על צאצאי קין ל״טOn the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 39
א׳
1[132] Rebecca is discovered watering her pupil not with gradual progress, like Hagar, but with perfection. How, the Law itself shall show. “The damsel,” it says, “was very fair to look upon: she was a virgin, no man had known her. And she went down to the spring and filled her pitcher and came up. And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Give me to drink, I pray thee, a little water out of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink, sir. And she hasted and let down her pitcher on to her arm, and gave him drink, until he ceased drinking. And she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they all have drunk. And she hasted and emptied her pitcher into the trough and ran to the well and drew water for the camels” (Gen. 24:16–20).
ב׳
2[133] Who would not admire the lawgiver’s accuracy in every detail? For he tells us that Rebecca was a virgin and a very beautiful virgin, because virtue is essentially free from alloy and false semblance and defilement, and alone among created things both beautiful and good. Indeed it was from virtue that the Stoic canon sprang that the morally beautiful alone is good.