Greed demonstrates its evil effects throughout the animate world, from the most universal of species to the most particular of individuals. To seek out one’s sustenance while placing one’s trust in God will, by constrast, bring about tranquillity and demonstrate everywhere its beneficient effects.

Thus, fruit trees and plants, which are a species of animate being insofar as they require sustenance, remain contentedly rooted where they are, placing their trust in God and not evincing any greed; it is for this reason that their sustenance hastens toward them. They breed too far more offspring than do the animals. The animals, by contrast, pursue their sustenance greedily, and for this reason are able to attain it only imperfectly and at the cost of great effort. Within the animal kingdom it is only the young who, as it were, evince their trust in God by proclaiming their weakness and impotence; hence it is that they receive in full measure their rightful and delicate sustenance from the treasury of Divine mercy. But savage beasts that pounce greedily on their sustenance can hope only for an illicit and coarse sustenance, attained through the expenditure of great effort. These two examples show that greed is the cause of deprivation, while trust in God and contentment are the means to God’s mercy.

In the human kingdom, the Jews have clung to the world more greedily and have loved its life with more passion than any other people, but the usurious wealth they have gained with great efforts is merely illicit property over which they exercise temporary stewardship, and it benefits them little. It earns them, on the contrary,