על בריאת העולם ל״טOn the Account of the World's Creation 39
א׳
1[114] The Great Bear, moreover, which is called the mariners’ escort, consists of seven stars. Fixing their eyes on this, pilots cut those countless paths in the sea, undertaking an enterprise surpassing belief and human powers. For by keeping their eyes on the stars we have named they discovered countries hitherto unknown, dwellers on the continents discovering islands, and islanders continents. For it was meet that by heaven, purest of all things existing, should be revealed to the living creature best loved by God, even the human race, the secret recesses both of land and sea.
ב׳
2[115] Beside the cases already mentioned, the full tale of the band of Pleiades is made up of seven stars, whose appearances and disappearances are fraught with vast benefits to all men: for when they are setting, furrows are opened for sowing, and when they are about to rise, they announce reaping-time; and when they have risen, they make glad the workers on the land and rouse them to gather in the crops that meet their needs; and they blithely store up their food for daily use.
ג׳
3[116] The sun, too, the great lord of day, bringing about two equinoxes each year, in Spring and Autumn, the Spring equinox in the constellation of the Ram, and the Autumn equinox in that of the Scales, supplies very clear evidence of the sacred dignity of the 7th number, for each of the equinoxes occurs in a 7th month, and during them there is enjoined by law the keeping of the greatest national festivals, since at both of them all fruits of the earth ripen, in the Spring the wheat and all else that is sown, and in Autumn the fruit of the vine and most of the other fruit-trees.