על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ג ל״בOn the Special Laws, Book III 32
א׳
1[178] This is the explanation commonly and widely stated, but I have heard another from highly gifted men who think that most of the contents of the law-book are outward symbols of hidden truths, expressing in words what has been left unsaid. This explanation was as follows. There is in the soul a male and female element just as there is in families, the male corresponding to the men, the female to the women. The male soul assigns itself to God alone as the Father and Maker of the Universe and the Cause of all things. The female clings to all that is born and perishes; it stretches out its faculties like a hand to catch blindly at what comes in its way, and gives the clasp of friendship to the world of created things with all its numberless changes and transmutations, instead of to the divine order, the immutable, the blessed, the thrice happy.
ב׳
2[179] Naturally therefore we are commanded in a symbol to cut off the hand which has taken hold of the “pair,” not meaning that the body should be mutilated by the loss of a most essential member, but to bid us exscind from the soul the godless thoughts which take for their basis all that comes into being through birth; for the “pair” are a symbol of seed-sowing and birth.
ג׳
3[180] I will add another thought, following where the study of nature leads me. The monad is the image of the first cause, the dyad of matter passive and divisible. Therefore one who honours the dyad before the monad should not fail to know that he holds matter in higher esteem than God. It is for this reason that the law judged it right to cut off this tendency of the soul as if it were a hand, for there is no greater impiety than to ascribe to the passive element the power of the active principle.