על שינוי השמות ט׳On the Change of Names 9
א׳
1It is only right that to prevent any other falling a victim to the same errors we should eradicate misgivings of this sort by resorting to the truths of nature and shewing that what we thus read is worthy of our most earnest consideration.
ב׳
2[63] Letters, whether vowels or consonants and the parts of speech in general, are not the gifts of God’s grace, seeing that when He created the plants and animals He summoned them to man as their ruler, set apart by Him from them all in virtue of his knowledge, that he might give each kind their distinguishing names. “Everything,” he says, “which Adam called them, that was their name” (Gen. 2:19).
ג׳
3[64] If God did not think fit to assign names even in their completed form, but committed the task to a man of wisdom, the founder of the human race, is it proper to suppose that parts of names or syllables or single letters, not merely vocal vowels but mute consonants, were added and altered by Himself, and a gift and pre-eminent benefaction alleged to be conferred thereby? It is quite impossible.
ד׳
4[65] Such changes of name are signs of moral values, the signs small, sensible, obvious, the values great, intelligible, hidden. And these values are found in noble verities, in unerring and pure notions, and in soul-betterments.
ה׳
5The proof of this is easy, starting from the change of name here before us,
ו׳
6[66] for Abram is interpreted as “uplifted father,” Abraham as “elect father of sound.” How the two differ we shall understand more clearly if we first discover the meaning of each.
ז׳
7[67] Resorting then to allegory we say that “uplifted” is one who rising from earth to the heights surveys the supraterrestrial, conversing with and studying the phenomena of the upper world, investigating the size of the sun and its courses, how it regulates the seasons of the year by its revolutions as it advances and retreats at the same rate of speed; one who considers also the different illuminations of the moon, its phases, its waning and waxing, and the movement of the other stars both in the fixed and the planetary order.
ח׳
8[68] To inquire into such matters bespeaks a soul not devoid of natural gifts or unproductive, but highly gifted and capable of engendering offspring perfect and without blemish; and therefore he called the student of the upper world “father” because he is not unproductive of wisdom.