על הגירת אברהם ל״חOn the Migration of Abraham 38
א׳
1[208] I profoundly admire also Patience or Rebecca, when she exhorts him who is full-grown in soul and has overthrown the harsh tyranny of vice and passion, even then to flee away to Haran. She says, “Now therefore, my child, hearken to my voice, and arise and flee away to Laban my brother in Haran, and abide with him some days, until the wrath and anger of thy brother turn away from thee, and he forget what thou hast done to him” (Gen. 27:43–45).
ב׳
2[209] Excellently well does she call the journey to the senses a flight or running away; for the mind proves itself indeed a runaway, whenever it forsakes the objects of intellectual apprehension which are proper to it, and turns to the opposite array of the objects of sense-perception. Yet sometimes even running away is serviceable, when a man does it not out of hatred for the better, but that he may not be exposed to the designs of the worse.
ג׳
3[210] What, then, is the advice of Patience? A most marvellous and valuable one! If ever, she says, thou seest stirred up to savagery in thyself or some other person the passion of wrath and anger, one of the stock bred and reared by our irrational and untamed nature, beware of whetting its fierceness and yet more rousing the beast in it, when its bites may be incurable, but cool down its excessive heat and perfervid temper and quiet it, for should it become tame and manageable it will inflict but little hurt.
ד׳
4[211] What, then, is the method of bringing it to a quiet and subdued state? Adapt and transform yourself in outward appearance and follow for the moment whatever it pleases, and opposing no single suggestion of its, profess to share its likes and dislikes. In this way it will be made quite friendly. And when it has been softened, you will drop your feigning, and, free now from the expectation of suffering any evil at its hands, you will comfortably return to the care of your own charges.
ה׳
5[212] For this is the reason why Haran is represented as full of beasts, and having cattle-rearers as its inhabitants; for what place could be more suitable for irrational nature and those who have taken upon them the charge and patronage of it, than our senses?
ו׳
6[213] For instance, when the trainer of self inquires “Whence are ye?” the shepherds answer truly “from Haran” (Gen. 29:4); for the irrational faculties come from sense-perception, as do the rational from understanding. When he further inquires whether they know Laban, they naturally say that they know him (Gen. 29:5): for sense-perception is familiar, so it imagines, with every colour and every quality, and Laban is the symbol of colours and varieties of quality.
ז׳
7[214] But as for Jacob himself, when at last he has been perfected, he quits, as we shall find, the dwelling-place of the senses, and founds that of the soul in the true sense of the word, the dwelling-place which he pictures to himself while still immersed in his toils and exercises; for he says, “When shall I also make for myself a dwelling-place?” (Gen. 30:30). When shall I, looking beyond things perceived and the senses which perceive them, inhabit mind and understanding, educated in and associating with matters which form reason’s contemplation, even as souls do that are in quest of things out of sight?
ח׳
8[215] To such souls it is customary to give the name of “midwives,” for, like the midwives in Egypt, these make places of shelter and security fit for virtue-loving souls: and the fear of God is as of old the most sure dwelling-place for those who have made Him their guard and impregnable fastness. For it says, “Since the midwives feared God, they made for themselves houses” (Ex. 1:21).