Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/56

34 Then Sammael called to the woman, and said, "See, I have touched the tree and am not dead. Do you also touch it and try." But when Eve drew near to the tree she saw the Angel of Death waiting sword in hand, and she said in her heart, "Perhaps I am to die, and then God will create another wife for Adam; that shall not be, he must die too." So she gave him of the fruit. And when he took it and bit, his teeth were blunted, and thus it is that the back teeth of men are no longer sharp.

 V.

ADAM AND EVE AFTER THE FALL.

WHEN Adam reached the earth, the Eagle said to the Whale, with whom it had hitherto lived in the closest intimacy, "Now we must part, for there is no safety for us animals since man has come amongst us. The deepest abysses of ocean must be thy refuge, and thou must protect thyself with cunning from the great foe who has entered the earth. I must soar high above the clouds, and there find a place of escape from him who is destined to be my pursuer till death."

According to certain cabbalistic Rabbis, Adam, when cast out of Eden, was precipitated into Gehenna, but he escaped therefrom to earth, by repeating and pronouncing properly the mystic word Laverererareri. In the Talmud it is related that when Adam heard the words of God, "Thou shalt eat the herb of the field" (Gen. iii. 18), he trembled in all his limbs, and exclaimed, "O Lord of all the world! I and my beast, the Ass, shall have to eat out of the same manger!" But God said to him, because he trembled, "Thou shalt eat bread in the sweat of thy brow."

Learned Rabbis assert that the angel Raphael had instructed Adam in all kinds of knowledge out of a book, and this book contained mighty mysteries which the highest angels could not fathom, and knew not; and before the Fall the angels used to 