Rabbi Shela once punished a man who had sinned with a non-Jewish woman. The offender, smarting under the beating, reported the Rabbi to the king. Jewish courts were not supposed to administer corporal punishment to their own without imperial permission.
Rabbi Shela was brought before the king. He was in real danger.
When asked to account for himself, he quoted a verse from the prayer David offered at the end of his life: Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory (1 Chronicles 29:11).
But he read the verse at an unusual angle. What the words mean, Rabbi Shela said, is that the Holy One has granted power and judgment to the kings of the earth. They too are called to sit in judgment. They act, in their finest moments, as deputies of heaven's court.
The king, who had been prepared to condemn a Jewish judge for overstepping, suddenly heard his own authority explained as a divine trust. He took it as a compliment. He took it as a truth. He raised Rabbi Shela from defendant to counselor and placed him in a high position at court.
Gaster, Exempla of the Rabbis (1924), #53, preserves this reversal. A verse of the Torah, quoted at the right moment, reframed a courtroom.