Aggada -- Translations into English; Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends; Midrash -- Translations into English
Moses saw the place called Alukah, where sinners were suspended by
their feet, their heads downward, and their bodies covered with black
worms, each five hundred parasangs long. They lamented, and cried: "Woe
unto us for the punishment of hell. Give us death, that we may die!"
Nasargiel explained: "These are the sinners that swore falsely,
profaned the Sabbath and the holy days, despised the sages, called
their neighbors by unseemly nicknames, wronged the orphan and the
widow, and bore false witness. Therefore bath God delivered them to
these worms."
Moses went thence to another place, and there he saw sinners prone on
their faces, with two thousand scorpions lashing, stinging, and
tormenting them, while the tortured victims cried bitterly. Each of the
scorpions had seventy thousand heads, each head seventy thousand
mouths, each mouth seventy thousand stings, and each sting seventy
thousand pouches of poison and venom, which the sinners are forced to
drink down, although the anguish is so racking that their eyes melt in
their sockets. Nasargiel explained: "These are the sinners who caused
the Israelites to lose their money, who exalted themselves above the
community, who put their neighbors to shame in public, who delivered
their fellow-Israelites into the hands of the Gentiles, who denied the
Torah of Moses, and who maintained that God is not the Creator of the
world."
Then Moses saw the place called Tit ba-Yawen, in which the sinners
stand in mud up to their navels, while the Angels of Destruction lash
them with fiery chains, and break their teeth with fiery stones, from
morning until evening, and during the night they make their teeth grow
again, to the length of a parasang, only to break them anew the next
morning. Nasargiel explained: "These are the sinners who ate carrion
and forbidden flesh, who lent their money at usury, who wrote the Name
of God on amulets for Gentiles, who used false weights, who stole money
from their fellow-Israelites, who ate on the Day of Atonement, who ate
forbidden fat, and animals and reptiles that are an abomination, and
who drank blood."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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