולם י״חOn the Account of the World's Creation 18
א׳
1[55] It was with a view to that original intellectual light, which I have mentioned as belonging to the order of the incorporeal world, that He created the heavenly bodies of which our senses are aware. These are images divine and exceeding fair, which He established in heaven as in the purest temple belonging to corporeal being. This He did that they might serve many purposes. One purpose was to give light; another to be signs; a third duly to fix seasons of the year; and lastly for the sake of days, months, years, which (as we all know) have served as measures of time and given birth to number.
ב׳
2[56] The kind of useful service rendered by each of the bodies mentioned is self-evident; yet that the truth may be more precisely apprehended it may not be out of place to follow it step by step in a reasoned account.
ג׳
3All time having been divided into two portions, day and night, the Father assigned the sovereignty of the day to the sun, as to a great king, and that of the night to the moon and the host of the other stars.
ד׳
4[57] The greatness of the sway and government pertaining to the sun finds its clearest proof in what has been already mentioned: one and alone it has by itself separately had day apportioned to it, half of the whole of time; while all the rest with the moon have had allotted to them the other half, which has received the name of night. And when the sun has risen, all that multitude of stars which were visible but now is not merely dimmed but becomes actually invisible through the pouring forth of its light; and upon its setting they begin all of them to shine out in their own true characters.