על הגירת אברהם כ״גOn the Migration of Abraham 23
א׳
1[127] We have now dealt with the subject of the gifts which God is wont to bestow both on those who are to become wise and for their sake on others. We are told next that “Abraham journeyed even as the Lord spoke to him” (Gen. 12:4).
ב׳
2[128] This is the aim extolled by the best philosophers, to live agreeably to nature; and it is attained whenever the mind, having entered on virtue’s path, walks in the track of right reason and follows God, mindful of His injunctions, and always and in all places recognizing them all as valid both in action and in speech.
ג׳
3[129] For “he journeyed just as the Lord spake to him”: the meaning of this is that as God speaks—and He speaks with consummate beauty and excellence—so the good man does everything, blamelessly keeping straight the path of life, so that the actions of the wise man are nothing else than the words of God.
ד׳
4[130] So in another place He says, “Abraham did ‘all My law’ ” (Gen. 26:5): “Law” being evidently nothing else than the Divine word enjoining what we ought to do and forbidding what we should not do, as Moses testifies by saying “he received a law from His words” (Deut. 33:3 f.). If, then, the law is a Divine word, and the man of true worth “does” the law, he assuredly “does” the word: so that, as I said, God’s words are the wise man’s “doings.”
ה׳
5[131] To follow God is, then, according to Moses, that most holy man, our aim and object, as he says elsewhere too, “thou shalt go in the steps of the Lord thy God” (Deut. 13:4). He is not speaking of movement by the use of our legs, for, while earth carries man, I do not know whether even the whole universe carries God; but is evidently employing figurative language to bring out how the soul should comply with those Divine ordinances, the guiding principle of which is the honouring of Him to Whom all things owe their being.