The Scent of Traitors and the Repentance of Yakum of Tzerorot

Another interpretation of "and he smelled the smell of his garments [begadav]" (Genesis 27:27): the smell of his traitors [bogedav], such as Yosef Meshita and Yakum of Tzerorot. As for Yosef Meshita: at the hour when the enemies sought to enter the Temple Mount, they said, "Let one of their own enter first." They said to him, "Go in, and whatever you take out is yours." He went in and brought out a golden menorah. They said to him, "It is not fitting for a commoner to use this; rather, go in a second time, and whatever you take out is yours." But he would not accept. They offered him exemption from taxes for three years, and still he would not accept. He said, "It is not enough that I angered my God once; shall I anger Him a second time?" What did they do to him? They placed him on a carpenter's saw-frame and sawed through him, and he cried out, "Woe, that I angered my Creator!" Yakum of Tzerorot was the nephew of Yose ben Yoezer of Tzeredah. He was riding a horse on the Sabbath and went ahead of the beam on which Yose was to be hanged. He said to him, "Look at the horse my master has mounted me upon, and look at the horse your Master has mounted you upon!" Yose said to him, "If it is so for those who anger Him, all the more so [kal vachomer] for those who do His will." He said, "Has any man done His will more than you?" Yose said to him, "If even one who did His will is treated so, all the more so for those who anger Him." The matter entered him like the venom of a serpent. He went and carried out upon himself the four court-imposed death penalties: stoning, burning, slaying, and strangling. What did he do? He brought a beam and fixed it in the ground, tied a cord to it, surrounded it with a fence, made a pyre before it, and fixed a sword upright in the middle. He hung himself from the beam; the cord snapped and he was strangled; the sword met him first; the fence fell upon him and he was burned. Yose ben Yoezer dozed and saw Yakum's bier flying through the air. He said, "By a brief hour this one has entered the Garden of Eden ahead of me."