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Antoninus Asked If God Could Judge Body and Soul

The body says the soul sinned. The soul says the body sinned. Rabbi Judah answers with a blind man and a lame man who stripped the orchard together.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Defense That Almost Works
  2. The Blind Man and the Lame Man in the Orchard
  3. The Two Guards Who Could Not Have Done It Alone
  4. What the Parable Answers

The Defense That Almost Works

Antoninus pressed Rabbi Judah the Prince with a philosophical problem that looked like a loophole in divine justice. At the day of judgment, the emperor argued, neither body nor soul could be justly punished.

The body's defense: since the soul departed, the body has lain in the grave as still as a stone. A stone does not steal. A stone does not lust or lie or strike. The sins belonged to the moving, choosing creature, and the body alone is not that creature. Punish the body and you are punishing clay.

The soul's defense: since it left the body, the soul has flitted through the air as innocent as a bird. The sins required hands, a mouth, feet, a location in the world where actions could happen. The soul alone has none of these. It needs the body the way a fire needs fuel, without the one the other cannot act at all. Punish the soul and you are punishing the fire for what the wood did.

Both defenses have partial truth in them. A corpse cannot commit a crime. A disembodied soul has no instrument for action. Antoninus was not being playful. He was asking whether divine judgment could be just if the judged creature is divided after death into two parts that each have a legitimate defense against accountability.

The Blind Man and the Lame Man in the Orchard

The rabbi answered with a parable. A king owned an orchard with fine young fig trees and appointed two gardeners to protect them. He chose the two guards for their specific incapacities: one was blind and one was lame. The blind man could not see the figs. The lame man could not reach them. Between them, the king reasoned, the orchard was protected.

The guards were creative. The lame man, seated where he could only watch, said to the blind one: "I can see ripe figs on the branch. Carry me there on your shoulders and we will eat together." The blind man stooped low. The lame man climbed up onto the broad shoulders and gripped them, and the blind man straightened under the weight and walked where the lame man's voice directed him, left, right, forward, until the branches were overhead. Then the lame man reached up into the leaves with hands that had never been able to walk to a single fig, and he plucked, and they ate, and they stripped the trees bare between them.

The Two Guards Who Could Not Have Done It Alone

When the king returned and found the branches empty, he asked what had happened to the fruit. The blind man spread his hands and said: "Do I have eyes to see where the fruit went?" The lame man pointed at his own useless legs and said: "Do I have feet that could have carried me to it?" Each defense was true in isolation. The blind man truly never saw a fig. The lame man truly never took a step toward one. Neither man alone could have reached the trees. Together they did exactly what the king had believed their combination of incapacities would forever prevent, and now each one stood inside his own honest incapacity as though it were a wall the king could not see past.

The king was not deceived. He saw the thing they could not see about themselves: that the theft had been committed by neither guard but by the pair, the seeing mouth and the walking legs joined into a single thief. So his solution was to judge them as one. He lifted the lame man and set him back on the blind man's shoulders, restoring the exact creature that had stripped the orchard, and he sentenced that joined creature, eyes and feet together, for what it had done together.

What the Parable Answers

The Holy One does the same, Rabbi Judah taught. At the day of judgment, the soul is asked: "Why did you break my commandments?" The soul deflects toward the body. The body is asked. The body deflects toward the soul. Then the Holy One places the soul back in the body and judges them together, the same joined creature that sinned, sentenced as one.

The two defenses are not false. They are incomplete. The body without the soul is inert. The soul without the body has no instruments. But the crime was committed by the joined creature, and the joined creature is reassembled at judgment because the sentence has to find what the crime found: the full person, whole, standing before an account that requires both parts present.

AntoninusRabbi JudahBody And SoulParableResurrectionJudgmentDivine Justice
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

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

Sanhedrin 91a (Harris, Hebraic Literature, 1901)Hebraic Literature (1901)

The Emperor Antoninus once pressed Rabbi Judah the Prince with a sharp question. At the day of judgment, he said, neither body nor soul could be justly punished. The body would plead that the soul had sinned, for since the soul departed it has lain in the grave as still as a stone. The soul would plead that the body had sinned, for since it left the body it has flitted through the air as innocent as a bird.

