על בריאת העולם נ״חOn the Account of the World's Creation 58
א׳
1But what has now been said is enough to show why the serpent seemed to utter a human voice. It is for this reason, I think, that even in the detailed laws, where the lawgiver writes about animals, laying down which may be eaten and which may not, he especially praises the “snake-fighter” as it is called (Lev. 11:22). This is a reptile with legs above its feet, with which it springs from the ground and lifts itself into the air like a grasshopper.
ב׳
2[164] For the snake-fighter is, I think, nothing but a symbolic representation of self-control, waging a fight that never ends and a truceless war against intemperance and pleasure. Self-control welcomes beyond measure simplicity and abstemiousness and so much as is requisite for a severe and lofty mode of life; intemperance gives a like welcome to superfluity and extravagance, which induce softness and voluptuousness in soul and body, and these result in the culpable life, the life that in the view of right-minded people is worse than death.