על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר א נ״גOn the Special Laws, Book I 53
א׳
1[289] After this he says, “On every gift ye shall offer salt,” by which he signifies, as I have said before, complete permanence. Salt acts as a preservative to bodies, ranking in this as second in honour to the life-principle. For just as the life-principle causes bodies to escape corruption, so does salt, which more than anything else keeps them together and makes them in a sense immortal.
ב׳
2[290] From the same point of view he called the altar a sacrifice-keeper, evidently giving it that special and distinctive name from its preserving the sacrifices, though the flesh is consumed by fire. And thus we have the clearest proof that he holds the sacrifice to consist not in the victims but in the offerer’s intention and his zeal which derives its constancy and permanence from virtue. He adds,
ג׳
3[291] too, a further enactment by which he orders every sacrifice to be offered without honey or leaven. Both these substances he considers unfit to be brought to the altar: honey perhaps because the bee which collects it is an unclean animal, bred from the putrescence and corruption of dead oxen, we are told, just as wasps are from the carcasses of horses ;
ד׳
4[292] or else he forbids it as a symbol of the utter unholiness of excessive pleasure which tastes sweet as it passes through the throat but afterwards produces bitter and persistent pains which of necessity shake and agitate the soul and make it unable to stand firmly in its place.
ה׳
5[293] Leaven is forbidden because of the rising which it produces. Here again we have a symbol of the truth, that none as he approaches the altar should be uplifted or puffed up by arrogance; Rather gazing on the greatness of God, let him gain a perception of the weakness which belongs to the creature, even though he may be superior to others in prosperity; and having been thus led to the reasonable conclusion, let him reduce the overweening exaltation of his pride by laying low that pestilent enemy, conceit.
ו׳
6[294] For if the Creator and Maker of the universe, though needing nothing of all that He has begotten, has regard to your weakness and not to the vastness of His might and sovereignty, makes you a partaker in His gracious power and fills up the deficiencies that belong to your life, how ought you to treat other men, your natural kinsfolk, seedlings from the same elements as yourself, you who brought nothing into the world,
ז׳
7[295] not even yourself? For naked you came into the world, worthy sir, and naked will you again depart, and the span of time between your birth and death is a loan to you from God. During this span what can be meet for you to do but to study fellow-feeling and goodwill and equity and humanity and what else belongs to virtue, and to cast away the inequitable, unrighteous and unforgiving viciousness which turns man, naturally the most civilized of creatures, into a wild and ferocious animal!