rebels

And the LORD said unto Moses, Bring Aaron’s rod again before the testimony, to be kept for a token against the rebels; and thou shalt quite take away their murmurings from me, that they die not.

And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?

And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against me: I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

O my son! restrain thy son from wickedness, and teach him manners before he rebels against thee and brings thee into contempt amongst the people and thou hang thy head in the streets and the assemblies and thou be punished for the evil of his wicked deeds.

Likewise also the fifth said: "I am Power. By power I raise up tyrants and tear down kings. To all rebels I furnish power. I have an angel that frustrates me, Asteraôth."

Surely you have said that the young man is your servant, and that he rebelled against you, and therefore you placed him in the pit; what then will you do with a servant who rebels against his master? Now therefore sell him unto us, and we will give you all that you require for him; and the Lord was pleased to do this in order that the sons of Jacob should not slay their brother.

Do you see this man whom the king has chosen to be his second? all the affairs of government shall be regulated by him, and he that transgresses his orders, or that does not bow down before him to the ground, shall die, for he rebels against the king and his second.

And at this moment these who are of thy kinsmen are evil men (or, rebels), and My divinity, which is true, they have rejected.

When the foundations of the temple were laying, and when the Jews were very zealous about building it, the neighboring nations, and especially the Cutheans, whom Shalmanezer, king of Assyria, had brought out of Persia and Media, and had planted in Samaria, when he carried the people of Israel captives, besought the governors, and those that had the care of such affairs, that they would interrupt the Jews, both in the rebuilding of their city, and in the building of their temple. Now as these men were corrupted by them with money, they sold the Cutheans their interest for rendering this building a slow and a careless work, for Cyrus, who was busy about other wars, knew nothing of all this; and it so happened, that when he had led his army against the Massagetae, he ended his life. But when Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, had taken the kingdom, the governors in Syria, and Phoenicia, and in the countries of Ammon, and Moab, and Samaria, wrote an epistle to Cambyses; whose contents were as follow: "To our lord Cambyses. We thy servants, Rathumus the historiographer, and Semellius the scribe, and the rest that are thy judges in Syria and Phoenicia, send greeting. It is fit, O king, that thou shouldst know that those Jews which were carried to Babylon are come into our country, and are building that rebellious and wicked city, and its market-places, and setting up its walls, and raising up the temple; know therefore, that when these things are finished, they will not be willing to pay tribute, nor will they submit to thy commands, but will resist kings, and will choose rather to rule over others than be ruled over themselves. We therefore thought it proper to write to thee, O king, while the works about the temple are going on so fast, and not to overlook this matter, that thou mayst search into the books of thy fathers, for thou wilt find in them that the Jews have been rebels, and enemies to kings, as hath their city been also, which, for that reason, hath been till now laid waste. We thought proper also to inform thee of this matter, because thou mayst otherwise perhaps be ignorant of it, that if this city be once inhabited and be entirely encompassed with walls, thou wilt be excluded from thy passage to Celesyria and Phoenicia."

And when the king had set Ptolemy over these parts of the country as his general, he went to Samaria, with six hundred horsemen, and three thousand armed footmen, as intending to fight Antigonus. But still this command of the army did not succeed well with Ptolemy, but those that had been troublesome to Galilee before attacked him, and slew him; and when they had done this, they fled among the lakes and places almost inaccessible laying waste and plundering whatsoever they could come at in those places. But Herod soon returned, and punished them for what they had done; for some of these rebels he slew, and others of them, who had fled to the strong holds he besieged, and both slew them, and demolished their strong holds. And when he had thus put an end to their rebellion, he laid a fine upon the cities of a hundred talents.

But when he had made slaves of the citizens of all these cities, the nation of the Jews made an insurrection against him at a festival; for at those feasts seditions are generally begun; and it looked as if he should not be able to escape the plot they had laid for him, had not his foreign auxiliaries, the Pisidians and Cilicians, assisted him; for as to the Syrians, he never admitted them among his mercenary troops, on account of their innate enmity against the Jewish nation. And when he had slain more than six thousand of the rebels, he made an incursion into Arabia; and when he had taken that country, together with the Gileadires and Moabites, he enjoined them to pay him tribute, and returned to Areathus; and as Theodorus was surprised at his great success, he took the fortress, and demolished it.

