מי יורש קנייני אלוה י״זWho is the Heir of Divine Things 17
א׳
1[86] When the Lord led him outside He said “Look up into heaven and count the stars, if thou canst count their sum. So shall be thy seed” (Gen. 15:5). Well does the text say “so” not “so many,” that is, “of equal number to the stars.” For He wishes to suggest not number merely, but a multitude of other things, such as tend to happiness perfect and complete.
ב׳
2[87] The seed shall be, He says, as the ethereal sight spread out before him, celestial as that is, full of light unshadowed and pure as that is, for night is banished from heaven and darkness from ether. It shall be the very likeness of the stars, marshalled in goodly array, following an unswerving order which never varies or changes.
ג׳
3[88] For He wished to picture the soul of the Sage as the counterpart of heaven, or rather, if we may so say, transcending it, a heaven on earth having within it, as the ether has, pure forms of being, movements ordered, rhythmic, harmonious, revolving as God directs, rays of virtues, supremely starlike and dazzling. And if it be beyond our powers to count the stars which are visible to the senses, how much more truly can that be said of those which are visible to the mind.
ד׳
4[89] For I hold that even as of the two faculties of judgement one is better and one worse, since mind is better than sense and sense duller than understanding, even so do the objects which these two faculties judge differ; and thus things intelligible vastly exceed in number the things perceptible by sense. The eyes of the body are but the tiniest part of the eye of the soul. That is like the sun; the others are like candles, whose business is to be lighted and extinguished.
