Littérature du Second Temple sur Le Deutéronome 23:3

[81] Let the despot’s title therefore be ruler of war, the king’s prince of peace, of Salem, and let him offer to the soul food full of joy and gladness; for he brings bread and wine, things which Ammonites and Moabites refused to supply to the seeing one, on which account they are excluded from the divine congregation and assembly. These characters, Ammonites deriving their nature from sense-perception their mother, and Moabites deriving theirs from mind their father, who hold that all things owe their coherence to these two things, mind and sense-perception, and take no thought of God, “shall not enter,” saith Moses, “into the congregation of the Lord, because they did not meet us with bread and water” (Deut. 23:3 f.) when we came out from the passions of Egypt.

And the Book of the Law affords many examples of wide divergence in original endowments. Noah “finds grace in the sight of the Lord,” and Melchizedeck is made His “Priest” and “King of peace,” no previous merit being mentioned in either case (79 ff.). (Philo stops to contrast M. with the Moabites and Ammonites, who failed to bring forth bread and water, Deut. 23:3 f.) Abram was created good, and led to a better city. Isaac, who is compared with Hope, was richly endowed before birth. The lots of Jacob and Esau were told when they were unborn (82). Ephraim and Manasseh have names denoting, the one Memory and its Fruitfulness, the other escape only from Forgetfulness (94). Bezalel called to a position, which he is not said to have earned, bears a name meaning “In the shadow of God” and is taught by Moses, while Moses is taught by God. In view of all this we must pray and ponder God’s goodness (95–103).

§ 333. Fourth and fifth class also. Heinemann suggests with considerable probability that in De Mut. 205 τεθλασμένοι γὰρ τὰ γεννητικὰ τῆς διανοίας ἢ καὶ τελείως ἀποκοπέντες οἱ τὸν ἴδιον νοῦν καὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀποσεμνύνοντες ὡς μόνα τῶν κατʼ ἀνθρώπους αἴτια πραγμάτων, we should read ἀποκοπέντες <ἢ> οἱ, thus bringing into the allegory as here Deut. 23:3, as well as the two preceding verses. The only objection to this is that it leaves the τεθλασμένοι and ἀποκοπέντες without any theological interpretation corresponding to the other classes. Possibly this might be met by inserting <οἱ ἄθεοι ἢ> instead of merely <ἢ>.