על הגירת אברהם ל״זOn the Migration of Abraham 37
א׳
1[203] This number, then, is, as I have said, intimately associated with Moses; but the number belonging to the five senses with him who hails as friends the body and the things outside the body, him who is usually called “Joseph.” So great is his devotion to these, that, while hardly owning the tie of a common fatherhood, he bestows upon his uterine brother, the offspring of sense-perception, five changes of raiment (Gen. 45:22), deeming the senses pre-eminent and deserving of adornment and honour.
ב׳
2[204] He sets up laws moreover for all Egypt, that honour may be paid to the senses and tribute and contributions rendered to them as sovereigns every year: for he commands the Egyptians to pay a fifth part of the corn, which means that they are to store in treasuries materials and food in abundance for the five senses, that so each of them incessantly glutting itself with its own objects may wanton and drown the mind under the weight of all that it devours. For understanding is starved when the senses feast, as on the other hand it makes merry when they are fasting.
ג׳
3[205] Do you not notice, that the five daughters of Zelophehad, whom we take to be a figure of the senses, are of the tribe of Manasseh, who is Joseph’s son, elder in age, younger in efficiency? Fitly is he younger, for his name means “from forgetfulness,” and that is a thing equivalent to “recalling to mind.” But the first prize goes to Memory, the second to Recollection, and Ephraim is named after Memory, for his name when translated is “Fruit-bearing,” and the fairest and most nourishing fruit of the soul is remembering with no forgetfulness.
ד׳
4[206] And so the maidens say what perfectly fits in with what they really are. “Our father died”—yes, the death of recollection is forgetfulness—“and he died by reason of no sin of his own”—quite rightly said, for forgetfulness is no voluntary experience, but one of those things that are not in our power, coming upon us from outside—“and he had no sons” (Num. 27:3), but only daughters, for whereas the faculty of memory, being naturally wide awake, has male progeny, forgetfulness, wrapt in a slumber of reasoning power, has female offspring; for it is irrational, and the senses are daughters of the irrational portion of the soul.
ה׳
5[207] But if anyone has outstripped Joseph in speed and followed Moses, while he still lacks power to keep pace with him, he will live under a mixed and hybrid number, namely seventy-five, which denotes the nature alike of mind and sense-perception, which are both mingled together to produce a single kind, that does not call for our censure.