The Rabbi answered with a mashal, a parable. A king owned an orchard with fine young fig trees, and he appointed two gardeners to guard it, one blind and the other lame. One day the lame gardener said to the blind one, I see ripe figs. Carry me on your shoulders and we shall eat them together. The blind one stooped, the lame one climbed on his back, and together they stripped the trees bare.

When the king came and found his orchard plundered, each gardener claimed innocence. The blind one said, How could I have eaten them? I cannot see them. The lame one said, How could I have eaten them? I cannot walk to them. So the king set the lame gardener on the back of the blind one and judged them as one.

So too the Holy One returns the soul to the body and judges the two together. Neither escapes by pointing at the other, because neither sinned alone. This teaching is preserved in the dialogues of Antoninus and the Rabbi (Sanhedrin 91a, as cited in Harris, Hebraic Literature, 1901). The lesson is plain: a person is one whole, and the whole is answerable for what the whole has done.

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Midrashic parable (Sanhedrin 91a)Hebraic Literature (1901)

Rabbi Judah was asked a difficult question about divine justice: how can body and soul be judged together when one is mortal and the other eternal? He answered with a parable.

A king once had an orchard full of exquisite figs, which he prized above all his other possessions. To prevent theft and abuse, he stationed two watchers inside the walls. To keep the watchers themselves from plucking the fruit, he chose them with care. One was blind. The other was lame. The blind man could not see the figs; the lame man could not reach them. Between them, the king thought, the orchard was safe.

The watchers were clever. The lame man said to the blind one, "I see beautiful figs, plump, luscious, irresistible. Carry me on your shoulders to the tree, and together we will eat." The blind man carried, the lame man reached, and the figs vanished.

When the king discovered the theft and questioned each man separately, the lame one said, "How could I steal? I cannot walk!" The blind one said, "How could I steal? I cannot see!" The king placed the lame man on the blind man's shoulders and judged them as one.

So it is with the body and the soul. The soul will plead, "I am spirit, the body sinned, not I." The body will plead, "I am clay, without the soul I could do nothing." On the day of judgment God will join them together as the king joined his watchers, and judge the whole human being in one voice.

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Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Vayikra 12:1Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Vayikra

In the time to come the Holy One, blessed be He, will bring forth the soul and say to it: "Why did you transgress the commandments?" And it answers: "The body transgressed the commandments. From the day I departed from it, have I ever sinned?" He turns and says to the body: "For what reason did you transgress the commandments?" It says to Him: "The soul sinned. From the moment the soul departed from me, have I ever sinned?" What does the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He brings them both and judges them as one.

To what may the matter be compared? To a king who had an orchard, and within it were grapes and figs and pomegranates and early-ripe figs. The king said: "If I set there a watchman who can see and walk, he will eat the early-ripe figs for himself." He set there two watchmen, one lame and one blind, and they sat and guarded the orchard. They smelled the early-ripe figs. The lame man said to the blind man: "I see fine early-ripe figs in the orchard. Come, carry me, and we will bring them and eat them." The lame man rode upon the back of the blind man, and they brought them and ate them. In time the king came; he sought the early-ripe figs and did not find them. He said to the blind man: "You ate them." He said to him: "Do I have any eyes?" He said to the lame man: "You ate them." He said: "Do I have any feet?" He mounted the lame man upon the back of the blind man and judged them as one.

So too the Holy One, blessed be He, brings the soul and casts it into the body, as it is said (Psalms 50:4): "He calls to the heavens above", this is the soul; "and to the earth, to judge His people", this is the body. And David foresaw how the Holy One, blessed be He, would judge His creatures, and he began to plead for mercy for his soul. He said: "Master of the World, when You judge Your creatures, do not judge me as one of them. [And do not enter into judgment with Your servant, for no living being is righteous before You] (Psalms 143:2). Rather, deal righteously with me, as it is said (Psalms 17:15): 'As for me, in righteousness I shall behold Your face.'" The Holy One, blessed be He, said: "In this world, because the evil inclination ruled over them, you were sinning; but in the world to come I will uproot it from you, as it is said (Ezekiel 36:26): 'And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.'"

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