[110] "Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and
if he were sensible of this he would not be
ignorant."--_Saádí_.
A saying ascribed to Esop has been frequently cited with admiration. The
sage Chilo asked Esop what God was doing, and he answered that he was
"depressing the proud and exalting the humble." A parallel to this is
presented in the answer of Rabbi Jose to a woman who asked him what God
had been doing since the creation: "He makes ladders on which he causes
the poor to ascend and the rich to descend," in other words, exalts the
lowly and humbles the haughty.
* * * * *
The lucid explanation of the expression, "I, God, am a jealous God,"
given by a Rabbi, has been thus elegantly translated by Coleridge:[111]
[111] _The Friend_, ed. 1850, vol. ii, p. 249.
"Your God," said a heathen philosopher to a Hebrew Rabbi, "in his Book
calls himself a jealous God, who can endure no other god besides
himself, and on all occasions makes manifest his abhorrence of idolatry.
How comes it, then, that he threatens and seems to hate the worshippers
of false gods more than the false gods themselves?"
"A certain king," said the Rabbi, "had a disobedient son. Among other
worthless tricks of various kinds, he had the baseness to give his dogs
his father's names and titles. Should the king show anger with the
prince or his dogs?"
"Well-turned," replied the philosopher; but if God destroyed the objects
of idolatry, he would take away the temptation to it."
"Yea," retorted the Rabbi; "if the fools worshipped such things only as
were of no farther use than that to which their folly applied them--if
the idol were always as worthless as the idolatry is contemptible. But
they worship the sun, the moon, the host of heaven, the rivers, the sea,
fire, air, and what not. Would you that the Creator, for the sake of
those fools, should ruin his own works, and disturb the laws applied to
nature by his own wisdom? If a man steal grain and sow it, should the
seed not shoot up out of the earth because it was stolen? O no! The wise
Creator lets nature run its own course, for its course is his own
appointment. And what if the children of folly abuse it to evil? The day
of reckoning is not far off, and men will then learn that human actions
likewise reappear in their consequences by as certain a law as that
which causes the green blade to rise up out of the buried cornfield."
* * * * *
Not less conclusive was the form of illustration employed by Rabbi
Joshuah in answer to the emperor Trajan. "You teach," said Trajan, "that
your God is everywhere. I should like to see him." "God's presence,"
replied the Rabbi, "is indeed everywhere, but he cannot be seen. No
mortal can behold his glory." Trajan repeated his demand. "Well," said
the Rabbi, "suppose we try, in the first place, to look at one of his
ambassadors." The emperor consented, and Joshuah took him into the open
air, and desired him to look at the sun in its meridian splendour. "I
cannot," said Trajan; "the light dazzles me." "Thou canst not endure the
light of one of his creatures," said the Rabbi, "yet dost thou expect to
behold the effulgent glory of the Creator!"
* * * * *
Our selections from the sayings of the Hebrew Fathers might be largely
extended, but we shall conclude them with the following: A Rabbi, being
asked why God dealt out manna to the Israelites day by day, instead of
giving them a supply sufficient for a year, or more, answered by a
parable to this effect: There was once a king who gave a certain yearly
allowance to his son, whom he saw, in consequence, but once a year, when
he came to receive it; so the king changed his plan, and paid him his
allowance daily, and thus had the pleasure of seeing his son each day.
And so with the manna: had God given the people a supply for a year they
would have forgotten their divine benefactor, but by sending them each
day the requisite quantity, they had God constantly in their minds.
* * * * *
There can be no doubt that the Rabbis derived the materials of many of
their legends and tales of Biblical characters from foreign sources; but
their beautiful moral stories and parables, which "hide a rich truth in
a tale's pretence," are probably for the most part of their own
invention; and the fact that the Talmud was partially, if not wholly,
translated into Arabic shortly after the settlement of the Moors in
Spain sufficiently accounts for the early introduction of rabbinical
legends into Muhammedan works, apart from those found in the Kurán.
_ADDITIONAL NOTES._