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Rabbi Yehoshua Took the Angel's Sword and Leapt Into Eden

When the Angel of Death comes to escort Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, the rabbi borrows the sword, asks to see Eden, and refuses to come back.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. He Asked for Directions
  2. He Asked for the Sword
  3. The Rabbi Leapt Over the Wall
  4. The Sword That Would Not Return
  5. What He Found There

He Asked for Directions

When Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi's time came, God told the Angel of Death to go and fulfill whatever the rabbi requested. This was not a small concession. The angel was accustomed to being the one with authority in these meetings. Now he had arrived with instructions to be accommodating.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi did not ask for more time. He did not ask for a final blessing or a chance to say goodbye. He asked to see his place in Gan Eden before he departed. He wanted to know where he was going.

The request sounded modest. It was not.

He Asked for the Sword

Then he asked for the angel's sword. His stated reason was practical: he did not want to be frightened on the road. If the sword stayed with the angel, the angel might flash it without thinking, and the rabbi preferred to travel without being startled.

The reasoning is very close to a legal argument. He had been granted the right to have his requests fulfilled. He needed the sword to make the journey comfortable. The request fit within the permission he had been given.

The Angel of Death hesitated. He knew what a sword was worth. He also had a command to honor the rabbi. Courtesy had become a structural vulnerability, and he was walking into it.

He handed over the sword.

The Rabbi Leapt Over the Wall

The angel brought him to the edge of Eden and showed him his place. Rabbi Yehoshua looked, then jumped over the wall into the garden.

The angel grabbed for him, catching the edge of his garment, but Yehoshua swore by heaven that he would not come back out. He was in. He had the sword. He had the oath. The angel could not drag him across his own oath, and Yehoshua knew it.

A heavenly voice declared that it had to stand: Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi was not to leave Eden. He had entered alive. He had entered with the angel's sword. He stayed.

The Sword That Would Not Return

The angel came back to God empty-handed, without his sword and without his appointed soul. God asked where the sword was. The angel had to admit he had given it to the rabbi and the rabbi had taken it into the garden.

God told him not to retrieve it. The sword stayed in Eden. Elijah, who would later appear in the garden, received it there and used it to announce the arrival of the Messiah.

The weapon of death, taken by a living rabbi through a technically accurate fulfillment of his travel request, became a tool of redemption in a garden that death could not enter.

What He Found There

In Eden, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi saw Elijah standing at the entrance. He heard the praise being given to the righteous who had entered. He found his own place already prepared, already real, already waiting for him with the full specificity of a house that belongs to someone.

The story does not tell us what it felt like to stand in the garden alive. It only tells us that he refused to leave. Whatever he saw there was enough to make the oath easy, the angel's grip ignorable, and the wall a detail rather than a barrier.

AfterlifeWarRabbi YehoshuaAngel Of DeathEdenRabbis
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From the tradition

Sources

4 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
Ketubot 77b (Harris, Hebraic Literature, 1901)Hebraic Literature (1901)

As Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi drew near the end of his earthly career, the angel of death was sent to fetch him. Because of the Rabbi's merit, the angel was instructed to show him every courtesy. No sudden seizure, no shadow in the doorway. The Rabbi could ask for reasonable favors.

Noticing the angel's unusual politeness, Rabbi Yehoshua asked for one thing before the journey: a glimpse of the place he would occupy in the Garden of Eden. And in the meantime, he said, let me hold your sword, as a sign that you will not take advantage of me on the road.

The angel agreed. The sword was surrendered. Rabbi and escort walked together to the very gate of the celestial city. There the angel helped the Rabbi climb the wall to see the spot reserved for him. In that moment Rabbi Yehoshua leapt, landed on the heavenly side, and held fast to the inside of the wall. The angel stood outside, still gripping the Rabbi's cloak, helpless.

When pressed to come back out, the Rabbi swore he would not return. I never sought to be released from any oath on earth, he said. I will not be coaxed or forced into perjury within the very precincts of heaven. The angel begged at least for the return of his sword. Even that the Rabbi refused, until a bat kol, a heavenly voice, rang out and ordered the sword restored. The Rabbi handed it back, but he stayed.

This famous story from Ketubot 77b, preserved in Harris's 1901 Hebraic Literature, is not really about a clever trick. It is about a man whose word was so rigid on earth that not even death could bend it in heaven. He enters paradise alive, on his own promise, and the angel of death goes home empty-handed.

Full source
Gaster, Exempla No. 138 (Ketubot 77b)The Exempla of the Rabbis (1924)

Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was one of the great Sages of the third-century Land of Israel, and the Talmud reports that he had a personal acquaintance with the Angel of Death, a rarity even among the righteous. One day the angel came to escort him out of the world.

Joshua ben Levi had one request before he died: "Show me my place in the Garden of Eden."

The Theft at the Wall

The angel agreed. He led the Sage to the wall of Gan Eden and helped him climb up so he could see. But Joshua ben Levi had planned ahead. He had asked for the angel's sword, ostensibly because he was afraid the angel might kill him with it along the way.

Once he was on top of the wall, with the angel's sword in his hand, he jumped inside.

The Angel of Death pleaded from outside. "Come back! You are breaking the order of things."

Joshua ben Levi refused. He had his place in Eden and he was not leaving. Only when a Heavenly voice itself commanded him to return the sword did he agree. He threw it back over the wall. But he himself stayed.

The Letter to Rabban Gamliel

Before the matter was settled, Joshua ben Levi sent word to his colleague Rabban Gamliel, measuring the dimensions of Eden and describing its features. The Ma'aseh Book preserves fragments of that description: the size of the paths, the arrangement of the trees, the location of the separate chambers for different classes of the righteous.

This exempla, drawn from Ketubot 77b and collected by Gaster in 1924, is one of the rare instances in rabbinic literature where a living Sage outmaneuvers the Angel of Death by sheer cleverness. Joshua ben Levi did not fight his death. He negotiated it. And in negotiating it, left behind a map.

Full source
Ketubot 77b (Hebraic Literature, 1901)Hebraic Literature (1901)

There is a story in Ketubot 77b about a rabbi who asked for a preview of his own Paradise. The Angel of Death had come for him, as the Angel comes for everyone, but this rabbi had one request before he crossed over: show me my place in Gan Eden while I am still breathing.

The Angel consented. Thirty days, he said. Return in thirty days.

At the end of the month the rabbi returned. Lend me your sword, he said, so that you do not catch me on the road and cheat me of what I was promised. He wanted the Angel's own weapon as collateral.

The Angel of Death looked at him and answered slowly. Do you mean to serve me as your friend Rabbi Yehoshua once did?, a reference to the legend of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, who tricked the Angel, leapt the wall of Eden with the sword, and refused to come back. The Angel had learned his lesson. He declined to hand over the weapon.

The tale is short, but it holds a whole theology. Even the angel who ends every human life is nervous around the righteous. The tzaddik is the one figure in the cosmos who can bargain with death. And sometimes win.

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