על עשרת הדברות כ״גOn the Decalogue 23
א׳
1[111] Let them not then fail to understand that in the two courts, the only courts which nature has, they stand convicted; in the divine court, of impiety because they do not show due respect to those who brought them forth from non-existence to existence and in this were imitators of God; in the human court, of inhumanity.
ב׳
2[112] For to whom else will they show kindness if they despise the closest of their kinsfolk who have bestowed upon them the greatest boons, some of them far exceeding any possibility of repayment? For how could the begotten beget in his turn those whose seed he is, since nature has bestowed on parents in relation to their children an estate of a special kind which cannot be subject to the law of “exchange” ? And therefore the greatest indignation is justified if children, because they are unable to make a complete return, refuse to make even the slightest.
ג׳
3[113] Properly, I should say to them, “beasts ought to become tame through association with men.” Indeed I have often known lions and bears and panthers become tame, not only with those who feed them, in gratitude for receiving what they require, but also with everybody else, presumably because of the likeness to those who give them food. That is what should happen, for it is always good for the inferior to follow the superior in hope of improvement.
ד׳
4[114] But as it is I shall be forced to say the opposite of this, “You men will do well to take some beasts for your models.” They have been trained to know how to return benefit for benefit. Watch-dogs guard and die for their masters when some danger suddenly overtakes them. Sheep-dogs, they say, fight for their charges and hold their ground till they conquer or die, in order to keep the herdsmen unscathed.
ה׳
5[115] Is it not, then, a very scandal of scandals that in returning kindnesses a man should be worsted by a dog, the most civilized of living creatures by the most audacious of brutes?
ו׳
6But, if we cannot learn from the land animals, let us turn for a lesson in right conduct to the winged tribe that ranges the air.
ז׳
7[116] Among the storks the old birds stay in the nests when they are unable to fly, while their children fly, I might almost say, over sea and land, gathering from every quarter provision for the needs of their parents;
ח׳
8[117] and so while they in the inactivity justified by their age continue to enjoy all abundance of luxury, the younger birds making light of the hardships sustained in their quest for food, moved by piety and the expectation that the same treatment will be meted to them by their offspring, repay the debt which they may not refuse—a debt both incurred and discharged at the proper time—namely that in which one or other of the parties is unable to maintain itself, the children in the first stage of their existence, the parents at the end of their lives. And thus without any teacher but their natural instinct they gladly give to age the nurture which fostered their youth.
ט׳
9[118] With this example before them may not human beings, who take no thought for their parents, deservedly hide their faces for shame and revile themselves for their neglect of those whose welfare should necessarily have been their sole or their primary care, and that not so much as givers as repayers of a due? For children have nothing of their own which does not come from their parents, either bestowed from their own resources or acquired by means which originate from them.
י׳
10[119] Piety and religion are the queens among the virtues. Do they dwell within the confines of such souls as these? No, they have driven them from the realm and sent them into banishment. For parents are the servants of God for the task of begetting children, and he who dishonours the servant dishonours also the Lord.
י״א
11[120] Some bolder spirits, glorifying the name of parenthood, say that a father and a mother are in fact gods revealed to sight who copy the Uncreated in His work as the Framer of life. He, they say, is the God or Maker of the world, they of those only whom they have begotten, and how can reverence be rendered to the invisible God by those who show irreverence to the gods who are near at hand and seen by the eye?