על צאצאי קין כ״גOn the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 23
א׳
1[78] Not without purpose have the differences between these cases been recorded in the lawgiver’s pages. For to those who welcome training, who make progress, and improve, witness is borne of their deliberate choice of the good, that their very endeavour may not be left unrewarded. But the fitting lot of those who have been held worthy of a wisdom that needs no other teaching and no other learning is, apart from any agency of their own, to accept from God’s hands Reason as their plighted spouse, and to receive Knowledge, which is partner in the life of the wise.
ב׳
2[79] But he that has been cast away from things human, the low and grovelling Lamech, marries as his first wife Ada, which means “Witness.” He has arranged the marriage for himself, for he fancies that the prime good for a man is the smooth movement and passage of the mind along the line of well-aimed projects, with nothing to hinder its working towards easy attainment.
ג׳
3[80] “For what,” says he, “could be better than that one’s ideas, purposes, conjectures, aims, in a word one’s plans, should go, as the saying is, without a limp, so as to reach their goal without stumbling, understanding being evidenced in all the particulars mentioned? Now, if a man brings a correct and unerring judgement to bear only on ends that are good, I for my part set this man down as happy. And in doing so I have the Law for my teacher, for the Law itself pronounced Joseph a successful man. It did not say “in all things” but in those in which God vouchsafed success (Gen. 39:2). and God’s gifts are all good.
ד׳
4[81] But if a man has used a natural aptness and readiness not only for good and worthy ends, but also for their opposites, treating as alike things widely different, let him be deemed unhappy. Certainly the words in the Babel passage are of the nature of a curse, where we read “nothing shall be wanting to them, which they purpose to do” (Gen. 11:6). for verily it is a desperate misfortune for the soul to succeed in all things which it attempts, although they be utterly base.
ה׳
5[82] I for my part would pray, that if ever I should have made up my mind to do a wrong, the wrongdoing might fail me, and if to live in a way unworthy of a man, the undisciplined life might fail me, and if with impudence and rascality, that there might be no impudence and rascality to be found. For assuredly ’tis better for those who have resolved to steal or commit adultery or murder to behold each of these purposes brought to failure and ruin.