Why Only the Wise Can Receive Wisdom

Midrash Aggadah Gaster, Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 13

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published January 19, 2025

The Roman Emperor had a habit of baiting Rabbi Akiva with the sharpest question he could devise.

"Why is it said," he asked once, "that God gives wisdom to the wise, and not to the fool? Would it not make more sense to give wisdom where it is lacking?"

Akiva did not argue. He went home and pretended to fall gravely ill. Word reached the palace. The Emperor, who was fond of Akiva in his own combative way, sent him a gift — an expensive medicine, worth a thousand denarii.

Akiva received the bottle, thanked the messenger, and as soon as the door closed, he walked outside and threw the medicine into the pig-sty.

The Emperor heard what had happened and arrived in person, furious. "I sent you a thousand denarii of medicine, and you fed it to the pigs?"

Akiva, now sitting up and apparently well, smiled. "Your Majesty — would the pigs have understood what to do with it? You sent healing to creatures who had no capacity to receive it. That is why the Holy One gives wisdom only to the wise. To the fool, wisdom is medicine in a pig-sty. No one is withholding it. He simply cannot receive it."

Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (1924), Exempla #13, preserves this reply. Wisdom is a gift only where there is already a place prepared for it.

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