על שינוי השמות מ״דOn the Change of Names 44
א׳
1[252] These and similar ways of analysing and distinguishing things become familiar to the man of virtue through breeding and practice, and does it not therefore seem natural that he should pray that Ishmael may live, if he cannot as yet be the parent of Isaac?
ב׳
2[253] What then does God in His kindness do? Abraham had asked for one thing, God gives him two. He had prayed for the less, God grants him the greater. He said to him, we read, “Yes, Sarah thy wife shall bear a son” (Gen. 17:19). How significant is that answer “Yes,” fraught as it is with inner meaning. For what can be more befitting to God than to grant and promise His blessings in a moment and with a sign of assent?
ג׳
3[254] Yet those who receive a sign of assent from God are refused assent by every fool. Thus the oracles represent Leah as hated and for this reason she received such a name. For by interpretation it means “rejected and weary,” because we all turn away from virtue and think her wearisome, so little to our taste are the commands she often lays upon us.
ד׳
4[255] But from the Ruler of all she was awarded such acceptance that her womb which He opened received the seed of divine impregnation (Gen. 29:31), whence should come the birth of noble practices and deeds.
ה׳
5Learn then, soul of man, that Sarah also, that is virtue, shall bear thee a son, as well as Hagar, the lower instruction. For Hagar’s offspring is the creature of teaching, but Sarah’s learns from none other at all than itself.
ו׳
6[256] And wonder not that God, who brings about all good things, has brought into being this kind also, and though there be few such upon earth, in Heaven vast is their number. You may learn this truth from the other elements, out of which man is constituted. Have the eyes been taught to see, do the nostrils learn to smell, do the hands touch or the feet advance in obedience to the orders or exhortations of instructors?
ז׳
7[257] As for our impulses and mental pictures, which are the primal conditions of the soul, according as it is in motion or at rest, are they made what they are by teaching? Does our mind attend the school of the professor of wisdom and there learn to think and to apprehend? All these exempt from teaching make use of self-worked independent nature for their respective activities.
ח׳
8[258] Why then need you still wonder that God showers virtue without toil or trouble, needing no controlling hand but perfect and complete from the very first? And if you would have further testimony of this can you find any more trustworthy than Moses, who says that while other men receive their food from earth, the nation of vision alone has it from heaven?
ט׳
9[259] The earthly food is produced with the co-operation of husbandmen, but the heavenly is sent like the snow by God the solely self-acting, with none to share his work. And indeed it says “Behold I rain upon you bread from heaven” (Ex. 16:4). Of what food can he rightly say that it is rained from heaven,
י׳
10[260] save of heavenly wisdom which is sent from above on souls which yearn for virtue by Him who sheds the gift of prudence in rich abundance, whose grace waters the universe, and chiefly so in the holy seventh (year) which he calls the Sabbath? For then he says there will be a plentiful supply of good things spontaneous and self-grown, which even all the art in the world could never raise, but springing up and bearing their proper fruit through self-originated, self-consummated nature.