על שינוי השמות ז׳On the Change of Names 7
א׳
1[54] The next words are “Abraham fell on his face.” Ah, what else should he do, when he heard the divine promises, but know himself and the nothingness of our mortal race, and fall at the feet of Him Who stands, to show what conception he held of himself and God? He knew that God stands with place unchanged, yet moves the universal frame of creation, His own motion being the motion of self-extension (not the movement of the legs, for He is not of human form), but a motion whereby He shows His unalterable, unchanging nature.
ב׳
2[55] He knew that he himself is never firmly set in a stable position, that he is ever subject to various changes, and that throughout his life, which is one long slipping, he trips and falls, woe to him! and how great is that fall.
ג׳
3[56] Sometimes it is through involuntary ignorance, sometimes through voluntary yielding to temptation, and so we read also that it was on his face that he fell. By face is meant his senses and his mind and his speech, and the gesture is little less than a loud insistent utterance. Fallen is sense, it cries, unable of itself to perceive, were it not by a dispensation of God’s saving providence set on its feet to the perception of material substances: fallen is speech, because it were unable to express in language anything that is, did not He Who framed and adjusted to harmony the instrument of the voice beat out the music of its notes, opening the mouth and giving strength to the nerves of the tongue: fallen too is the royal mind, robbed of its powers of apprehension, did not the Framer of all that lives raise it up and establish it, and planting in it far-piercing eyes, lead it to the sight of the immaterial world.