Aggada -- Translations into English; Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends; Midrash -- Translations into English
The celestial light was but one of the seven precious gifts enjoyed by
Adam before the fall and to be granted to man again only in the
Messianic time. The others are the resplendence of his countenance;
life eternal; his tall stature; the fruits of the soil; the fruits of
the tree; and the luminaries of the sky, the sun and the moon, for in
the world to come the light of the moon shall be as the light of the
sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold.[105]
ADAM'S REPENTANCE
Cast out of Paradise, Adam and Eve built a hut for themselves, and for
seven days they sat in it in great distress, mourning and lamenting. At
the end of the seven days, tormented by hunger, they came forth and
sought food. For seven other days, Adam journeyed up and down in the
land, looking for such dainties as he had enjoyed in Paradise. In vain;
he found nothing. Then Eve spoke to her husband: "My lord, if it please
thee, slay me. Mayhap God will then take thee back into Paradise, for
the Lord God became wroth with thee only on account of me." But Adam
rejected her plan with abhorrence, and both went forth again on the
search for food. Nine days passed, and still they found naught
resembling what they had had in Paradise. They saw only food fit for
cattle and beasts. Then Adam proposed: "Let us do penance, mayhap the
Lord God will forgive us and have pity on us, and give us something to
sustain our life." Knowing that Eve was not vigorous enough to undergo
the mortification of the flesh which he purposed to inflict upon
himself, he prescribed a penance for her different from his own. He
said to her: "Arise, and go to the Tigris, take a stone and stand upon
it in the deepest part of the river, where the water will reach as high
as thy neck. And let no speech issue forth from thy mouth, for we are
unworthy to supplicate God, our lips are unclean by reason of the
forbidden fruit of the tree. Remain in the water for thirty-seven
days."
For himself Adam ordained forty days of fasting, while he stood in the
river Jordan in the same way as Eve was to take up her stand in the
waters of the Tigris. After he had adjusted the stone in the middle of
the Jordan, and mounted it, with the waters surging up to his neck, he
said: "I adjure thee, O thou water of the Jordan! Afflict thyself with
me, and gather unto me all swimming creatures that live in thee. Let
them surround me and sorrow with me, and let them not beat their own
breasts with grief, but let them beat me. Not they have sinned, only I
alone!" Very soon they all came, the dwellers in the Jordan, and they
encompassed him, and from that moment the water of the Jordan stood
still and ceased from flowing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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