על צאצאי קין מ״גOn the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 43
א׳
1[142] This is why Moses says elsewhere: “Thou shalt lend to him that needs (in quantity) as much as he needs (in kind) suitably to his need” (Deut. 15:8), teaching by the latter clause that we must not grant everything to everybody, but what corresponds (in kind) to the need (or business) of those who wants something. For it is absurd to give an anchor or an oar or a rudder to a farmer, or a plough and a hoe to a pilot, or a lyre to a physician, while giving surgical instruments to a musician. This is as ridiculous as it is to bring costly viands to those who are athirst, and gallons of undiluted wine to those who are hungry, with a view to making known at the same time our wealth and our hatred of our fellow-men, by making sport of others’ mishaps.
ב׳
2With the kind of help to be given has been joined the amount to be given. This is introduced for the sake of maintaining due proportion, a thing which has great advantages. “Do not,” says right principle, “give all you can, but as much as the man in want is capable of receiving.”
ג׳
3[143] Or do you fail to notice that even God imparts divine communications not in a way corresponding to the greatness of His own perfection, but to the ever-varying capacity of those whom He would benefit? Who could possibly have borne the force of the oracles of God which are too great for any power of hearing? This seems to be most truly expressed by those who say to Moses: “Speak thou to us, and let not God speak to us, lest we die” (Exod. 20:19). for they felt that they have in themselves no organ of hearing fit to be employed when God is giving laws to His congregation.
ד׳
4[144] Were He to choose to display His own riches, even the entire earth with the sea turned into dry land would not contain them. One might as well suppose that the rainfall and the supply of Nature’s other boons takes place at seasons recurring at fixed intervals, and not uninterruptedly, owing to some dearth and scarcity of them, and not out of forethought for those who need them, who would be harmed rather than benefited by the unbroken enjoyment of like gifts.
ה׳
5[145] Wherefore God ever causes His earliest gifts to cease before their recipients are glutted and wax insolent; and storing them up for the future gives others in their stead, and a third supply to replace the second, and ever new in place of earlier boons, sometimes different in kind, sometimes the same. For creation is never left destitute of the gifts of God—had it been so left it would assuredly have perished—but it has no power to bear their full and abundant torrent. And so in His desire that we should enjoy benefit from the gifts which He bestows, God proportions the things which He gives to the strength of those who receive them.