The Sound of a Driven Leaf Chases the Sages Who Fled

"And those of you who remain, I will bring faintness into their hearts" (Leviticus 26:36) — this is terror and dread and anxiety and fear. "And the sound of a driven leaf shall chase them" — for even the leaves of a tree, when the wind blows, would strike one against another, as in the incident that occurred in the days of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Yehotzadak, when the leaves struck one another, and the sages fled, thinking that the enemy had come upon them; and afterward they turned their faces back, and found no one pursuing them. They said: to fulfill regarding it the verse, "And the sound of a driven leaf shall chase them."