Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ... A mule can have no offspring, because God would not have it that creatures should perpetuate any that He had not created. The-blessing which God had bestowed upon His creatures, that they should increase and multiply, does not extend to those which spring from two different species. End Of The Eighth Section. Chapter XXXVII.--i And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger. The B'chai writes: The righteous man is like a stranger.-in this world. A stranger, having no friends, no house and no fields, thinks only to provide himself with food, and to wander about; so likewise is the pious man--he thinks only of death, and prepares of his provision for the way, that is good works. Hence the text says: "Jacob dwelt in the land as a stranger," just like his fathers before him dwelt in the land as strangers in the world, and had only thought of the other world In the preceding section the text speaks of the children of Esau, but says very little about them, for it does not wish to say much about the wicked; but when it comes to the children of Jacob it records what happened to them. There is a parable: A man lost a pearl in the sand, he took a sieve and sifted the sand, and when he found the pearl, he threw away the sand and took up the pearl. 2 These are the generations of Jacob. These are the things which happened to the children of Jacob. The first thing is: Joseph was seventeen years old and fed his father's sheep, and the lad was brought up with the children of Bilhah and Zilpah. And the text says: And the lad, that is to say, he was young, and hence it was no disgrace to him to be with such associates as the children of Bilhah and Zilpah when they were feeding his father's flocks he was a lad, too young. So writes the...