The Souls Of The Dead On The Sabbath

Rabbi Chiyya and Rabbi Yonatan were once walking along in a cemetery. The blue fringe of Rabbi Yonatan's garment was trailing on the ground. Rabbi Chiyya said to him: Lift it up, so that they the dead should not say, Tomorrow they are coming to join us, and now they are mocking us. He said to him: And do they know so much as all this? Is it not written, "And the dead know nothing" (Ecclesiastes 9:5)? He said to him: If you have read Scripture, you have not repeated it in study; if you have repeated it, you have not gone over it a third time; if you have gone over it a third time, they have not explained it to you. "For the living know that they will die" (Ecclesiastes 9:5): these are the righteous, who even in their death are called living, as it is said, "And Benayahu the son of Yehoyada, the son of a living man, great in deeds, from Kabtzeel; he struck down the two sons of Ariel of Moab, and he went down and struck down the lion in the midst of the pit on a snowy day" (2 Samuel 23:20).