Aggada -- Translations into English; Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends; Midrash -- Translations into English
Solomon sent his chief man, Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, to capture
Asmodeus. For this purpose he provided him with a chain, the ring on
which the Name of God was engraved, a bundle of wool, and a skin of
wine. Benaiah drew the water from the well through a hole bored from
below, and, after having stopped up the hole with the wool, he filled
the well with wine from above. When Asmodeus descended from heaven, to
his astonishment he found wine instead of water in the well, although
everything seemed untouched. At first he would not drink of it, and
cited the Bible verses that inveigh against wine, to inspire himself
with moral courage. At length Asmodeus succumbed to his consuming
thirst, and drank till his senses were overpowered, and he fell into a
deep sleep. Benaiah, watching him from a tree, then came, and drew the
chain about Asmodeus' neck. The demon, on awakening, tried to free
himself, but Benaiah called to him: "The Name of thy Lord is upon
thee." Though Asmodeus now permitted himself to be led off
unresistingly, he acted most peculiarly on the way to Solomon. He
brushed against a palm-tree and uprooted it; he knocked against a house
and overturned it; and when, at the request of a poor woman, he was
turned aside from her hut, he broke a bone. He asked with grim humor:
"Is it not written, 'A soft tongue breaketh the bone?'" A blind man
going astray he set in the right path, and to a drunkard he did a
similar kindness. He wept when a wedding party passed them, and laughed
at a man who asked his shoemaker to make him shoes to last for seven
years, and at a magician who was publicly showing his skill.
Having finally arrived at the end of the journey, Asmodeus, after
several days of waiting, was led before Solomon, who questioned him
about his strange conduct on the journey. Asmodeus answered that he
judged persons and things according to their real character, and not
according to their appearance in the eyes of human beings. He cried
when he saw the wedding company, because he knew the bridegroom had not
a month to live, and he laughed at him who wanted shoes to last seven
years, because the man would not own them for seven days, also at the
magician who pretended to disclose secrets, because he did not know
that a buried treasure lay under his very feet; the blind man whom he
set in the right path was one of the "perfect pious," and he wanted to
be kind to him; on the other hand, the drunkard to whom he did a
similar kindness was known in heaven as a very wicked man, but he
happened to have done a good deed once, and he was rewarded
accordingly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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