מי יורש קנייני אלוה מ״טWho is the Heir of Divine Things 49
א׳
1[237] After speaking of the birds which were left unsevered and undivided, he continues “and the birds came down to the carcasses, the half-pieces” (Gen. 15:11). He employs the same word “birds.” but shews very clearly to those who have eyes to see the contrast in fact between the two kinds of birds. For it is against nature that birds whose wings were given them to soar on high should come down.
ב׳
2[238] Just as earth is the most suitable place for creatures of the land, particularly reptiles, which in their wriggling course cannot even bear to be above ground, but make for holes and crannies and, since their natural place is below, avoid what is above, so too the air is the suitable habitat for the birds, its natural lightness matching with the lightness which the wings give them. So when the denizens of the air, who should rather be explorers of the realm of ether, “descend,” it is to the land that they come and there they cannot live their natural life.
ג׳
3[239] Conversely Moses gives high approval to those reptiles which can leap upwards. Thus he says, “These shall ye eat of the flying reptiles which go on four legs, which have legs above their feet, so as to leap with them from the earth” (Lev. 11:21). These are symbols of the souls which though rooted like reptiles to the earthly body have been purified and have strength to soar on high, exchanging earth for heaven, and corruption for immortality.
ד׳
4[240] Surely then we must suppose that misery wholesale and all-pervading must be the lot of those souls which reared in air and ether at its purest have left that home for earth the region of things mortal and evil, because the good things of God bred in them an intolerable satiety. And here they become the resort of thoughts and notions, numberless as the subjects with which they are concerned, some willingly admitted, some in mere ignorance. These thoughts are just like winged creatures and it is to them that he likens “the birds which come down.”
ה׳
5[241] Some of our thoughts fly up, others down. To the upward flight falls the better lot, for it has for its fellow-traveller virtue leading it to the divine and heavenly region; to the downward flight the worse lot falls, since vice goes in front and pulls it with might and main if it resists. How opposite are the climes to which these two belong is shewn most clearly by their names. Virtue is so named not only because we choose it (αἵρεσις) but also from its uplifting (ἄρσις), for it is lifted up and soars on high, because it ever yearns for the celestial. Vice is so called because it has “gone down” and compels those who have to do with it to fall down likewise.
ו׳
6[242] Thus thoughts hostile to the soul, when they hover over it or perch upon it, not only come down themselves, but also bring downfall to the understanding, when in hideous fashion they pounce upon things material, not immaterial; which are of the senses, not of the intelligence; of imperfection, not of soundness; of corruption not of life. For they perch not only on bodies, but on sections of bodies divided in two. And it is impossible that bodies so divided should admit of joining or unifying, since the currents of spirit force, which were their congenital ligament, have been broken into.
