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The Rabbi Who Tricked the Angel of Death Into Eden

The Angel of Death came with orders to be generous. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi borrowed the angel's blade, vaulted the wall of Eden, and made heaven honor his oath.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Last Request Before the Road
  2. The Wall and the Leap
  3. What the Garden Looked Like
  4. The Entry That Was Already Written

The Last Request Before the Road

God told the Angel of Death: "go to Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, and whatever he asks of you, grant it." The angel arrived armed, as always, but with unusual instructions. The rabbi heard him at the door and understood immediately what was happening. He was dying. He also understood something the angel had perhaps not fully considered: he had been given a blank authorization.

"Show me my place in the Garden of Eden," Rabbi Joshua said. The angel agreed. That alone was remarkable, the tradition notes, because it implied a place had already been assigned. The angel could show it because it existed. They walked together toward paradise, the dying rabbi and the figure who carried the instrument of his finality.

Then Rabbi Joshua asked for the blade. He explained it modestly: he might be frightened on the road if the sword remained in the angel's hand. "Give it to me for the walk." The Angel of Death, carrying explicit divine instructions to grant whatever was requested, handed over the instrument by which finality enters the world.

The Wall and the Leap

They arrived at the wall of paradise. The angel rose to show Rabbi Joshua his place from above, lifting him to see over the wall. The rabbi looked at what was on the other side, saw where he was standing relative to where he needed to be, and jumped.

He landed inside Eden with the blade still in his hand. He refused to give it back. He had not technically violated any oath. He had asked to see his place. He had seen it. He was now in it. The blade was in his possession on the inside of a wall the Angel of Death could not cross without authorization, and the Angel of Death did not currently have the authorization, because it was in the hand of the man who had just vaulted the wall.

The angel called back to heaven: "a man has stolen from me." A divine voice answered: "did he make an oath to give it back?" The angel said yes. The voice said: "tell him to return it." Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was already inside paradise, alive, standing in the place that had been reserved for him, and heaven was asking him to honor an oath. He honored it. He handed back the blade through the wall. He stayed where he was.

What the Garden Looked Like

The tradition preserves the account of what paradise looked like through Rabbi Joshua's eyes. There were seven compartments, each for a different category of the righteous. Each compartment had its own quality of light, its own population, its own atmosphere. The compartment nearest to the divine presence was the one reserved for the martyrs, for those who had died for the sanctification of God's name, and even there the tradition noted gradations of proximity and radiance.

The Academy on High sat at the center of paradise, where the sages who had spent their lives in learning continued learning, surrounded by the divine presence rather than approaching it from a distance. Rabbi Joshua had spent his life running an academy in the world below. What he found in the world above was the same work, extended and amplified, without the interruptions of exile and Roman occupation and the constant press of halakhic decisions that needed to be rendered by morning.

The Entry That Was Already Written

The tradition notes several people who entered paradise alive: Enoch, Elijah, and a small number of others whose righteousness was so complete that the ordinary mechanism of death was set aside for them. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi entered paradise alive through a different mechanism: not by being taken up directly, but by exploiting the precise terms of an authorization the angel had received and following those terms to their logical conclusion with more ingenuity than the angel had anticipated.

The divine voice that confirmed his entrance did not object to the method. It asked about the oath. The oath was honored. The entrance stood. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi had found the opening in the one situation that admits none, death itself, and walked through it with a clean oath and a clear conscience.

JoshuaAngel Of DeathGarden Of EdenAfterlifeParadise
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From the tradition

Sources

5 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Ketubot 77bTalmud Bavli, Ketubot

When he was about to die, they said to the Angel of Death: Go, do for him his will. He went and appeared to him. He said to him: Show me my place. He said to him: Very well. He said to him: Give me your knife, lest you frighten me on the way. He gave it to him. When he reached there, he lifted him up and showed it to him. He leaped and fell to that other side.

He seized him by the corner of his cloak. He said to him: By an oath, I will not come back. The Holy One, blessed be He, said: If he was ever released from an oath, let him return; if not, let him not return. He said to him: Give me back my knife. He would not give it to him. A heavenly voice went forth and said to him: Give it back to him, for it is needed for the created beings. Elijah proclaimed before him: Make way for the son of Levi! Make way for the son of Levi!

He went and found Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai sitting upon thirteen stools of fine gold. He said to him: Are you the son of Levi? He said to him: Yes. Has the rainbow appeared in your days? He said to him: Yes. If so, you are not the son of Levi. But it was not so, for there had been nothing; rather he reasoned: I will not claim merit for myself.

Full source
Gaster, Hebrew Visions of Hell and Paradise, Revelation of R. Joshua ben Levi (A), sec. 1-5Hebrew Visions of Hell and Paradise

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi was so beloved for his piety that when his hour came, the Holy One instructed the angel of death to grant him any wish he asked. The angel came and told him plainly that the end was near, then offered to fulfill whatever he desired. The rabbi made a single request: to be shown his place in Gan Eden before he died.

