על שינוי השמות כ״חOn the Change of Names 28
א׳
1[151] Next we read “And kings of nations shall be from her,” for those whom she conceives and bears are all rulers, chosen not for a short time by the uncertainty of lot or by the votes of men for the most part hirelings, but rulers appointed for ever by Nature herself.
ב׳
2[152] And this is no invention of mine, but a statement made by the most holy oracles, wherein certain people appear as saying to Abraham “Thou art a King from God among us” (Gen. 23:6). They did not consider his material resources, for what such were there in an emigrant, who was not even the inhabitant of a city but a wanderer over a wide and desolate and trackless land? Rather they perceived the kingship in his mind, and thus Moses confesses that the Sage alone is king.
ג׳
3[153] For in truth the prudent man is ruler of the imprudent, for he knows what he should and should not do, and the temperate of the intemperate, for he has studied carefully how to choose and how to avoid: the brave man of the coward because he has learned with certainty what he should and should not endure: the just of the unjust, because he aims at unbiased equality in what he has to award: the holy of the unholy because high and true conceptions of God prevail with him.