Miriam bat Baythus Eats a Fig Skin and Dies Rich

Midrash Aggadah Hebraic Literature (Harris, 1901), Proverbial Sayings

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published January 20, 2025

The midrash tells of the last days of Jerusalem under Roman siege. One of the wealthiest women of the city, Miriam the daughter of Baythus, sent her servant to buy flour for the household.

The servant came back empty-handed. All the fine flour was sold. He had heard that coarser meal might still be available — should he buy that? Miriam nodded. He ran back out. The meal, too, was gone; only barley meal remained. He hurried home again to ask permission, and when he returned to the market the barley was gone as well.

Impatient with the relay of missed chances, Miriam went out herself, still dressed in her finery. House after house, stall after stall, she searched and found nothing. The siege had emptied Jerusalem of every morsel. At last, weak with hunger, she bent down in the street and picked up a discarded fig skin from the gutter. She ate it. The rot in it sickened her, and she died there.

Before her last breath, she tore the gold and silver ornaments from her arms and hurled them into the street, saying, “What use is this wealth to me, when it cannot buy me food?”

The rabbis heard in her dying cry the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy: “They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be as an unclean thing” (Ezekiel 7:19). Wealth, the storyteller says, is always a fig skin away from useless.

Themes

Destruction Women of the Bible Poverty Prophecy

Biblical References

Ezekiel 7:19

Continue Reading

Midrash Aggadah The Daughter of Nakdimon Picking Grain from Dung Nakdimon ben Gurion, one of the three wealthiest men of Jerusalem before the Roman siege, had been so rich that, accordi... Midrash Aggadah Why the Second Temple Was Called Greater Than the First The First Temple, the sages taught, held five tokens of God's nearness that the Second Temple lacked: the Ark and its co... Midrash Aggadah The Forty Signs Before the Temple Fell The sages taught that forty years before the Second Temple burned, its destruction had already begun to show in the quie... Midrash Aggadah What a Jew May Read on the Ninth of Av On the ninth of Av, the blackest day on the Jewish calendar, the normal pleasures drop away one by one. No eating. No dr... Midrash Aggadah The High Priest's Daughter Sold as a Slave Her name was Tzafnat, daughter of Peniel, and her father had been high priest of Israel. She had grown up in the holiest... Midrash Aggadah The Blood That Would Not Stop Boiling in Jerusalem For seven years after the destruction of the First Temple, the Sages say, the nations of the world cultivated their vine... Midrash Aggadah The Prophet's Blood That Named Its Killers Rabbi Yehoshua, the son of Korcha, heard the story from an old man of Jerusalem who had lived through the Babylonian des... Midrash Aggadah Why Rabbi Akiba Laughed When the Others Wept Over Jerusalem Four rabbis were walking together on Mount Scopus, looking down at the ruin of Jerusalem. They saw a fox running out of ... Midrash Aggadah Why Akiva Laughed in the Ruins of Jerusalem Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 240, preserves a story that the Talmud tells at length in Makkot 24b. Rabbi Akiva was trave...