Yose ben Yoezer of Tzeredah was being led to his execution during the persecutions of the Hellenistic kings. He was one of the earliest sages, a tzaddik whose teachings stand near the very beginning of Pirkei Avot. His nephew Yakim came riding along the road to mock him, sitting easily on a fine horse while his righteous uncle walked to die.
"Behold my horse," Yakim sneered, "and behold thine" — meaning the stake on which the old man would be killed.
Yose looked up at him and answered without anger. "If this" — and he gestured at the instrument of execution — "is the reward for those who anger God, how much greater will be the reward for those who fear Him?"
Yakim laughed. "Has there ever been anyone more God-fearing than you, Uncle? And look at your reward."
Yose answered again, without hurry. "If this is the treatment given to those who fear Him, how much more severe will be the punishment reserved for those who anger Him?"
Something broke in Yakim at that word. The nephew who had come to laugh suddenly saw what his uncle saw: that the horse was a short ride and the cross was a short agony, but the judgment after both was unending.
He dismounted. He accepted upon himself the four deaths of the rabbinic court — stoning, burning, beheading, and strangulation — performing each upon himself as a voluntary atonement for a life misused. And tradition says that by the time the last breath left him, his teshuvah had been accepted, and his soul entered the world to come alongside the uncle he had mocked (Bereshit Rabbah 65:22).
The story is preserved in the Ma'aseh Book and collected in Gaster's Exempla (1924). Its sharpest point is that scorn can turn to repentance in a single sentence, if the sentence is the right one.