על צאצאי קין י״טOn the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 19
א׳
1[66] The son of Enoch is named Gaidad (Gen. 4:18), which means “a flock.” Such a name follows naturally upon his father’s name. For it was fitting that the man who deems himself beholden to mind, which is incapable of comprehending its own nature, should beget irrational faculties, collected into a flock; for men endowed with reason do not profess that creed.
ב׳
2[67] Now every flock that has no shepherd over it necessarily meets with great disasters, owing to its inability by itself to keep hurtful things away and to choose things that will be good for it. Accordingly Moses says in his Prayer “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits and of all flesh, appoint a man over this congregation, which shall go out before their face and which shall come in, and which shall lead them out and which shall lead them in, and the congregation of the Lord shall not be as sheep that have no shepherd” (Numb. 27:16 f.).
ג׳
3[68] For when the protector, or governor, or father, or whatever we like to call him, of our complex being, namely right reason, has gone off leaving to itself the flock within us, the flock itself being left unheeded perishes, and great loss is entailed upon its owner, while the irrational and unprotected creature, bereft of a guardian of the herd to admonish and discipline it, finds itself banished to a great distance from rational and immortal life.