על שינוי השמות ג׳On the Change of Names 3
א׳
1[15] Think it not then a hard saying that the Highest of all things should be unnamable when His Word has no name of its own which we can speak. And indeed if He is unnamable He is also inconceivable and incomprehensible.
ב׳
2And so the words “The Lord was seen of Abraham” (Gen. 17:1) must not be understood in the sense that the Cause of all shone upon him and appeared to him, for what human mind could contain the vastness of that vision? Rather we must think of it as the manifestation of one of the Potencies which attend him, the Potency of kingship, for the title Lord betokens sovereignty and kingship.
ג׳
3[16] While our mind pursued the airy speculations of the Chaldeans it ascribed to the world powers of action which it regarded as causes. But when it migrated from the Chaldean creed it recognized that the world had for its charioteer and pilot a Ruler Whose sovereignty was presented to it in vision.
ד׳
4[17] And therefore the words are “The Lord (not “The Existent”) was seen of him,” as though it would say, The king has been manifested, king indeed from the first, but hitherto unrecognized by the soul, which so long unschooled has not remained in ignorance for ever but has received the vision of the Sovereignty which rules over all that is.
ה׳
5[18] But the Sovereign when manifested confers a still higher gift on him who sees and hears him. He says to him, “I am thy God.” Which indeed amongst all this multitude of created things does not have Thee for its god? I might ask. But His interpreting word will shew me that He does not here speak of the world of which doubtless He is Creator and God, but of human souls which do not in His eyes deserve to be cared for all alike.
ו׳
6[19] His will is to be called the Lord and Master of the bad, the God of those who are on the way to betterment, but of the best and most perfect both at once God and Lord. For instance, when He has set Pharaoh before us as the crowning example of impiety He never calls Himself his God but gives that name to wise Moses, “Behold I give thee as god to Pharaoh” (Ex. 7:1). But He often names Himself as Lord in the oracles which He gives. We find such utterances as these,
ז׳
7[20] “These things saith the Lord” (Ex. 7:17), and at the beginning of His speech “The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, ‘I am the Lord, speak unto Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, all that I speak unto thee’ ” (Ex. 6:29). And Moses says to Pharaoh,
ח׳
8[21] “When I go forth from the city I will spread out my hands to the Lord, and the sounds shall cease and the hail and the rain shall not be, that thou mayest know that to the Lord belongs the earth” (that is all the bodily earth-compounded frame), “and thou” (that is the mind which the body carries with it) “and thy servants” (that is the several thoughts which form its guard), “for I know that ye have not yet feared the Lord” (Ex. 9:29), meaning that Lord who is not merely so-called but is Lord in very truth.
ט׳
9[22] For none that is created is truly a lord, though he be invested with a rule that spreads from pole to pole. Only the Uncreated is truly ruler, and he who lives in fear and awe under that Ruler’s government receives a prize of truest value in His reproofs, while he who despises them has before him nothing but to perish miserably.
י׳
10[23] So then He is shown to be the Lord of the foolish in that He holds over them the terrors that are proper to the sovereign. Of those who are on the way to betterment He is called in scripture God, as in this present passage, “I am thy God,” or “I am thy God, increase and multiply” (Gen. 35:11). Of the perfect He is both Lord and God as in the Decalogue “I am thy Lord God” (Ex. 20:2), and elsewhere “The Lord God of your fathers” (Deut. 4:1),
י״א
11[24] for it is His will that the wicked man should be under His sway as his Lord, and thus with awe and groaning feel the fear of the Master hanging over him; that the man of progress should be benefited by Him as God and thus through those kindnesses reach perfection; that the perfect should be guided by Him as Lord and benefited by Him as God. For through the one he remains free from lapses, through the other he is most surely God’s man. This is best shown in Moses’ case.
י״ב
12[25] “This is the blessing,” we read, “which Moses gave, the man of God” (Deut. 33:1). To what a glorious, what a holy exchange is he promoted that in return for God’s protecting care he should give himself to God.
י״ג
13[26] But do not suppose that God becomes man’s in the same way that man becomes God’s, for a man is God’s as His possession, God is man’s to be his glory and assistance. If thou wouldst have God as thy heart’s portion, first become thyself a portion worthy for Him to take, and that thou shalt become if thou escape such faults as are thine own handiwork and come of free will.