על הכרובים י״בOn the Cherubim 12
א׳
1[40] “And Adam knew his wife and she conceived and bare Cain, and he said, ‘I have gotten a man through God,’ and He added to this that she bore his brother Abel” (Gen. 4:1, 2). The persons to whose virtue the lawgiver has testified, such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, and others of the same spirit, are not represented by him as knowing women.
ב׳
2[41] For since we hold that woman signifies in a figure sense-perception, and that knowledge comes into being through estrangement from sense and body, it will follow that the lovers of wisdom reject rather than choose sense. And surely this is natural. For the helpmeets of these men are called women, but are in reality virtues. Sarah “sovereign and leader,” Rebecca “steadfastness in excellence,” Leah “rejected and faint” through the unbroken discipline, which every fool rejects and turns from with words of denial, Zipporah, the mate of Moses, whose name is “bird,” speeding upwards from earth to heaven and contemplating there the nature of things divine and blessed.
ג׳
3[42] The virtues have their conception and their birth-pangs, but when I purpose to speak of them let them who corrupt religion into superstition close their ears or depart. For this is a divine mystery and its lesson is for the initiated who are worthy to receive the holiest secret, even those who in simplicity of heart practise the piety which is true and genuine, free from all tawdry ornament. The sacred revelation is not for those others who, under the spell of the deadly curse of vanity, have no other standards for measuring what is pure and holy but their barren words and phrases and their silly usages and ritual.
