מי יורש קנייני אלוה ל״הWho is the Heir of Divine Things 35
א׳
1[167] Again, are not the slabs of the ten general laws, which he calls tables, two, thus equal in number to the parts of the soul, the rational and irrational, which must be trained and chastened? These tables too were cut by the Divine Legislator and by Him only. For “the tables were the work of God and the writing on them was the writing of God, graven on the tables” (Ex. 32:16).
ב׳
2[168] Further, the ten words on them, divine ordinances in the proper sense of the word, are divided equally into two sets of five, the former comprising duties to God, and the other duties to men.
ג׳
3[169] The first commandment among the duties to God, is that which opposes the creed of polytheism, and its lesson is that the world has one sole ruler. The second forbids us to make gods of things which are not the causes of existence, employing for that purpose the mischievous arts of the painter and sculptor which Moses expelled from his common-wealth and sentenced to perpetual banishment. The purpose of this law is that the sole and true god may be duly honoured.
ד׳
4[170] The third is concerned with the name of the Lord, not that name the knowledge of which has never even reached the world of mere becoming—He that is cannot be named in words—but the name which is given to His Potencies. We are commanded not to take this name in vain. The fourth is concerned with the number Seven, the ever-virgin, the motherless. Its purpose is that creation, observing the inaction which it brings, should call to mind Him who does all things invisibly.
ה׳
5[171] The fifth is about honouring parents. This is of the sacred kind, since its reference is not to men, but to Him who causes all things to be sown and come into being, through whom it is that the father and mother appear to generate, though they do not really do so, but are the instruments of generation.
ו׳
6[172] This commandment was graven on the borderline between the set of five which makes for piety to God and the set which comprises the prohibitions against acts of injustice to our fellows. The mortal parentage is but the final form which immortal powers take. They in virtue of their nature generate all things, but have permitted mortality also at the final stage to copy their creative art and to beget. For God is the primary cause of generation, but the nethermost and least honoured kind, the mortal-kind, is the ultimate.
ז׳
7[173] The other set of five forbids adultery, murder, theft, false witness, covetousness. These are general rules forbidding practically all sins, and to them the specific sins may in each case be referred.
