על חיי משה, ספר א ט׳On the Life of Moses, Book I 9
א׳
1[46] When those in authority who suspected the youth’s intentions, knowing that he would remember their wicked actions against them and take vengeance when the opportunity came, had thus once got a handle, they poured malicious suggestions by the thousand from every side into the open ears of his grandfather, so as to instil the fear that his sovereignty might be taken from him. “He will attack you,” they said, “he is highly ambitious. He is always busy with some further project. He is eager to get the kingship before the time comes. He flatters some, threatens others, slays without trial and treats as outcasts those who are most loyal to you. Why do you hesitate, instead of cutting short his projected undertakings? The aggressor is greatly served by delay on the part of his proposed victim.”
ב׳
2[47] While such talk was in circulation, Moses retired into the neighbouring country of Arabia, where it was safe for him to stay, at the same time beseeching God to save the oppressed from their helpless, miserable plight, and to punish as they deserved the oppressors who had left no form of maltreatment untried, and to double the gift by granting to himself that he should see both these accomplished. God, in high approval of his spirit, which loved the good and hated evil, listened to his prayers, and very shortly judged the land and its doings as became His nature.
ג׳
3[48] But, while the divine judgement was still waiting, Moses was carrying out the exercises of virtue with an admirable trainer, the reason within him, under whose discipline he laboured to fit himself for life in its highest forms, the theoretical and the practical. He was ever opening the scroll of philosophical doctrines, digested them inwardly with quick understanding, committed them to memory never to be forgotten, and straightway brought his personal conduct, praiseworthy in all respects, into conformity with them; for he desired truth rather than seeming, because the one mark he set before him was nature’s right reason, the sole source and fountain of virtues.
ד׳
4[49] Now, any other who was fleeing from the king’s relentless wrath, and had just arrived for the first time in a foreign land, who had not yet become familiar with the customs of the natives nor gained exact knowledge of what pleases or offends them, might well have been eager to keep quiet and live in obscurity unnoticed by the multitude; or else he might have wished to come forward in public, and by obsequious persistence court the favour of men of highest authority and power, if none others, men who might be expected to give help and succour should some come and attempt to carry him off by force.
ה׳
5[50] But the path which he took was the opposite of what we should expect. He followed the wholesome impulses of his soul, and suffered none of them to be brought to the ground. And, therefore, at times he showed a gallant temper beyond his fund of strength, for he regarded justice as strength invincible, which urged him on his self-appointed task to champion the weaker.