In the context of the foregoing quotation occurs an anecdote of Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah which is too racy to let pass, and too characteristic to need note or comment. One day Elisha ben Abuyah was privileged to pry into Paradise, where he saw the recording angel Metatron on a seat registering the merits of the holy of Israel. Struck with astonishment at the sight, he exclaimed, " Is it not laid down that there is no sitting in heaven, no shortsightedness or fatigue?* Then Metatron, thus discovered, was ordered out and flogged with sixty lashes from a fiery scourge.
Smarting with pain, the angel asked and obtained leave to cancel the merits of the prying Rabbi. One day — it chanced to be on Yom Kippur and Sabbath — as Elisha was riding along by the wall where the Holy of Holies once stood, he heard a Bath Kol proclaiming, " Return, ye backsliding children, but Acher abide thou in thy sin M (Acher was the Rabbi's nickname). A faithful disciple of his hearing this, and bent on reclaiming and reforming him, jnvited him to go and hear the lads of a school close by repeat their lessons.
The Rabbi went, and from that to another and another, until he had gone the round of a dozen seminaries, in the last of which he called up a lad to repeat a verse who had an impediment in his speech. The verse happened to be Ps. 1. 16, " But unto the wicked, God saith, Why dost thou declare my law?" Acher fancied the boy said, and to Elisha (his own name), instead of and to Rasha, that is, the wicked.
This roused the Rabbi into such fury of passion, that he sprang to his feet, exclaiming, " If I only had a knife at hand I would cut this boy into a dozen pieces, and send a piece to each school I have visited! B