על חיי משה, ספר א מ״גOn the Life of Moses, Book I 43
א׳
1[237] This event was the reason why they did not come sooner to the land where they proposed to settle. For, though they could have occupied the cities of Syria and their portions of land in the second year after leaving Egypt, they turned away from the road which led directly thither and wandered about, travelling with difficulty, through long, pathless tracts, which appeared one after the other, bringing endless weariness of soul and body, the punishment they needs must endure for their great impiety.
ב׳
2[238] For thirty-eight years in addition to the time already spent, the span of a generation of human life, they went wayworn up and down, tracing and retracing the trackless wilds till at last in the fortieth year they succeeded in reaching those boundaries of the country to which they had come before.
ג׳
3[239] Near the entrances there dwelt, among others, some kinsfolk of their own, who, they quite thought, would join in the war against their neighbours and assist the new settlement in every way, or, if they shrank from this, would at the worst abstain from force and remain neutral. For the ancestors of both nations,
ד׳
4[240] the Hebrews and the inhabitants of the outlying districts, were two brothers with the same father and mother, and twins to boot. Both had become the parents of an increasing family, and, as their descendants were by no means unfruitful, both households had spread into great and populous nations. One of these had clung to the homeland, the other, as has been said, migrated to Egypt on account of the famine, and was returning after many years.
ה׳
5[241] The latter in spite of its long separation maintained the tie of relationship, and though it had to deal with men who retained none of their ancestral customs, but had abandoned all the old ways of communal life, considered that it was proper for humane natures to pay some tribute of goodwill to the name of kinship.
ו׳
6[242] The other, on the contrary, had upset all that made for friendship. In its customs and language, its policy and actions, it shewed implacable enmity and kept alive the fire of an ancestral feud. For the founder of the nation, after having of his own accord sold his birthright as the elder to his brother, had later reclaimed what he had surrendered, in violation of their agreement, and had sought his blood, threatening him with death if he did not make restitution; and this old feud between two individual men was renewed by the nation so many generations after.
ז׳
7[243] Now the leader of the Hebrews, Moses, though an attack might have won him an uncontested victory, did not feel justified in taking this course because of the above-mentioned kinship. Instead, he merely asked for the right of passage through the country, and promised to carry out all that he agreed to do, not to ravage any estate, not to carry off cattle or spoil of any kind, to pay a price for water if drink were scarce and for anything else which their wants caused them to purchase. But they refused these very peaceful overtures with all their might, and threatened war if they found them overstepping their frontiers, or even merely on the threshold.