On the next day the Romans drove the robbers out of the lower city, and set all on fire as far as Siloam. These soldiers were indeed glad to see the city destroyed. But they missed the plunder, because the seditious had carried off all their effects, and were retired into the upper city; for they did not yet at all repent of the mischiefs they had done, but were insolent, as if they had done well; for, as they saw the city on fire, they appeared cheerful, and put on joyful countenances, in expectation, as they said, of death to end their miseries. Accordingly, as the people were now slain, the holy house was burnt down, and the city was on fire, there was nothing further left for the enemy to do. Yet did not Josephus grow weary, even in this utmost extremity, to beg of them to spare what was left of the city; he spake largely to them about their barbarity and impiety, and gave them his advice in order to their escape; though he gained nothing thereby more than to be laughed at by them; and as they could not think of surrendering themselves up, because of the oath they had taken, nor were strong enough to fight with the Romans any longer upon the square, as being surrounded on all sides, and a kind of prisoners already, yet were they so accustomed to kill people, that they could not restrain their right hands from acting accordingly. So they dispersed themselves before the city, and laid themselves in ambush among its ruins, to catch those that attempted to desert to the Romans; accordingly many such deserters were caught by them, and were all slain; for these were too weak, by reason of their want of food, to fly away from them; so their dead bodies were thrown to the dogs. Now every other sort of death was thought more tolerable than the famine, insomuch that, though the Jews despaired now of mercy, yet would they fly to the Romans, and would themselves, even of their own accord, fall among the murderous rebels also. Nor was there any place in the city that had no dead bodies in it, but what was entirely covered with those that were killed either by the famine or the rebellion; and all was full of the dead bodies of such as had perished, either by that sedition or by that famine.

When Noah was five hundred years old, he took a wife from the daughters of Seth; and there were born to him three sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet. And God saw Noah’s uprightness and integrity, while all men were corrupted and polluted by lasciviousness; and He determined to remove the human race from this broad earth, and made this known to the blessed Noah, and commanded him to make an ark for the saving of himself, his sons, and the rest of the animals. Noah constructed this ark during the space of one hundred years, and he made it in three stories, all with boards and projecting ledges. Each board was a cubit long and a span broad. The length of the ark was three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Noah made it of box wood, though some say of teak wood; and he pitched it within and without. At the end of the six hundredth year, God commanded Noah, with his wife, his sons and his daughters-in-law — eight souls — to go into the ark x, and to take in with him seven couples of every clean animal and fowl, and one couple of every unclean animal, a male and a female. And he took bread and water in with him according to his need: not an abundant supply, lest they might be annoyed by the smell of the faeces, but they got food just sufficient to preserve their lives. God forewarned the blessed Noah of what he was about to do seven days beforehand, in case the people might remember their sins and offer the sacrifice of repentance. But those rebels mocked at him scoffingly, and thrust out their unclean lips at the sound of the saw and the adze. After seven days God commanded Noah to shut the door of the ark, and to plaster it over with bitumen. And the fountains of the deeps were broken up from beneath, and a torrent of rain (fell) from above, for forty days and forty nights, without cessation, until the waters rose fifteen cubits above the highest mountains in the world. And the waters bore up the ark, which travelled over them from east to west and from north to south, and so inscribed the figure of the cross upon the world; and it passed over the ocean, and came to this broad earth. So the rain was stayed, and the winds blew, and the waters remained upon the earth without diminishing one hundred and fifty days, besides those forty days; which, from the time that Noah entered the ark and the flood began until the waters began to diminish, make in all one hundred and ninety days, which are six months and ten days — even until the twentieth day of the latter Teshri. The waters began to diminish from the latter Teshri to the tenth month, on the first day of which the tops of the mountains appeared, but until the time when the earth was dry, and the dove found rest for the sole of her foot, was one hundred days. The ark rested upon the top of mount Kardo. In the tenth month, which is Shebat, Noah opened the door of the ark, and sent a raven to bring him news of the earth. And it went and found dead bodies, and it alighted upon them and returned not. For this reason people have made a proverb about Noah’s raven. Again he sent forth a dove, but it found not a place whereon to alight, and returned to the ark. After seven days he sent forth another dove, and it returned to him in the evening carrying an olive leaf in its bill; and Noah knew that the waters had subsided. Noah remained in the ark a full year, and he came forth from it and offered up an offering of clean animals; and God accepted his offering and promised him that He would never again bring a flood upon the face of the earth, nor again destroy beasts and men by a flood; and He gave him (as) a token the bow in the clouds, and from that day the bow has appeared in the clouds; and He commanded him to slay and eat the flesh of beasts and birds after he had poured out their blood. The number of people who came forth from the ark was eight souls, and they built the town of Themanon after the name of the eight souls, and it is to-day the seat of a bishopric in the province of Suba. Noah planted a vineyard, and drank of its wine; and one day when he slumbered, and was sunk in the deep sleep of drunkenness, his nakedness was uncovered within his tent. When Ham his son saw him, he laughed at him and despised him, and told his brethren Shem and Japhet. But Shem and Japhet took a cloak upon their shoulders, and walked backwards with their faces turned away, and threw the cloak over their father and covered him, and then they looked upon him. When Noah awoke and knew what had been done to him by the two sets of his sons, he cursed Canaan the son of Ham and said, c Thou shalt be a servant to thy brethren;’ but he blessed Shem and Japhet. The reason why he cursed Canaan, who was not as yet born nor had sinned, was because Ham had been saved with him in the ark from the waters of the flood, and had with his father received the divine blessing; and also because the arts of sin — I mean music and dancing and all other hateful things — were about to be revived by his posterity, for the art of music proceeded from the seed of Canaan h After the flood a son was born to Noah, and he called his name Jonaton; and he provided him with gifts and sent him to the fire of the sun, to the east. Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years; the sum of his years was nine hundred and fifty years; and he saw eighteen generations and families before and after it. He died on the fourth day of the week, on the second of Nisan, at the second hour of the day; his son Shem embalmed him, and his sons buried him, and mourned over him forty days.

