על הכרובים כ״וOn the Cherubim 26
א׳
1[87] And therefore Moses often in his laws calls the sabbath, which means ‘rest,’ God’s sabbath (Exod. 20:10, etc.), not man’s, and thus he lays his finger on an essential fact in the nature of things. For in all truth there is but one thing in the universe which rests, that is God. But Moses does not give the name of rest to mere inactivity. The cause of all things is by its nature active; it never ceases to work all that is best and most beautiful. God’s rest is rather a working with absolute ease, without toil and without suffering. For the sun and moon and the whole heaven and universe, since they are not self-mastering and move and revolve continually, we may rightly say do suffer. Their labouring is most clearly seen by the seasons of the year.
ב׳
2[88] For of the heavenly bodies the chiefest change their courses, sometimes revolving to the south, sometimes to the north, sometimes elsewhere; and the air grows colder and warmer and undergoes all manner of changes; and these changes in condition peculiar to it prove that it labours and is weary. For weariness is the principal cause of change.
ג׳
3[89] It were folly to pursue the subject through the creatures of air and water and enumerate at length their general and particular changes: for these are naturally liable to far greater weakness than the creatures of the upper world, since they in largest measure partake of the lowest form of substance, namely the earthly.
ד׳
4[90] Since then weariness is the natural cause of change in things that turn and vary, and since God turns not and changes not, He must be by nature unwearying. But a being that is free from weakness, even though he be making all things, will cease not to all eternity to be at rest, and thus rest belongs in the fullest sense to God and to Him alone.
