על הכרובים כ״גOn the Cherubim 23
א׳
1[74] He who seeks intimacy with these can have had no perception, cannot even have dreamt, of freedom. For it is only by flight and estrangement from these that we can make a claim to the lot of the fearless.
ב׳
2We read of another who crowns his self-love with madness, and declares that, though what I have be taken from me, I will contend for it as my own and win the victory. “I will pursue,” he says, “I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; I will satisfy my soul; I will destroy with my sword; my hand shall have the mastery” (Exod. 15:9).
ג׳
3[75] To such a one I would say “Fool, is it hidden from you that every created being, who thinks he pursues, is pursued?” For maladies and old age and death, with all the other host of evils voluntary and involuntary, drive and hustle and pursue each one of us, and he who thinks to overtake and conquer is overtaken and conquered, and many a one who thinks to spoil and is already in his thoughts parcelling out the booty has fallen under the foot of victorious enemies. He receives into his soul emptiness for satisfaction, slavery for lordship, he is killed instead of killing, and all that he thought to do to others falls with full measure upon himself.
ד׳
4[76] For in very truth this man was the enemy of convincing reason and of nature herself, when he took to himself all active functions and forgot the passive, as though he was secure from the mass of calamities which these severally bring.
