על עשרת הדברות ט״זOn the Decalogue 16
א׳
1[76] Let no one, then, who has a soul worship a soulless thing, for it is utterly preposterous that the works of nature should turn aside to do service to what human hands have wrought.
ב׳
2But the Egyptians are rightly charged not only on the count to which every country is liable, but also on another peculiar to themselves. For in addition to wooden and other images, they have advanced to divine honours irrational animals, bulls and rams and goats, and invented for each some fabulous legend of wonder.
ג׳
3[77] And with these perhaps there might be some reason, for they are thoroughly domesticated and useful for our livelihood. The ox is a plougher and opens up furrows at seed-time and again is a very capable thresher when the corn has to be purged; the ram provides the best possible shelter, namely, clothing, for if our bodies were naked they would easily perish, either through heat or through intense cold, in the first case under the scorching of the sun, in the latter through the refrigeration caused by the air.
ד׳
4[78] But actually the Egyptians have gone to a further excess and chosen the fiercest and most savage of wild animals, lions and crocodiles and among reptiles the venomous asp, all of which they dignify with temples, sacred precincts, sacrifices, assemblies, processions and the like. For after ransacking the two elements given by God to man for his use, earth and water, to find their fiercest occupants, they found on land no creature more savage than the lion nor in water than the crocodile and these they reverence and honour.
ה׳
5[79] Many other animals too they have deified, dogs, cats, wolves and among the birds, ibises and hawks; fishes too, either their whole bodies or particular parts. What could be more ridiculous than all this?
ו׳
6[80] Indeed strangers on their first arrival in Egypt before the vanity of the land has gained a lodgement in their minds are like to die with laughing at it, while anyone who knows the flavour of right instruction, horrified at this veneration of things so much the reverse of venerable, pities those who render it and regards them with good reason as more miserable than the creatures they honour, as men with souls transformed into the nature of those creatures, so that as they pass before him, they seem beasts in human shape.
ז׳
7[81] So then He gave no place in His sacred code of laws to all such setting up of other gods, and called upon men to honour Him that truly is, not because He needed that honour should be paid to Him, for He that is all-sufficient to Himself needs nothing else, but because He wished to lead the human race, wandering in pathless wilds, to the road from which none can stray, so that following nature they might win the best of goals, knowledge of Him that truly IS, Who is the primal and most perfect good, from Whom as from a fountain is showered the water of each particular good upon the world and them that dwell therein.