על צאצאי קין ו׳On the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 6
א׳
1[17] This must be borne in mind if we are to understand what we read about Abraham, how, on reaching the place of which God had told him, he looked up on the third day and “seeth the place from afar” (Gen. 22:3 f.). What place? The one which he had reached? And how can it be far off if he is already there?
ב׳
2[18] It may be that what we are told under a figure is to this effect. The wise man is ever longing to discern the Ruler of the Universe. As he journeys along the path that takes him through knowledge and wisdom, he comes into contact first with divine words, and with these he makes a preliminary stay, and though he had meant to go the remainder of the way, he comes to a stop. For the eyes of his understanding have been opened, and he sees perfectly clearly that he has engaged in the chase of a quarry hard to capture, which always eludes its pursuers and is off to a distance leaving them ever so far behind.
ג׳
3[19] Rightly does he reflect that all the fleetest things under the sky would be seen to be standing still, if their motion were compared with that of the sun and moon and the other heavenly bodies. And yet (he ponders) all heaven is God’s handiwork, and that which makes is ever ahead of the thing made: it follows, then, that not only other things with which we are familiar, but that whose movement surpasses them all in swiftness, the mind, would come short of the apprehension of the First Cause by an immeasurable distance. But the strangest thing of all is, that whereas the heavenly bodies as they go past moving objects are themselves in motion, God who outstrips them all is motionless.
ד׳
4[20] Yea, we aver that remaining the same He is at once close to us and far from us. He takes hold of us by those forming and chastening powers which are so close to each one of us; and yet He has driven created being far away from His essential Nature, so that we cannot touch it even with the pure spiritual contact of the understanding.
ה׳
5[21] With the lovers of God, then, in their quest of the Existent One, even if they never find Him, we rejoice, for the quest of the Good and Beautiful, even if the goal be missed, is sufficient of itself to give a foretaste of gladness. But the self-loving Cain we commiserate, for he has left in the lurch his own soul bereft of any conception of the Existent One, having deliberately blinded the organ by which alone he could have seen Him.