In this seventh and last millennium will the kingdom of the Persians be destroyed. In it will the children of Ishmael go forth from the wilderness of Yathrib (al-Medinah), and they will all come and be gathered together in Gibeah of Ramah, and there shall the fat ones of the kingdom of the Greeks, who destroyed the kingdoms of the Hebrews and the Persians, be destroyed by Ishmael, the wild ass of the desert; for in wrath shall he be sent against the whole earth, against man and beast and trees, and it shall be a merciless chastisement. It is not because God loves them that He has allowed them to enter into the kingdoms of the Christians, but by reason of the iniquity and sin which is wrought by the Christians, the like of which has never been wrought in any one of the former generations. They are mad with drunkenness and anger and shameless lasciviousness; they have intercourse with one another wickedly, a man and his son committing fornication with one woman, the brother with his brother’s wife, male with male, and female with female, contrary to the law of nature and of Scripture, as the blessed Paul has said, ‘ Male with male did work shame, and likewise also the women did work lewdness, and, contrary to nature, had intercourse with one another V Therefore they have brought upon themselves the recompense of punishment which is meet for their error, women as well as men, and hence God will deliver them over to the impurity of the barbarians, that their wives may be polluted by the sons of pollution, and men may be subjected to the yoke of tribute; then shall men sell everything that they have and give it to them, but shall not be able to pay the debt of the tribute, until they give also their children to them into slavery. And the tyrant shall exalt himself until he demands tribute and poll-tax from the dead that lie in the dust, first oppressing the orphans and defrauding the widows. They will have no pity upon the poor, nor will they spare the miserable; they will not relieve the afflicted; they will smite the grey hairs of the aged, despise the wise, and honour fools; they will mock at those who frame laws, and the little shall be esteemed as the great, and the despised as the honourable; their words shall cut like swords, and there is none who shall be able to change the persuasive force of their words. The path of their chastisement shall be from sea to sea, and from east to west, and from north to south, and to the wilderness of Yathrib. In their latter days there shall be great tribulation, old men and old women hungering and thirsting, and tortured in bonds until they account the dead happy. They will rip up the pregnant woman, and tear infants away from their mothers’ bosoms and sell them like beasts, and those that are of no use to them will they dash against the stones. They will slay the priests and deacons in the sanctuary, and they will lie with their wives in the houses of God. They will make clothes for themselves and their wives out of the holy vestments, and they will spread them upon their horses, and work impurity upon them in their beds. They will bring their cattle into the churches and altars, and they will tie up their dogs by the shrines of the saints. In those days the spirit of the righteous and of them that are well versed in signs will be grieved. The feeble will deny the true faith, the holy Cross, and the life-giving mysteries; and without compulsion many will deny Christ, and become rebels and slanderers and boasters, denying the faith. With this chastisement shall the Christians be tried. For at that time the righteous, the humble, the peaceful and the gentle will not be sought after, but liars and slanderers and accusers and disturbers and the obscene and those who are destitute of mercy, and those who scoff at their parents and blaspheme the life-giving mysteries. And the true believers shall come into troubles and persecutions until they despair of their lives. Honour shall be taken away from the priests, and the pastors shall become as the people. When the measure of their (i. e. the Ishmaelites’) victory is full, tribulation will increase, and chastisement will be doubled upon man and beast. And there shall be a great famine, and the dead bodies of men shall lie in the streets and squares without any one to bury them, and (just) reckoning shall vanish and disappear from the earth. And men shall sell their brass and their iron and their clothes, and shall give their sons and their daughters willingly to the heathen. A man shall lie down in the evening and rise in the morning, and shall find at his door two or three exactors and officers to carry off by force; and two or three women shall throw themselves upon one man and say, ‘ We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel, only let us take refuge beneath thy skirts V When men are oppressed and beaten, and hunger and thirst, and are tormented by that bitter chastisement; while the tyrants shall live luxuriously and enjoy themselves, and eat and drink, and boast in the victory they have won, having destroyed nations and peoples, and shall adorn themselves like brides, saying, ‘The Christians have neither a God nor a deliverer;’ then all of a sudden there shall be raised up against them pains like those of a woman in childbirth; and the king of the Greeks shall go forth against them in great wrath, and he shall rouse himself like a man who has shaken offhis wine. He shall go forth against them from the sea of the Cushites, and shall cast the sword and destruction into the wilderness of Yathrib and into the dwelling-place of their fathers. They shall carry off captive their wives and sons and daughters into the service of slavery, and fear of all those round about them shall fall upon them, and they shall all be delivered into the hand of the king of the Greeks, and shall be given over to the sword and to captivity and to slaughter, and their latter subjection shall be one hundred times more severe than their (former) yoke. They shall be in sore tribulation from hunger and thirst and anxiety; they shall be slaves unto those who served them, and bitter shall their slavery be. Then shall the earth which has become desolate of its inhabitants find peace, and the remnant that is left shall return every man to his own land and to the inheritance of his fathers; and men shall increase like locusts upon the earth which was laid waste. Egypt shall be ravaged, Arabia shall be burnt with fire, the land of Hebron shall be laid waste, and the tongue of the sea shall be at peace. All the wrath and anger of the king of the Greeks shall have full course upon those who have denied Christ. And there shall be great peace on earth, the like of which has not been from the creation of the world until its end; for it is the last peace. And there shall be great joy on earth, and men shall dwell in peace and quiet; convents and churches shall be restored, cities shall be built, the priests shall be freed from taxes, and men shall rest from labour and anxiety of heart. They shall eat and drink; there shall be neither pain nor care; and they shall marry wives and beget children during that true peace. Then shall the gates of the north be opened, and the nations shall go forth that were imprisoned there by Alexander the king,

