על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ב ט״וOn the Special Laws, Book II 15
א׳
1[56] After this continuous unbroken feast which has neither beginning nor end, the second to be observed is the sacred seventh day, recurring with six days between. Some have given to it the name of virgin, having before their eyes its surpassing chastity. They also call her the motherless, begotten by the father of the universe alone, the ideal form of the male sex with nothing of the female. It is the manliest and doughtiest of numbers, well gifted by nature for sovereignty and leadership. Some give it the name of the “season,” judging its conceptual nature from its manifestation in the realm of sense.
ב׳
2[57] For seven is a factor common to all the phenomena which stand highest in the world of sensible things and serve to consummate in due order transitions of the year and recurring seasons. Such are the seven planets, the Great Bear, the Pleiades and the cycles of the moon, as it waxes and wanes, and the movements, harmonious and grand beyond description, of the other heavenly bodies.
ג׳
3[58] But Moses from a higher point of view gave it the name of completion and full perfection when he laid down six as the number under which the parts of the universe were brought into being, seven as that under which they were perfected. For six is even-odd, formed out of twice three with the odd part as its male element and the even as its feminine, and these two, by the immutable laws of nature, are the sources of generation.
ד׳
4[59] But seven is a number entirely uncompounded, and may be quite properly described as the light of six. For seven reveals as completed what six has produced, and therefore it may be quite rightly entitled the birthday of the world, whereon the Father’s perfect work, compounded of perfect parts, was revealed as what it was.
ה׳
5[60] On this day we are commanded to abstain from all work, not because the law inculcates slackness; on the contrary it always inures men to endure hardship and incites them to labour, and spurns those who would idle their time away, and accordingly is plain in its directions to work the full six days. Its object is rather to give men relaxation from continuous and unending toil and by refreshing their bodies with a regularly calculated system of remissions, to send them out renewed to their old activities. For a breathing-space enables not merely ordinary people but athletes also to collect their strength and with a stronger force behind them to undertake promptly and patiently each of the tasks set before them.
ו׳
6[61] Further, when He forbids bodily labour on the seventh day, He permits the exercise of the higher activities, namely, those employed in the study of the principles of virtue’s lore. For the law bids us take the time for studying philosophy and thereby improve the soul and the dominant mind.
ז׳
7[62] So each seventh day there stand wide open in every city thousands of schools of good sense, temperance, courage, justice and the other virtues in which the scholars sit in order quietly with ears alert and with full attention, so much do they thirst for the draught which the teacher’s words supply, while one of special experience rises and sets forth what is the best and sure to be profitable and will make the whole of life grow to something better.
ח׳
8[63] But among the vast number of particular truths and principles there studied, there stand out practically high above the others two main heads: one of duty to God as shewn by piety and holiness, one of duty to men as shewn by humanity and justice, each of them splitting up into multiform branches, all highly laudable.
ט׳
9[64] These things shew clearly that Moses does not allow any of those who use his sacred instruction to remain inactive at any season. But since we consist of body and soul, he assigned to the body its proper tasks and similarly to the soul what falls to its share, and his earnest desire was, that the two should be waiting to relieve each other. Thus while the body is working, the soul enjoys a respite, but when the body takes its rest, the soul resumes its work, and thus the best forms of life, the theoretical and the practical, take their turn in replacing each other. The practical life has six as its number allotted for ministering to the body. The theoretical has seven for knowledge and perfection of the mind.