Preface to Ben Mishle

Said Eliassaf, the son of our teacher Samuel ha-Levi, may his Rock protect him, after giving thanks to Him to whom gratitude is due, the Eternal One who preceded all things, before whom nothing existed and after whom there shall be none, and acknowledging, in every language and in all places, that He alone is God exalted and that all virtues and good qualities are His:

In this book I have gathered that which my father, may God find favor with him, and teacher composed by way of maxims and parables and which he called “Ben Mishle.” And I set out to copy it and learn it by heart when I was barely six years of age, my birth having occurred, according to an examination of the notation of the one who carefully documented it, in the middle of the seventh hour on the morning of Sunday the twenty-third of Marḥeshvan in the year 4810 [1049] since God’s creation of the world and the morning of the twenty-third of Jumādā I in the year 441 since the Ḥijra. And he wished that I should collect it and arrange its contents according to the letters of the alphabet. All of it is in a lucid style and harmoniously balanced, its subjects and formulations carefully selected and its structures and aims derived from the wisdom of the various nations and the diverse peoples, such as can be found in their books, in their pithy sayings and on the lips of their elites and common folk, together with inventions of his own, composed in accordance with his taste and as time and ability permitted. There will be found in it contradictory things due to a subtle reason to which the reader will be led if he is of sound mind and avails himself of thought as well as repetitions for the purpose of emphasizing an idea or increasing comprehension or to adorn a parable just as can be found in the works of authors like him, and even in our divinely inspired books, which are the word of God, may He be blessed, and His speech and the collections of our prophets, may God’s blessing be upon them. For indeed there is nothing desirable that does not contain opposing elements, and both may be beautiful at one time and not at another, and in one respect and not in another.

And he gave it [the book] as an epigraph these two verses:

Acquire excellent instruction and wondrous counsel in Ben Mishle of Samuel ha-Nagid. He who applies himself to its chapters will transgress not; his actions will be sincere, his speech upright. 

And each of the words in the couplet is tied to the rhyming syllable of the poems that begin each of the alphabetically arranged chapters.¹