'Surely Joseph and his brother are dearer to our father than we are: his brother [Benjamin] is the practical rational faculty from Joseph's mother the heart, Rachel the self-reproaching soul whom Jacob the heart married after the death of Leah the commanding soul. They said 'surely Joseph and his brother […]', because just as the intellect entails perfecting of the heart with forms of knowledge and gnoses, it also entails perfecting this faculty by inferring all manner of virtues such as beautiful character traits and noble deeds. Their description of him [Jacob] as being in misguidance, which is to be remote from what is correct, by saying: Lo! our father is in plain misguidance, is a deficiency of rational consideration on their part and [an indication of] the remoteness of his way of actualising corporeal pleasures from theirs. Their casting of him [Joseph] into the bottom of a well is their [the senses'] mastery over the heart and their drawing of it towards the lower aspect by the occurrence [in the heart] of love for the body and correspondences with it until it was [finally] cast into the bottom of the well of corporeal nature. Except that he [Joseph] had been dressed in a shirt from Paradise which Gabriel, peace be upon him, had brought to Abraham on that day when he was denuded and cast into the fire and had dressed him in. Isaac had inherited it [from Abraham] and from him Jacob inherited it and attached it to an amulet around his [Joseph's] neck. So Gabriel came to him in the well, took it out and dressed him in it, for otherwise the water would have drowned him and his private parts would have been exposed, as has been related. It [the shirt] is an allusion to the attribute of original preparedness and the light of primordial nature, which is what preserved Abraham from the fire and shielded him by the will of God such that it was coolness and safety for him. As for their [the senses'] drawing of the intellect down so that it considers what pertains to livelihood and the actualisation of the means for that and that it orients itself towards that [pursuit], that is the significance of their words: