על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר א מ״חOn the Special Laws, Book I 48
א׳
1[257] The law would have such a person pure in body and soul, the soul purged of its passions and distempers and infirmities and every viciousness of word and deed, the body of the defilements which commonly beset it.
ב׳
2[258] For each it devised the purification which befitted it. For the soul it used the animals which the worshipper is providing for sacrifice, for the body sprinklings and ablutions of which we will speak a little later. For precedence in speech as well as elsewhere must be given to the higher and more dominant element in ourselves,
ג׳
3[259] the soul. How then is the soul purified? “Note, friend,” says the lawgiver, “how perfect and utterly free from blemish is the victim which you bring selected as the best of many by the priests with all impartiality of mind and clearness of vision, the result of the continued practice which has trained them to faultless discrimination. For if you observe this with your reason rather than with your eyes you will proceed to wash away the sins and defilements with which you have besmeared your whole life, some involuntary and accidental,
ד׳
4[260] some due to your own free will. For you will find that all this careful scrutiny of the animal is a symbol representing in a figure the reformation of your own conduct, for the law does not prescribe for unreasoning creatures, but for those who have mind and reason. It is anxious not that the victims should be without flaw but that those who offer them should not suffer from any corroding passion.
ה׳
5[261] As for the body, it purifies it with ablutions and sprinklings and does not allow the person to be sprinkled and washed once for all and then pass straightway within the sacred precincts, but bids him stay outside for seven days and be twice sprinkled on the third and seventh day, and after that, when he has bathed himself, it gives him full security to come within and offer his sacrifice.