Philo: Allegorical Interpretation, III

LXXXVI. (241) And who, some one perhaps, may say, ever escapes in-doors? Do not many do so? Or have not some people, avoiding the guilt of sacrilege, committed robberies in private houses, or though not beating their own fathers, have not they insulted the fathers of others? Now these men do escape from one class of offences, but they run into others. But a man who is perfectly temperate, ought to avoid every description of offence, whether greater or less, and never to be detected in any sin whatever. (242) But Joseph, for he is a young man, and because as such he was unable to struggle with the Egyptian body and to subdue pleasure, runs away. But Phineas the priest, who was zealous with a great zeal for God's service, did not provide for his own safety by flight; but having taken to himself a yoke horse, that is to say, zeal combined with reason, would never desist till he had wounded the Midianitish woman (that is to say the nature which was concealed in the divine company), through her belly,

in order that no plant or seed of wickedness might ever be able to shoot out from it.