מי יורש קנייני אלוה ט״זWho is the Heir of Divine Things 16
א׳
1[81] There is a moral bearing too in the phrase “He led him out outside,” which some, because of the grossness of their moral sense, are in the habit of holding up to ridicule. “Can any be led out inside,” they ask, “or conversely go in outside?” “Indeed they can,” I would reply. In your ludicrous, thoughtless folly you have never learnt to trace the ways of the soul, but only of bodies, and all you look for is their movements from place to place. Therefore it seems to you a contradiction in terms that one should go out inside or go in outside. But we the disciples of Moses find nothing conflicting in such phrases.
ב׳
2[82] Would you not agree that the high priest whose heart is not perfect is both inside and outside, when he is performing the ancestral rites in the inmost shrine; inside in his visible body, outside in his wandering vagrant, soul; and on the contrary that one who loves and is loved by God, even if he is not of the consecrated line, though he stands outside the sacred limits abides right inside them? For he holds all his life in the body to be a sojourning in a foreign land, but when he can live in the soul alone, he feels that he is a dweller in his fatherland.
ג׳
3[83] Every fool is outside the threshold, even if he spend the livelong day within, nor leave it for a moment; and every wise man is inside it though he be separated from it not merely by countries but even by vast latitudes. And in Moses’ view a friend is so near that he differs not a whit from one’s own soul, for he says, “the friend, who is equal to thy soul” (Deut. 13:6).
ד׳
4[84] Again, according to Moses, the priest when he goes into the holy of holies “will not be a man until he comes out” (Lev. 16:17); no man, that is, in the movements of his soul though in the bodily sense he is still a man. For when the mind is ministering to God in purity, it is not human, but divine. But when it ministers to aught that is human, it turns its course and descending from heaven, or rather falling to earth, comes forth, even though his body still remains within.
ה׳
5[85] Most rightly, then, is it said, “He led him out outside,” outside of the prison-houses of the body, of the lairs where the senses lurk, of the sophistries of deceitful word and thought; above all He led him out of himself, out of the belief that he thought and apprehended through an intelligence which acknowledged no other authority and owed no allegiance to any other than itself.
