על שהרע נוהג לארוב לטוב מ״חThat the Worse is wont to Attack the Better 48
א׳
1[175] And so, to my thinking, those who are not utterly ignorant would choose to be blinded rather than see unfitting things, and to be deprived of hearing rather than listen to harmful words, and to have their tongues cut out to save them from uttering anything that should not be divulged. Such things have been done before now.
ב׳
2[176] Certain wise men, they tell us, while being tortured on the wheel to induce them to reveal secrets have bitten off their tongue, and so contrived a worse torture for their torturers, who found themselves unable to obtain the information which they wanted. It is better to be made a eunuch than to be mad after illicit unions. All these things, seeing that they plunge the soul in disasters for which there is no remedy, would properly incur the most extreme vengeance and punishment.
ג׳
3[177] It goes on to say “the Lord God set a sign upon Cain, that everyone that found him might not kill him” (Gen. 4:15), and what the sign is, he has not pointed out, although he is in the habit of showing the nature of each object by means of a sign, as in the case of events in Egypt when he changed the rod into a serpent, and the hand of Moses into the form of snow, and the river into blood.
ד׳
4[178] It would seem then that just this is the sign regarding Cain that he should not be killed, namely that on no occasion did he meet with death. For nowhere in the Book of the Law has his death been mentioned. This shows in a figure that, like the Scylla of fable, folly is a deathless evil, never experiencing the end that consists in having died, but subject to all eternity to that which consists in ever dying. Would that the opposite might come to pass, that worthless things should be taken out of sight and abolished, undergoing absolute destruction. As it is, they are continually kindled into flame, and inflict on those who have once been taken captive by them the disease that never dies.