Ebrei

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In the Earthly Paradise of the Commedia, within the treatise on vows, Beatrice adduces an example drawn from the Mosaic law: the Ebrei were obligated always to offer something to God, even if the material of the sacrifice could in some cases be substituted with another, as indicated in Leviticus 27, 1-33. The adverb «pur» indicates the continuity of the obligation, since they had in every case to offer something, even though permutations were permitted. The periphrasis «li Ebrei» also appears in Purgatorio XXIV, where the voice coming from the tree, in the purgatory of the gluttons, recalls the biblical episode narrated in Judges 7: Gideon, by divine order, led ten thousand Israelites to the water and chose only the three hundred who had drunk bringing the water to their mouths with their hands without bending their knees, while the others, having knelt to drink their fill, had shown themselves weak.