מי יורש קנייני אלוה נ״בWho is the Heir of Divine Things 52
א׳
1[258] The fourth kind of ecstasy we find in the passage we are now examining. “About sunset there fell upon Abraham an ecstasy,” that is, what the inspired and God-possessed experience. Yet it is not merely this experience which proves him a prophet, but we have also the actual word written and recorded in the holy Scriptures, when another tried to take Sarah from his home, Sarah the virtue whose nature is to rule, as though that virtue was not the peculiar possession of the wise and of him alone, but belonged to any who counterfeits good sense. For the text runs, “restore the woman to the man, because he is a prophet and shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live” (Gen. 20:7).
ב׳
2[259] Now with every good man it is the holy Word which assures him his gift of prophecy. For a prophet (being a spokesman) has no utterance of his own, but all his utterance came from elsewhere, the echoes of another’s voice. The wicked may never be the interpreter of God, so that no worthless person is “God-inspired” in the proper sense. The name only befits the wise, since he alone is the vocal instrument of God, smitten and played by His invisible hand.
ג׳
3[260] Thus, all whom Moses describes as just are pictured as possessed and prophesying.
ד׳
4Noah was just. Is he not in the same breath shewn as a prophet? Were not the curses which he called down on subsequent generations, the prayers which he made on their behalf, all of which the actual event confirmed, uttered by him under divine possession?
ה׳
5[261] What of Isaac? What of Jacob? They too are confessed as prophets by many other evidences, but particularly by their speeches addressed to their children. For “Gather ye together that I may proclaim what shall happen to you at the end of the days” (Gen. 49:1) were the words of one inspired. For apprehension of the future does not belong to man.
ו׳
6[262] What of Moses? Is he not everywhere celebrated as a prophet? For it says, “if a prophet of the Lord arise among you, I will be known to him in vision, but to Moses in actual appearance and not through riddles” (Num. 12:6, 8), and again “there no more rose up a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deut. 34:10).
ז׳
7[263] Admirably then does he describe the inspired when he says “about sunset there fell on him an ecstasy.”
