Literatura Drugiej Świątyni do Wyjścia 33:11

[21] He reached this limit, I will not say of daring in general but of good daring, because all the wise are friends of God, and particularly so in the judgement of the most holy lawgiver. Frankness of speech is akin to friendship. For to whom should a man speak with frankness but to his friend? And so most excellent is it, that in the oracles Moses is proclaimed the friend of God (Ex. 33:11), to shew that all the audacities of his bold discourse were uttered in friendship, rather than in presumption. For the audacity of rashness belongs to the presumptuous, the audacity of courage or confidence to a friend.

§ 32. Release. An allusion to the ordinance by which in the sabbatical year the land (here compared to the mind) was to be left fallow, Ex. 33:11 τῷ δὲ ἑβδόμῳ ἄφεσιν ποιήσεις καὶ ἀνήσεις αὐτήν, καὶ ἔδονται οἱ πτωχοὶ τοῦ ἔθνους σου. In Lev. 25:4–7 we have the same ordinance, but with ἀνάπαυσις for ἄφεσις. Philo understands that the land by divine grace will bear plentifully of itself. Compare his φορὰ τῶν αὐτοματιζομένων ἀγαθῶν with τὰ αὐτόματα ἀναβαίνοντα of Lev. He may also be thinking of the somewhat similar ordinance of the Jubilee year, ἐνιαυτὸς ἀφέσεως, though there ἄφεσις means release for the people rather than for the land. On ὥσπερ τῶν ἑκουσίων Mangey wrote “omnino male” and proposed ὡς φόρτων τῶν ἐτησίων. But ἑκούσιος is in Philo’s thought the direct antithesis of αὐτόματος.