על הגירת אברהם כ״אOn the Migration of Abraham 21
א׳
1[118] This is Moses’ first lesson; he tells us what befalls others for the virtuous man’s sake, whenever they consent to visit him with blame or praise, with prayers or imprecations: but greatest of all is that which follows; he tells us that, when these hold their peace, no portion of rational existence is left without its share of benefit bestowed: for He says that “In thee shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3).
ב׳
2[119] This is a pregnant and significant announcement; for it implies that, if the mind continues free from harm and sickness, it has all its tribes and powers in a healthy condition, those whose province is sight and hearing and all others concerned with sense-perception, and those again that have to do with pleasures and desires, and all that are undergoing transformation from the lower to the higher emotions.
ג׳
3[120] Further there have been instances of a household or a city or a country or nations and regions of the earth enjoying great prosperity through a single man giving his mind to nobility of character. Most of all has this been so in the case of one on whom God has bestowed, together with a good purpose, irresistible power, just as He gives to the musician and every artist the instruments which his music or his art requires, or as He gives to fire logs as its material.
ד׳
4[121] For in truth the righteous man is the foundation on which mankind rests. All that he himself has he brings into the common stock and gives in abundance for the benefit of all who shall use them. What he does not find in his own store, he asks for at the hands of God, the only possessor of unlimited riches; and He opens his heavenly treasury and sends His good things, as He does the snow and the rain, in ceaseless downpour, so that the channels and cavities of earth’s whole face overflow.
ה׳
5[122] And it is His wont to bestow these gifts in answer to the word of supplication, from which He does not turn His ear away; for it is said in another place, when Moses had made a petition, “I am gracious to them in accordance with thy word” (Num. 14:20); and this is evidently equivalent to “In thee shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed.”
ו׳
6And it is by reason of this that Abraham, the wise, when he had made trial of God’s unvarying loving-kindness, believed that, even if all else be done away, but some small relic of virtue be preserved as a live coal to kindle with, for the sake of this little piece He looks with pity on the rest also, so as to raise up fallen things and to quicken dead things (Gen. 18:24 ff.).
ז׳
7[123] For a smouldering spark, even the very smallest, when it is blown up and made to blaze, lights a great pile; and so the least particle of virtue, when, warmed into life by bright hopes, it has shone out, gives sight to eyes that erst were closed and blind, and causes withered things to bloom again, and recovers to prolific fertility all that were barren by nature and therefore without offspring. Even so scanty goodness by God’s favour expands and becomes abundant, assimilating all else to itself.