על הענקים י״דOn the Giants 14
א׳
1[62] Thus Abraham, while he sojourned in the land of the Chaldeans—sojourned, that is, in mere opinion—and with his name as yet unchanged from Abram, was a “man of heaven.” He searched into the nature of the supra-terrestrial and ethereal region, and his philosophy studied the events and changes which there occur, and their causes and the like. And therefore he received a name suitable to the studies which he pursued. For “Abram” being interpreted is the uplifted father, a name which signifies that mind which surveys on every side the whole compass of the upper world of heaven, called father-mind because this mind which reaches out to the ether and further still is the father of our compound being.
ב׳
2[63] But when he has risen to a better state and the time is at hand that his name should be changed, he becomes a man of God according to the oracle which was vouchsafed to him, “I am thy God: walk before Me according to My pleasure, and show thyself blameless” (Gen. 17:1).
ג׳
3[64] Now if the God of the Universe, the only God, is also his God in a special sense and by special grace, he surely must needs be himself a man of God. For he is called Abraham, by interpretation, “the elect father of sound,” that is, “the good man’s reasoning.” Good, because it is elect and purified; reasoning, because reason is the father of the voice, through which comes the sound of speech common to us all. Such a reasoning has the one and only God for its owner; it becomes God’s companion and makes straight the path of its whole life, treading the true “King’s way,” the way of the one sole almighty king, swerving and turning aside neither to the right nor to the left.