Philonis Judaei Opera Omnia (Vol. 7)

The boundaries, however, justly take their origin from Egypt and are terminated in the Euphrates; for in the extremities, the things of the soul occur, which it succeeds for us to approach with difficulty, after one has passed through bodily and external things, such as health, integrity of the senses, beauty, and strength, which in youth were accustomed to progress, grow, and be acquired: similarly, also those things which pertain to making profit and trade, such as navigation, agriculture, and commerce; for it was rightly said that all things, especially those aforementioned, befit a young man.

Who are the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, the Jebusites? Genesis 15:19-20

§. 17. Ten nations of malice are counted, which He destroys because of their proximity original note by Aucher: or, "the nations which He destroys because of the malice of their proximity to them"; for the false and poorly signed decade is also a neighbor to the good and lovable. The final perfection of the decimal number is most suitable as a measure of immeasurable numbers, just as both the world and the mind of the wise man are disposed. However, malice converts and overturns its substance, by despising the most necessary powers, so that only that remains which he has said (or heard), that the pursuit of virtue is good: for the depraved man is such, admitting opinion more than truth: among whom is the seed of the prophets, Ishmael.

Why did Sarah, the wife of Abraham, not generate (or bear) for him? Genesis 16:1

§. 18. The barren woman is celebrated as the mother of understanding. First, so that the son born through the miracle might appear more wondrous to the generations. Second, so that the conception and birth might be not from the marriage of the man, but from divine providence: for a barren woman to generate is not a work of the faculty of bearing, but a work of divine virtue. This is the literal sense: to the mind, however, first, that to have given birth is proper to a woman, just as to have generated is to a male: he wishes, therefore, to render the mind full of virtue more similar to the masculine gender than the feminine, believing it to be akin to itself to act, and not to be acted upon.