The Refiner of Israel and the Ladder of Prayers Answered

"The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts" (Proverbs 17:3). Rav said: The commandments were given only in order to refine Israel by them. Just as the refiner puts the gold into the furnace and strains it a first time, a second, and a third, until he establishes it in its purity, so the Holy One, blessed be He, chastens the righteous, each and every one according to his strength. There is a prayer that is answered after a hundred years, from Abraham, for "Abraham was a hundred years old" (Genesis 21:5). There is a prayer that is answered after ninety years, from Sarah, for "shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?" (Genesis 17:17). There is a prayer that is answered after eighty years, from Moses, for "Moses was eighty years old" (Exodus 7:7). There is a prayer that is answered after sixty years, from Isaac, for "Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them" (Genesis 25:26). There is a prayer that is answered after fifty years, from Samuel, for she said "and there abide for ever" (1 Samuel 1:22) — and the "world" of the Levites is only fifty years, as it is written, "and from the age of fifty years" and so forth (Numbers 8:25). But these are fifty-two! Rabbi Yose bar Avin said: the two years that she nursed him. (Rabbi Akiva expounded: "As for man, his days are as grass" (Psalms 103:15). It happened that Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva were walking in the streets of Jerusalem, and a certain man was with them. A sick man met them. He said to them, "My masters, tell me how I may be healed." They said to him, "Take such and such until you are healed." That man who was with them said to them, "Who struck him with illness?" They said to him, "The Holy One, blessed be He." He said to them, "And you have entered into a matter that is not yours! He struck, and you heal?" They said to him, "What is your work?" He said to them, "I am a tiller of the soil, and here is the sickle in my hand." They said to him, "Who created the soil? Who created the vineyard?" He said to them, "The Holy One, blessed be He." They said to him, "And you enter into a matter that is not yours! He created it, and you eat its fruit?" He said to them, "Do you not see the sickle in my hand? Were it not that I go out and plow it and clear it and dung it and weed it, it would yield nothing." They said to him, "Fool of the world! From your own work have you not heard what is written, 'As for man, his days are as grass'? Just as the tree, if it is not dunged and weeded and plowed, does not grow, and if it grew but did not drink water it does not live but dies — so the body is the tree, the dung is the medicine, and the man of the soil is the physician." He said to them, "I beg of you, do not punish me. This body — its constituents are suspended one upon another, and if this one is not, that one is not; and when they break apart one from another, the body is stricken and dies, like this house which has four sides: if one of them breaks apart, the house falls.") There is a prayer that is answered after thirty years, from Joseph, for "Joseph was thirty years old" (Genesis 41:46). There is a prayer that is answered after three days, from Jonah, for "and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights" (Jonah 2:1). And there is a prayer that did not have time to leave the mouth of the one who said it before it was answered, from Moses, for "and the LORD said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me?" and so forth (Exodus 14:15). But of Hannah we have not heard. Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said: From the hundred written of Abraham, or the ninety written of Sarah. Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman, in the name of Rabbi Yonatan: Hannah was remembered at a hundred and thirty, just as Jochebed was remembered.