על הכרובים ל״אOn the Cherubim 31
א׳
1[106] If such a house be raised amid our mortal race, earth and all that dwells on earth will be filled with high hopes, expecting the descent of the divine potencies. With laws and ordinances from heaven they will descend, to sanctify and consecrate them on earth, according to their Father’s bidding. Then, joined in commonalty of daily life and board with virtue-loving souls, they sow within them the nature of happiness, even as they gave to wise Abraham in Isaac the most perfect thank-offering for their stay with him.
ב׳
2[107] The purified mind rejoices in nothing more than in confessing that it has the lord of all for its master. For to be the slave of God is the highest boast of man, a treasure more precious not only than freedom, but than wealth and power and all that mortals most cherish.
ג׳
3[108] To this sovereignty of the Absolutely Existent the oracle is a true witness in these words, “and the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for all the land is mine, because ye are strangers and sojourners before me” (Lev. 25:23). A clear proof surely that in possession all things are God’s,
ד׳
4[109] and only as a loan do they belong to created beings. For nothing, he means, will be sold in perpetuity to any created being, because there is but One, to whom in a full and complete sense the possession of all things is assured.
ה׳
5For all created things are assigned as a loan to all from God, and He has made none of these particular things complete in itself, so that it should have no need at all of another. Thus through the desire to obtain what it needs,
ו׳
6[110] it must perforce approach that which can supply its need, and this approach must be mutual and reciprocal. Thus through reciprocity and combination, even as a lyre is formed of unlike notes, God meant that they should come to fellowship and concord and form a single harmony, and that an universal give and take should govern them, and lead up to the consummation of the whole world.
ז׳
7[111] Thus love draws lifeless to living, unreasoning to reasoning, trees to men, men to plants, cultivated to wild, savage to tame, each sex to the other; so too, in a word, the creatures of the land to the creatures of the water, these to the fowls of the air and those to both:
ח׳
8[112] so again heaven to earth, earth to heaven, air to water, and water to air. So natures intermediate yearn for each other and those at either extreme; these too for their fellows and the intermediate beings. Winter needs summer, summer winter, spring both, and autumn spring. Thus each, we may say, wants and needs each; all need all, that so this whole, of which each is a part, might be that perfect work worthy of its architect, this world.
