על הגירת אברהם כ״וOn the Migration of Abraham 26
א׳
1[143] This is the end of the way of those who follow the words and injunctions of the law, and march in whatever direction God leads the way: but the man who gives in under the assaults of the foe, who hungers after pleasure and is lickerish for passion, whose name is “Amalek,” which means “a people licking up”—this man shall find himself cut off.
ב׳
2[144] The oracles signify that the Amalek type of character lies in ambush, when it is aware that the more stalwart portion of the soul-army has gone by, rises up from its ambuscade and “smites or ‘cuts’ the hindmost” (Deut. 25:17 f.) or the labouring rear.
ג׳
3“Labouring” may be used of a readiness to give in, a feebleness of reason’s functioning, an inability to bear the burdens needed to win virtue. This is a condition which, when found lagging at the extreme rear, falls an easy prey. Or the word may connote brave endurance in a noble cause, a sturdy readiness to undertake all noble tasks together, a refusal to support the weight of any base thing, though it be the very lightest, nay a rejection of it as though it were the heaviest burden.
ד׳
4[145] Hence it comes that the Law gave Virtue the appropriate name “Leah,” which when translated is “growing weary”; for Virtue has, as she well may do, made up her mind that the way of life of the wicked, so essentially burdensome and heavy, is full of weariness, and she refuses so much as to look at it, turning her gaze away from it and fixing it on the morally beautiful alone.
ה׳
5[146] But let the mind be bent not only on following God with alert and unfailing steps, but also on keeping the straight course. Let it not incline to either side, either to what is on the right hand or to what is on the left, where Edom, of the earth earthy, has his lurking holes, and thus be the victim now of excesses and extravagances, now of shortcomings and deficiencies. For better is it to walk on the central road, the road that is truly “the king’s” (Num. 20:17), seeing that God, the great and only King, laid it out a broad and goodly way for virtue-loving souls to keep to.
ו׳
6[147] Hence it is that some of those who followed the mild and social form of philosophy, have said that the virtues are means, fixing them in a borderland, feeling that the overweening boastfulness of a braggart is bad, and that to adopt a humble and obscure position is to expose yourself to attack and oppression, whereas a fair and reasonable mixture of the two is beneficial.