“I said in my heart: The righteous and the wicked, God will judge, as there is a time for every purpose and for every action there” (Ecclesiastes 3:17). “I said in my heart: The righteous and the wicked, God will judge.” Rabbi Ḥanina bar Pappa said: God will judge the righteous like the wicked; a robber goes up to the gallows and Rabbi Akiva goes up to the gallows. Rabbi [Yehuda HaNasi] said: God judges the righteous via the wicked.
The wicked Turnusrofus judged Rabbi Akiva, and when Trajan killed Luleyanus and his brother Pappos in Laodicea, he said to them: ‘Are you not from the people of Ḥananya, Mishael, and Azarya, and I am from the grandchildren of Nebuchadnezzar? Let the God of Ḥananya, Mishael, and Azarya come and rescue you from my hands.’ They said to him: ‘Ḥananya, Mishael, and Azarya were upright, and King Nebuchadnezzar was a decent king, and he was worthy for a miracle to be performed through him.
But we are people who are liable [to punishment] by the Omnipresent and you are a king who is liable [to punishment], and you are unworthy for a miracle to be performed through you. We are liable to be executed [due to our sins]. If you kill us, fine, and if not, the Omnipresent has many lions, bears, snakes, and scorpions through which people are killed. If you kill us, you are considered as nothing more than one of them; however, the Holy One blessed be He is destined to avenge our blood from your hands.’
It is said that they did not manage to move from there,77After he executed them. before a pair of emissaries arrived from Rome and removed his [Turnusrofus’s] brain with wooden clubs. “As there is a time for every purpose and for every action there” – for every purpose there is a time, and for every time there is a purpose. “And for every action there” – in this world, what a person wishes, he does; however, he is held to account there.78In the World to Come.