מי יורש קנייני אלוה נ״וWho is the Heir of Divine Things 56
א׳
1[275] Having said thus much on these points also he continues, “but thou shalt depart to thy fathers nourished with peace, in a goodly old age” (Gen. 15:15). So then we who are imperfect are victims both of war and slavery, and hard-won is our release from the terrors which menace us. But the perfect are a race subject neither to war nor slavery, but nourished in peace and freedom sure and secure.
ב׳
2[276] And when he represents the good man as not dying but departing, there is sound doctrine in the words. He would have the nature of the fully purified soul shewn as unquenchable and immortal, destined to journey from hence to heaven, not to meet with dissolution and corruption, which death appears to bring.
ג׳
3[277] After “thou shalt depart” come the words “to thy fathers.” What fathers? This is worth inquiring. For Moses could not mean those who had lived in the land of the Chaldeans, who were the only kinsfolk Abraham had, seeing that the oracle had set his dwelling away from all those of his blood. For we read, “the Lord said unto Abraham ‘depart from thy land and from thy kinsfolk and from the house of thy father unto the land which I shall shew thee, and I will make thee into a great nation’ ” (Gen. 12:1, 2).
ד׳
4[278] Was it reasonable that he should again have affinity with the very persons from whom he had been alienated by the forethought of God? Or that he who was to be the captain of another race and nation should be associated with that of a former age? God would not bestow on him a fresh and in a sense a novel race and nation, if he were not cutting him right adrift from the old.
ה׳
5[279] Surely he is indeed the founder of the nation and the race, since from him as root sprang the young plant called Israel, which observes and contemplates all the things of nature. So we are told to bear out the old from the face of the new (Lev. 26:10). Rightly, for how shall they on whom the rain of new blessings has fallen in all its abundance, sudden and unlooked for, still find profit in old-world lore and the ruts of ancient customs?
