על צאצאי קין י״זOn the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 17
א׳
1[59] This “Heap” is called to witness by Jacob, the man of earnest effort, in his controversy with Laban (Gen. 31:46 f.). This conveys the deep truth that the mind is for each man the witness of his secret purposes, and the conscience an impartial scrutineer unequalled in veracity. [But the city of Witness]was built before these cities. [60] For we are told that the spies came to Hebron, and that Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were there; then it is added: “and Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt” (Numb. 13:22). It is a thoroughly philosophical proceeding to show how one and the same name has different shades of meaning. “Hebron,” for instance, means “union,” but union may be of two kinds, the soul being either made the body’s yokefellow, or being brought into fellowship with virtue.
ב׳
2[61] The soul, then, that submits to bodily couplings has as its inhabitants those mentioned just now. “Ahiman” means “my brother”; “Sheshai” “outside me”; “Talmai” “one hanging”: for it is a necessity to souls that love the body that the body should be looked upon as a brother, and that external good things should be valued pre-eminently: and all souls in this condition depend on and hang from lifeless things, for, like men crucified and nailed to a tree, they are affixed to perishable materials till they die.
ג׳
3[62] But the soul wedded to goodness obtained inhabitants excelling in the virtues, whom the double cave (Gen. 23:9) received in pairs, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Leah and Jacob, these being virtues and their possessors. This Hebron, a treasure-house guarding personal monuments of knowledge and wisdom, is earlier than Zoan and all Egypt. For nature wrought soul elder than body (or Egypt), and virtue elder than vice (or Zoan). for “Zoan” means “Command of evacuation”; and nature determines precedence not by length of time but by worth.