על שהרע נוהג לארוב לטוב מ״דThat the Worse is wont to Attack the Better 44
א׳
1[159] Do you not see that Abraham, when he had “forsaken land and kindred and his father’s house,” i.e. the body, sense, and speech (Gen. 12:1), begins to meet with the powers of Him that IS? For when he has gone out from all his house, the Law says that “God appeared to him” (Gen. 12:7), showing that He clearly manifests Himself to him that escapes from things mortal and mounts up into a soul free from the encumbrance of this body of ours.
ב׳
2[160] So Moses “taking his tent sets it up outside the camp” (Exod. 33:7), and places its abode far from the bodily encampment, expecting that only thus might he become a perfect suppliant and worshipper of God.
ג׳
3Of this tent he says that it has received the title of “Tent of Testimony,” using his words quite advisedly, to show that the Tent of the Existent One really IS, and does not merely receive the title. For, among the virtues, that of God really IS, actually existing, inasmuch as God alone has veritable being. This is why Moses will say of Him as best he may in human speech, “I AM He that IS” (Exod. 3:14), implying that others lesser than He have not being, as being indeed is, but exist in semblance only, and are conventionally said to exist. To Moses’ Tent, however, which figuratively represents human virtue, must be accorded not existence but only a title, seeing that it is a copy and likeness of that divine virtue. It follows as a consequence of this that, when Moses is appointed “a god unto Pharaoh,” he did not become such in reality, but only by a convention is supposed to be such; for I do indeed know God as granting favours and giving,
ד׳
4[161] but I am unable to conceive of Him as being given; yet it is said in the sacred books, “I give thee as a god to Pharaoh” (Exod. 7:1), that which is given being passive not active; but He that really IS must needs be active not passive.
ה׳
5[162] What then do we gather from these words? That the wise man is said to be a god to the foolish man, but that in reality he is not God, just as the counterfeit four-drachma piece is not a tetradrachm. But when the wise man is compared with Him that is, he will be found to be a man of God; but when with a foolish man, he will turn out to be one conceived of as a god, in men’s ideas and imagination, not in view of truth and actuality.