על חיי משה, ספר א ל״הOn the Life of Moses, Book I 35
א׳
1[191] After this no long time had elapsed when they were famished for want of food. It seemed as though the forces of necessity were taking turns to attack them. For those stern mistresses, hunger and thirst, had parcelled out their inflictions and plied them with these successively, with the result that when one was relaxed the other was upon them. This was most intolerable to the victims, since, often when they thought they had got free of thirst, they soon found the scourge of hunger waiting to take its place.
ב׳
2[192] And the presence of the dearth was not their only hardship; there was also the despair of obtaining provisions in the future. The sight of the deep, wide desert, utterly barren of fruits, filled them with despondency. All around there was nothing but rough, broken rocks, or plains where the soil was full of salt, or very stony mountains, or depths of sand stretching upwards steep and high, and again no rivers, spring-fed or winter torrent, no well, no tilth, no woodland of trees, either cultivated or wild, no living creature either of the air or of the land, save reptiles that vent poison for the destruction of mankind, such as snakes and scorpions.
ג׳
3[193] Then, remembering the teeming fertility of Egypt, and contrasting the abundance of everything there with the lack of everything here, they were roused to anger, and expressed their feelings to each other in such words as these: “We left the country in the hope of freedom, and yet we have no security even of life. Our leader promised us happiness; in actual fact, we are the most miserable of men.
ד׳
4[194] What will be the end of this long, interminable journey? Every traveller by sea or land has set before him some goal to come to, market or harbour for the one, city or country for the other; we alone have before us a pathless wilderness, painful journeying, desperate straits. For, as we proceed, there opens out before us, as it were, an ocean, vast, deep, impassable, ever wider day by day. He exhorted and puffed us up with his words,
ה׳
5[195] and filled our ears with empty hopes, and then tortures our bellies with hunger, not providing even the barest nourishment. With the name of colonization he has deceived this great multitude, and first carried us from an inhabited to an uninhabited world, then led us on to the grave along the road which brings life to its end.”