Musar su Isaia 44:18

Since it has been made clear that service to God must be with three things: with fear, with wisdom, and with love, we recognize that these three are given by one shepherd, and that is reason, for reason contains all three and other powers as well. For it is obvious that reason contains wisdom and love and the awareness that the rational person should in all things love the righteous path, lest he add to any of them more than is fitting or diminish more than is fitting. We learn from this that according to the perfection of the reason of man will his service to God become whole, and that what is lacking in the perfection of his service to God is lacking in the man’s reason and knowledge. If the service be perfect there is no doubt that the knowledge of their possessor is complete. For Scripture says with regard to sins and sinners (Jeremiah 10:14), “Every man is proved to be brutish, without knowledge,” and it says (Isaiah 44:18-19), “They know not, neither do they understand; for their eyes are bedaubed, that they cannot see, and their hearts, that they cannot understand. And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding.” The Prophet means that the service must be with the power of wisdom, as it is said (Psalms 111:10), “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And this is a sign that the service of God, blessed be He, is the goal of reason and wisdom and that those who forsake God are fools. If someone were to say, “Behold you see the wicked, that even among them there are wise and intelligent men in every branch of wisdom. How can you say of them that they are fools or lacking in mental power?” Our answer would be: “When a wise man is visited by misfortune and thereupon does a thing which he has never done before, but suddenly realizes that through this thing salvation will come to him, it is a sign of his previous folly.

But if a man is visited by sufferings, illness, troubles, or if he is exiled from his land, let him know that the Creator loves Him and corrects him as a man corrects his son. But if he sees that he is tranquil and confident without sufferings and illnesses and that he remains at peace and no trials come upon him, let him know that the Creator does not love him. Moreover, if he sees that his heart is hardened and uncharitable, or he does not fast to remember the day of judgment, and that when he sees people die, he does not reflect in his heart concerning the day of death, this is a great sign that, “Their eyes are bedaubed⁴³This is a paraphrase of Isaiah 44:18. lest they, seeing with their eyes, and hearing with their ears, and understanding with their heart, return and be healed.”⁴⁴This is based on Isaiah 6:10. When an evil decree is enforced against the people of the city, or against a nation, and he escapes from it, let him know that the Creator loves him and has shown his superiority over the others. Similarly, if the people of the city or a nation are altogether wicked and they walk in the obstinacy of their hearts, while this man’s eyes are opened and he stirs from his sleep and does not turn to those wicked people, but hastens to do complete repentance, this is a sign of the will of his God, that he has found favor in His eyes. Similarly, if he was extreme in his evil deeds, and did all things abominable to God and angered his God, but afterwards aroused himself and forsook all his evil deeds and removed all the evil from his heart, without fear⁴⁵Hoffman’s German translation understood this as "without a teacher.", except the fear of his God, because God inspired him with fear of Him, this is a great sign of the love of the Creator, blessed be He, and that He will have pity on him because he has removed the heart of stone from his flesh, and God has given to him a heart of flesh and His spirit he has given within him. There is no greater good than this! It is similar when sickness comes upon a man and he reaches the gates of death, and afterwards is spared, that is a sign of the love of the Creator, blessed be He, and that He has pity upon him, and that He wanted to warn him in order that he might turn away from his evil. But if a man commits blasphemies and is advanced in age and still does not repent, but clings to his wickedness, and if he advances in age and grows older, his lusts continue to renew themselves, he begins to build houses and to deal much in merchandise and to amass money from robbery, more than he did in the days of his youth, this is a great sign that the Creator rejects him, and therefore does not arouse him to repentance and does not correct him. He lets him go on in the stubbornness of his heart, as it is said (Psalms 81:13), “So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart that they might walk in their own counsels.” Similarly, if a man gives alms, or fulfills some commandment and then regrets it, all the more so if there was great effort expended in fulfilling the commandment, and he loathes the doing of it after he has done it, this is a great sign that the heart of his God is not set upon him, and that he does not find favor in His eyes, and that all of his expenditure of energy was in vain. It is the same if he does a sin and completes it and rejoices in it very much and has no remorse for having done it, but his desire is to do it a second time, this is a sign that the Creator, blessed be He, has turned His face from him.