על צאצאי קין ל״הOn the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 35
א׳
1[120] We are told that the sister of Thobel was Noeman (Gen. 4:22), meaning “fatness”; for when those, who make bodily comfort and the material things of which I have spoken their object, succeed in getting something which they crave after, the consequence is that they grow fat. Such fatness I for my part set down not as strength but as weakness, for it teaches us to neglect to pay honour to God, which is the chiefest and best power of the soul.
ב׳
2[121] The Law testifies to this by what it says in the greater song, “he became sleek, he grew thick, he broadened out, and forsook God which made him, and was unmindful of God his Saviour” (Deut. 32:15). For indeed those for whom life has burst into bloom in the sunshine of the moment, no longer remember the Eternal, taking the lucky moment to be a god.
ג׳
3[122] Wherefore Moses also bears his witness by exhorting to warfare against opposing doctrines; for he says “the fair moment has departed from them, but the Lord is among us” (Numb. 14:9). From this we see that the Divine word dwells and walks among those for whom the soul’s life is an object of honour, while those who value the life given to its pleasures, experience good times that are transient and fictitious. These, suffering from the effects of fatness and enjoyment spreading increasingly, swell out and become distended till they burst; but those who are fattened by wisdom which feeds souls that are lovers of virtue, acquire a firm and settled vigour, of which the fat taken from every sacrifice to be offered with the whole burnt offering is a sign.
ד׳
4[123] For Moses says “all the fat is a due for ever to the Lord” (Lev. 3:16 f.), showing that richness of mind is recognized as God’s gift and appropriated to Him, and thus attains to immortality; while that of the body and outward things is ascribed to the fair moment that usurps the place of God, and for this reason quickly has passed its prime.