על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ד כ״אOn the Special Laws, Book IV 21
א׳
1[113] Holding to the same method he declares that all reptiles which have not feet but wriggle along by trailing their belly, or are four-legged and many footed are unclean for eating. Here again he has a further meaning: by the reptiles he signifies persons who devote themselves to their bellies and fill themselves like a cormorant, paying to the miserable stomach constant tributes of strong drink, bake-meats, fishes and in general all the delicacies produced with every kind of viand by the elaborate skill of cooks and confectioners, thereby fanning and fostering the flame of the insatiable ever-greedy desires. By the four-legged and many footed he means the base slaves not of one passion only, desire, but of all. For the passions fall under four main heads but have a multitude of species, and while the tyranny of one is cruel the tyranny of many cannot but be most harsh and intolerable.
ב׳
2[114] Creeping things which have legs above their feet, so that they can leap from the ground, he classes among the clean as for instance the different kinds of grasshoppers and the snake-fighter as it is called; and here again by symbols he searches into the temperaments and ways of a reasonable soul. For the natural gravitation of the body pulls down with it those of little mind, strangling and overwhelming them with the multitude of the fleshly elements.
ג׳
3[115] Blessed are they to whom it is given to resist with superior strength the weight that would pull them down, taught by the guiding lines of right instruction to leap upward from earth and earth-bound things into the ether and the revolving heavens, that sight so much desired, so worthy a prize in the eyes of those who come to it with a will and not half-heartedly.