על צאצאי קין ל״גOn the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 33
א׳
1[112] We have now described the progeny of Ada and who she herself is. Let us contemplate Lamech’s other wife Sella (Zillah) and her offspring. Well, “Sella” means “a shadow,” and is a figure of bodily and external goods, which in reality differ not a whit from a shadow. Is not beauty a shadow, which after a short-lived bloom withers away? What else is strength and vigour of body, which any chance illness breaks up? What else are the organs of sense with all their accuracy, which a noisome rheum can impair, or old age, the disease to which all of us in common must submit, reduces to inefficiency? And, to look further, are not large incomes and high reputations, and magistracies, and honours, and whatever external things are reckoned advantages, a shadow one and all?
ב׳
2[113] It behoves us to lead our mind by easy stages to the principle from which the whole matter starts. Men belonging to the number of those who are called distinguished have in former times gone up to Delphi and dedicated there records of their prosperous lives. These then, like evanescent paintings, have not only faded away by lapse of time, but have even breathed their last amid sharp reverses of fortune, or some of them have been swept away suddenly as by the rush of a torrent in spate and have been seen no more.
ג׳
3[114] Of this shadow and its fleeting dreams a son is born, to whom was given the name of Thobel (Gen. 4:22), meaning “all together.” For it is a fact that those who have obtained health and wealth, the compound which is proverbial, think that they have secured absolutely all things. And should a governorship conferring independent authority fall to their lot, puffed up by self-conceit and treading air, they forget themselves and the perishable stuff out of which they were made.
ד׳
4[115] They imagine that they have received a nature whose constitution is something more than human, and boastfully exalting themselves on their honours they deify themselves outright. An instance of this attitude is afforded by certain persons who have dared before now to say that they did not know the true God (Exod. 5:2), forgetting in their excessive enjoyment of bodily and outward things that they were but men.