על הגירת אברהם כ״חOn the Migration of Abraham 28
א׳
1And very well and appropriately does he call the soul of the bad man “mixed”: for it is brought together and collected and a medley in very deed, consisting of many discordant opinions, one in number but myriad in its manifoldness.
ב׳
2[153] For this reason it is called a “multitude” or “numerous” as well as “mixed”; for he that has an eye to a single aim only is single and unmixed and truly smooth and level, but he that sets before himself many aims for his life is manifold and mixed and truly rough. It is for this reason that the oracles represent Jacob, the trainer of himself for nobility, as smooth, but Esau, who exercised himself in basest things, as rough with hair (Gen. 27:11).
ג׳
3[154] What befell the Mind, when it escaped from Egypt the country of the body, was due to this mixed and rough multitude, a conglomeration of promiscuous and diverse opinions. It could have made rapid progress and in three days (Gen. 22:3) have entered upon the inheritance of virtue by a threefold light, memory of things gone by, clear sight of things present, and the expectation of things to come. Instead of this, for the space of forty years, for all that length of time, it wears itself out wandering and going round circle-wise, in obedience to the “manifold” element with its many twistings, when it behoved it to have taken the straight way which was the speediest.
ד׳
4[155] It is this mixed multitude which takes delight not in a few species of lusting only, but claims to leave out nothing at all, that it may follow after lust’s entire genus, including all its species. For we read “the mixed people that was among them ‘craved after lust,’ after the genus itself, not some single species, ‘and sat down and wept’ ” (Num. 11:4).
ה׳
5For the understanding is conscious of its feebleness, and when it cannot obtain what it is longing for, it weeps and groans; and yet it had cause to rejoice at missing passions and sicknesses, and to consider the dearth and absence of them great prosperity.
ו׳
6[156] And yet indeed it is not unusual for the devotees of virtue themselves to be much moved and to shed tears, either when bemoaning the misfortunes of the unwise owing to their innate fellow-feeling and humaneness, or by reason of being overjoyed. This last occurs when, as is sometimes the case, a sudden shower of unexpected good things falls, and they come all at once like a flood. I fancy that it is to this that we must refer the expression of the poet,
ז׳
7She laughed with glad tears in her eyes.
ח׳
8[157] For joy, that best of the good emotions, when it has fallen upon the soul unexpectedly, makes it larger than it was before, so that owing to its size the body has no longer room for it, and as it is squeezed and compressed it distils moist drops, which we are in the habit of calling “tears.” Of these it is said in the Psalms, “Thou shalt feed us with the bread of tears” (Ps. 79 [80] 6), and “My tears have been my bread by day and by night” (Ps. 41 [42] 4). For tears, that rise to the surface from the inward heart-felt laughter, are food to the understanding, coming when the love of God has sunk deep in and turned the dirge of created being into a canticle of praise to the Uncreate.