If a wife rebels against her husband her ketubah is reduced by seven denarii a week. Rabbi Judah says: seven tropaics. How long does he continue to reduce? Until the amount of her ketubah. Rabbi Yose says: he may continue to reduce, and if she receives an inheritance he may collect from it. Similarly, if a husband rebels against his wife, an addition of three denarii a week is made to her ketubah. Rabbi Judah said: three tropaics.

If a wife rebels against her husband her ketubah is reduced by seven denarii a week. Rabbi Judah says: seven tropaics. How long does he continue to reduce? Until the amount of her ketubah. Rabbi Yose says: he may continue to reduce, and if she receives an inheritance he may collect from it. Similarly, if a husband rebels against his wife, an addition of three denarii a week is made to her ketubah. Rabbi Judah said: three tropaics.

The following are strangled: One who strikes his father or mother; One who kidnaps a Jew; An elder who rebels against the ruling of the court; A false prophet; One who prophesies in the name of an idol; One who commits adultery; Witnesses who testified falsely [to the adultery of] a priest’s daughter, and the one who has had sexual relations with her. The one who strikes his father or his mother is liable only if he wounds them. In this respect, cursing is more stringent than striking, for one who curses [his/her parents] after death is liable, while one who strikes them after death is not. One who kidnaps a Jew is not liable unless he brings him onto his own property. Rabbi Judah said: “Until he brings him onto his own property and puts him to service, as it says, “If a man is found to have kidnapped a fellow Israelite, enslaving him or selling him” (Deut. 24:7). If he kidnaps his own son. Rabbi Ishmael the son of Rabbi Yohanan ben Beroka declares him liable, but the Sages exempt [him]. If he kidnapped one who was half a slave and half free, Rabbi Judah declares him liable, but the Sages exempt [him].

There, we have stated: “For these one is liable for extirpation in case of intentional transgression, or a purification sacrifice for unintentional transgression, and for what was not certainly known in their cases a suspended sacrifice.” But did not the day of Atonement already atone? Rebbi Simeon in the name of Rebbi Levi from Sokho: The Mishnah refers to one who rebels on the Day of Atonement.