Suspecting nothing good, he added a condition. He asked the angel to hand over his sword, so that he could not be frightened along the way, and the angel agreed. Together they walked until they reached the wall of the garden, and the angel lifted the rabbi to the top to point out his appointed portion within.

In that instant Rabbi Yehoshua jumped down from the wall and landed inside, and he swore by the Name of God that he would never leave. The angel of death caught at his cloak and ordered him out, but had no power to cross the boundary himself. When the ministering angels protested, the Holy One ruled that the oath would stand only if the rabbi had never once broken a vow in his life. They searched his whole record and found nothing, and so a living man kept by holy cunning the place he had earned.

Full source
Chronicles of Jerahmeel XIIChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

All of a person's sins are engraved on their bones. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle compiled by Jerahmeel ben Solomon, Rabbi Isaac ben Parnach taught that iniquities are literally inscribed on the skeleton, while merits are written on the right hand.

At the moment of death, three angels arrive. The Angel of Death. A scribe. And a third angel assigned to accompany them. They say, "Arise, your end has come." The dying person protests: "My end has not yet arrived." The scribe begins counting the person's days and years. Then the person opens their eyes and sees the Angel of Death for the first time.

The description is terrifying. The angel stretches from one end of the world to the other. From the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, he is covered entirely in eyes. His clothing is fire. His covering is fire. He is surrounded by fire. He is fire. In his hand he carries a blade of flame, and from that blade hangs a single bitter drop. That drop causes death, then decomposition, then the livid pallor of the corpse.

Here is the paradox: no one dies until they have seen God. "No man shall see Me and live" (Exodus 33:20) means that in the act of dying, God becomes visible. The person then confesses everything they have done. Their own mouth bears witness. God writes it down.

If the person lived righteously, their soul is returned peacefully to its owner. Three companies of angels greet them. The first says, "A righteous one has perished from the earth." The second says, "Let them rest in peace upon their couches." The third says, "They walked the straight path." But if the person was wicked, five angels of destruction arrive and declare: "The wicked shall return to Sheol."

Full source
Gaster, Hebrew Visions of Hell and Paradise, Revelation of R. Joshua ben Levi (A), sec. 10-14Hebrew Visions of Hell and Paradise

When Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi was asked to map the hidden country he had entered, he walked through Gan Eden and counted seven chambers, each a perfect square of vast measure, every wall and panel chosen to match the souls who lived there.

The first chamber, walled in glass and lined with cedar, belongs to those who came to the Torah of their own free choice rather than by birth or pressure. The second, built of silver, holds the penitents, and over them presides Manasseh son of Ezekiah, a king who himself turned back from grave wrong, a sign that the gate of return stays open even to those who fell the furthest.

The third chamber gleams with silver and gold and houses the patriarchs Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, the whole generation that left Egypt, and the righteous kings of Judah. The fourth is no less beautiful, yet its paneling is plain olive-wood, and the rabbi was told the reason without flinching: the perfectly faithful who rest there had lived lives as bitter as the olive. The architecture of the place is itself a teaching, fitting each reward to the road that earned it.

Full source
Alphabet of Ben Sira 45Alphabet of Ben Sira

Jewish tradition holds that a handful of people never died. They walked into Gan Eden - the Garden of Eden - while still alive, bypassing death entirely. The Alphabet of Ben Sira, composed between 700 and 1000 CE, gives us the most complete list of these extraordinary figures and explains why each one earned this reward.

Enoch entered because he was the most righteous person of his generation. Eliezer, Abraham's servant, entered because despite being a descendant of the cursed line of Ham, he gave himself over to Abraham's service and became righteous. Serach bat Asher entered because she was the one who told Jacob that his son Joseph was still alive - and Jacob blessed her that her mouth, which brought him such joy, would never taste death. Bitya bat Pharaoh, the Egyptian princess who raised Moses, entered so that no one could say her goodness went unrewarded. Eved-Melech the Ethiopian entered because he saved the prophet Jeremiah from a muddy pit. Yabetz entered for being the most righteous of his entire generation.

The most dramatic story belongs to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. He convinced the Angel of Death to give him a tour of the Garden's entrance. But first, he asked to hold the angel's sword - for safety. The Angel of Death agreed. The moment they reached the gate, Rabbi Yehoshua jumped over the wall and landed inside. He was in. The Angel of Death screamed so loudly he nearly destroyed the world, but God calmed him. Rabbi Yehoshua kept the sword for seven years before God finally made him return it.

Hiram, King of Tyre, entered for building the Temple - but his story has a twist. After a thousand years in paradise, he grew arrogant and declared himself a god, as described in (Ezekiel 28:2). He was expelled from Gan Eden and cast into Gehennom instead.

The strangest immortal is Malchas the Bird. When Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, she fed the fruit to every creature. But Malchas refused: "Isn't it enough that you sinned? Now you come to make me sin too?" A heavenly voice declared that Malchas and all his descendants would never taste death. The text also explains why the eagle flies highest of all birds - after being punished and cast into a lions' den for trying to eat another bird upon leaving the Ark, the eagle was eventually rescued and given divine protection, soaring above all other creatures so its enemies could never reach it.

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