על שינוי השמות כ״גOn the Change of Names 23
א׳
1[130] We have now dealt sufficiently with the change and substitution of names and will proceed to the next points in our inquiry. What followed at once was the promise of the birth of Isaac. For after calling his mother Sarah instead of Sarai He says to Abraham, “I will give thee a child from her” (Gen. 17:16). Each part of this must be severally examined.
ב׳
2[131] First, then, the giver of anything in the proper sense of the word must necessarily give something which belongs to himself, and if this is so Isaac must be not the man Isaac but the Isaac whose name is that of the best of the good emotions, joy, the Isaac who is the laughter of the heart, a son of God, who gives him as a means to soothe and cheer truly peaceful souls.
ג׳
3[132] It were a monstrous thing that one should be a husband, and another the parent, parent therefore of bastards born in adultery, and yet Moses writes of God as the husband of the virtue-loving mind when he says, “The Lord seeing that Leah was hated opened her womb” (Gen. 29:31),
ד׳
4[133] for moved by pity and compassion for the virtue hated by our mortal race and for the soul that loves virtue he sends barrenness 〈on the favourite and gives honour〉 to the nature which loves excellence and opens the fountain of happy parentage by granting her welfare in childbirth.
ה׳
5[134] And Tamar too; she bore within her womb the divine seed, but had not seen the sower. For we are told that at that hour she veiled her face (Gen. 38:15), just as Moses when he turned aside fearing to look upon God (Ex. 3:6). But she closely scanned the symbols and tokens, and judging in her heart that these were the gifts of no mortal she cried aloud, “To whomsoever these belong, he it is by whom I am with child” (Gen. 38:25).
ו׳
6[135] Whose is the ring, the pledge of faith, the seal of the universe, the archetypal idea by which all things without form or quality before were stamped and shaped? Whose is the cord, that is, the world-order, the chain of destiny, the correspondence and sequence of all things, with their ever-unbroken chain? Whose is the staff, that is the firmly planted, the unshaken, the unbending; the admonition, the chastening, the discipline; the sceptre, the kingship! whose are they? Are they not God’s alone?
ז׳
7[136] And therefore the temper which makes confession of thankfulness, that is Judah, pleased at the divine inspiration which masters her, says with all boldness, “She is justified since I gave her to no mortal” (ibid. 26), for he holds it impiety to defile the divine with things profane.