From where even if he fell ill? The verse says, “in the seventh year he shall leave into freedom gratis.” I could think, even if he fled; the verse says, “six years he shall work.” What did you see to include this and to exclude that? After the verse included, it excluded. I am including the one who remains in his power and am exluding the one who is not in his power. Rebbi Abun bar Ḥiyya said that Rav Hoshaia asked: I understand that if he fell ill and fled afterwards, he has to make up [the time lost]. If he fled and then fell ill? Rebbi Ḥiyya bar Ada said, let us hear from the following: “If a woman rebels against her husband, one writes him a bill of rebellion on her ketubah.” And Rebbi Ḥiyya stated: One writes a bill of rebellion on the ketubah of a menstruating woman or a sick one, a preliminarily married one and one waiting for her levir. Where do we hold? If she rebelled against him while she was menstruating, the Torah instructed her to rebel. But we must hold that she rebelled when she was not menstruating and then started menstruating. Here she is unable to rebel, nevertheless you say, one writes. Here also, if he rebelled and then fell ill he has to make up. For he can say to him, if you had stayed with me, you would not have become sick. Rebbi Ḥinena said, that argument even works in the first case. If he fell ill and fled afterwards, he has to make up, since he can say to him, if you had stayed with me, you would have recuperated sooner.

MISHNAH: But the following are strangled: One who hits his father or his mother, and one who kidnaps a person from Israel, and the Elder who rebels against the Court, and the false prophet, and one who prophesies in the name of foreign worship, and one who copulates with a married woman, and the perjured witness of a Cohen’s daughter and her paramour. One who hits his father or his mother is not punishable unless he inflict a wound on them. The following is more aggravating about one who curses than one who hits, in that one who curses is punishable even after death, but one who hits after death cannot be prosecuted.

MISHNAH: The Elder who rebels against the Court, as it is said: If a law case is too difficult for you, whether blood and blood, or case and case, etc. Three courts were there, one at the entrance of the Temple Mount, one at the entrance of the Temple courtyard, and one in the ashlar hall. They come to the one at the entrance to the Temple Mount and he says, so I argued and so my colleagues argued, so I taught and so my colleague taught. If they had heard it, they tell them; otherwise they come to the one at the entrance of the Temple courtyard and he says, so I argued and so my colleagues argued, so I taught and so my colleagues taught. If they had heard it, they tell them; otherwise these and those come to the Supreme Court in the ashlar hall, for from there instruction goes out to all of Israel as it is said, from that place which the Eternal will choose. If he returned to his town, repeated and taught as was his custom, he cannot be prosecuted. If he instructed to act, he is punishable, as it is said, but the man who would act criminally etc. He is not punishable unless he instruct to act. A student who instructed to act cannot be prosecuted; it turns out that his severity is his leniency.

HALAKHAH: “The Elder who rebels,” etc. Halakhah 4: “If he returned to his town, repeated and taught as was his custom,” etc. It is written: If something is being distinguished for you in law, this shows that the verse speaks about the distinguished member of the court. For you, this is counsel. Something is sermonizing. Whether blood and blood, whether menstrual blood or blood of virginity; whether menstrual blood, blood of flux, or blood of skin disease. Whether case or case, between those who are stoned, or burned, or decapitated, or strangled. Whether defect or defect, between a quarantined sufferer from skin disease or an absolute one; whether defect or defect, between defects of humans or of garments or of houses. Words, that is the drinking of the suspected adulteress, breaking the neck of the calf, and the purification of the sufferer from skin disease. Quarrels, these are estimations, bans, and dedications. You shall get up, from the court, and rise, this is the ascent.

It is understandable if it did not come to his knowledge. If it did come to his knowledge? Was it not stated: “From where that those obligated for purification sacrifices and certain reparation sacrifices for whom the Day of Atonement had passed, are obligated to bring them after the Day of Atonement, but those obligated for suspended reparation offerings are no longer liable?” Rebbi Abun bar Ḥiyya said, whether it was known to him on it, or not known to him on it, did not the Day of Atonement already atone? Rebbi Simeon in the name of Levi [Sokhia], the Mishnah speaks of one who rebels against the day of Atonement. Why did he not say, if it was not known to him on the Day of Atonement? His words imply that even if it was not known to him on the Day of Atonement, the Day of Atonement atones.

Why, then, is the Psalm concerning Absalom (Ps. iii) next to the Psalm concerning Gog and Magog (Ps. ii)? So that should anybody ask thee, "Is there a slave that rebels against his master?" do thou ask him, "Is there a son who rebels against his father?" The latter has happened, and similarly will the former happen.

Why, then, is the Psalm concerning Absalom (Ps. iii) next to the Psalm concerning Gog and Magog (Ps. ii)? So that should anybody ask thee, "Is there a slave that rebels against his master?" do thou ask him, "Is there a son who rebels against his father?" The latter has happened, and similarly will the former happen.