Aggada -- Translations into English; Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends; Midrash -- Translations into English
The two wives of Lamech, Adah and Zillah, bore him each two children,
Adah two sons, Jabal and Jubal, and Zillah a son, Tubal-cain, and a
daughter, Naamah. Jabal was the first among men to erect temples to
idols, and Jubal invented the music sung and played therein. Tubal-cain
was rightly named, for he completed the work of his ancestor Cain. Cain
committed murder, and Tubal-cain, the first who knew how to sharpen
iron and copper, furnished the instruments used in wars and combats.
Naamah, "the lovely," earned her name from the sweet sounds which she
drew from her cymbals when she called the worshippers to pay homage to
idols.[45]
THE DESCENDANTS OF ADAM AND LILITH
When the wives of Lamech heard the decision of Adam, that they were to
continue to live with their husband, they turned upon him, saying, "O
physician, heal thine own lameness!" They were alluding to the fact
that he himself had been living apart from his wife since the death of
Abel, for he had said, "Why should I beget children, if it is but to
expose them to death?"[46]
Though he avoided intercourse with Eve, he was visited in his sleep by
female spirits, and from his union with them sprang shades and demons
of various kinds,[47] and they were endowed with peculiar gifts.
Once upon a time there lived in Palestine a very rich and pious man,
who had a son named Rabbi Hanina. He knew the whole of the Torah by
heart. When he was at the point of death, he sent for his son, Rabbi
Hanina, and bade him, as his last request, to study the Torah day and
night, fulfil the commands of the law, and be a faithful friend to the
poor. He also told him that he and his wife, the mother of Rabbi
Hanina, would die on the selfsame day, and the seven days of mourning
for the two would end on the eve of the Passover. He enjoined him not
to grieve excessively, but to go to market on that day, and buy the
first article offered to him, no matter how costly it might be. If it
happened to be an edible, he was to prepare it and serve it with much
ceremony. His expense and trouble would receive their recompense. All
happened as foretold: the man and his wife died upon the same day, and
the end of the week of mourning coincided with the eve of the Passover.
The son in turn carried out his father's behest: he repaired to market,
and there he met an old man who offered a silver dish for sale.
Although the price asked was exorbitant, yet he bought it, as his
father had bidden. The dish was set upon the Seder table, and when
Rabbi Hanina opened it, he found a second dish within, and inside of
this a live frog, jumping and hopping around gleefully. He gave the
frog food and drink, and by the end of the festival he was grown so big
that Rabbi Hanina made a cabinet for him, in which he ate and lived. In
the course of time, the cabinet became too small, and the Rabbi built a
chamber, put the frog within, and gave him abundant food and drink. All
this he did that he might not violate his father's last wish. But the
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