על שינוי השמות כ״אOn the Change of Names 21
א׳
1[121] So much for this. But Moses also changes the name of Hoshea to Joshua (Num. 13:17), thus transforming the individual who embodies a state into the state itself. For Hoshea by interpretation is “he,” that is a particular individual, “is saved.” But Joshua is “safety of the Lord,” a name for the best possible state.
ב׳
2[122] For states are better than the individuals who embody them, as music is better than the musician and medicine than the physician, and every art than every artist, better both in everlastingness and in power and in unerring mastery over its subject matter. The state is everlasting, active, perfect; the individual is mortal, acted on, imperfect; and the imperishable is higher and greater than the mortal, the acting cause than that on which it acts, and the perfect than the imperfect.
ג׳
3[123] Thus in the above also we see the coin which represents the man re-minted in a better form.
ד׳
4But in Caleb we have a total change of the man himself. For we read “there was another spirit in him” (Num. 14:24), as though the ruling mind in him was changed to supreme perfection. For Caleb is by interpretation “all heart,”
ה׳
5[124] and this is a figurative way of shewing that his was no partial change of a soul wavering and oscillating, but a change to proved excellence of the whole and entire soul which dislodged anything that was not entirely laudable by thoughts of repentance; for when it thus washed away its defilements, and made use of the lustrations and purifications of wisdom, it could not but be clean and fair.