על הכרובים ל״דOn the Cherubim 34
א׳
1[120] In relation to each other all created beings rank as men of longest descent and highest birth; all enjoy equal honour and equal rights, but to God they are aliens and sojourners. For each of us has come into this world as into a foreign city, in which before our birth we had no part, and in this city he does but sojourn, until he has exhausted his appointed span of life.
ב׳
2[121] And there is another lesson of wisdom that he teaches in these words, even this—God alone is in the true sense a citizen, and all created being is a sojourner and alien, and those whom we call citizens are so called only by a licence of language. But to the wise it is a sufficient bounty, if when ranged beside God, the only citizen, they are counted as aliens and sojourners, since the fool can in no wise hold such a rank in the city of God, but we see him an outcast from it and nothing more.
ג׳
3Such a lesson too He has proclaimed to us in an utterance of deepest meaning. “The land shall not be sold at all.” No word of the seller there, that through this very silence he, who has access to the secrets of nature-truth, may profit in the quest of knowledge.
ד׳
4[122] Look round you and you shall find that those who are said to bestow benefits sell rather than give, and those who seem to us to receive them in truth buy. The givers are seeking praise or honour as their exchange and look for the repayment of the benefit, and thus, under the specious name of gift, they in real truth carry out a sale; for the seller’s way is to take something for what he offers. The receivers of the gift, too, study to make some return, and do so as opportunity offers, and thus they act as buyers. For buyers know well that receiving and paying go hand in hand.
ה׳
5[123] But God is no salesman, hawking his goods in the market, but a free giver of all things, pouring forth eternal fountains of free bounties, and seeking no return. For He has no needs Himself and no created being is able to repay His gift.
