Yehudah ben Tabbai once entered a ruin and found a man in his death throes. A knife dripping with blood was in the hand of another man — clearly the murderer. Yehudah turned to the killer and said: "May God come upon me if neither I nor you killed this man. But what can I do to you? The Torah has written: 'By word of two witnesses shall a thing be established'" (Deuteronomy 19:15).
Yehudah knew who the murderer was. The evidence was overwhelming — a dying man, a blood-soaked knife, and a single witness (Yehudah himself). But one witness is not enough. The Torah requires two. Without a second witness, the judicial system could not act. Yehudah was powerless to punish a man he watched commit murder.
Instead, he invoked divine justice: "The Omniscient One will exact punishment of that man." He had barely finished speaking when a snake bit the murderer, and the man died.
This story illustrates both the limitations and the majesty of the Torah's judicial system. The human court was bound by its procedural rules — two witnesses or nothing. But God's justice operates without those constraints. Where the earthly court could not act, Heaven acted immediately. The snake served as God's agent of retribution, striking the moment Yehudah declared the case beyond human jurisdiction. The story affirms that no guilty person ultimately escapes judgment, even when the legal system cannot reach them.