ellauri156.html on line 537: Abner was the son of the witch of En-dor in Mordor, (Pirḳe R. El. xxxiii.), and the hero par excellence in the Haggadah (Yalḳ., Jer. 285; Eccl. R. on ix. 11; Ḳid. 49b). Conscious of his extraordinary strength, he exclaimed: "If I could only catch hold of the earth, I could shake it" (Yalḳ. l.c.)—a saying which parallels the famous utterance of Archimedes, "Had I a fulcrum, I could move the world." (Dote moi pa bo kai tan gan kino.) According to the Midrash (Eccl. R. l.c.) it would have been easier to move a wall six yards thick than one of the feet of Abner, who could hold the Israelitish army between his knees, and often did. Yet when his time came [date missing], Joab smote him. But even in his dying hour, Abner seized his foe's balls like a ball of thread, threatening to crush them. Then the Israelites came and pleaded for Joab's jewels, saying: "If thou crushest them his future kids shall be orphaned, and our women and all our belongings will become a prey to the Philistines." Abner answered: "What can I do? He has extinguished my light" (has wounded me fatally). The Israelites replied: "Entrust thy cause to the true judge [God]." Then Abner released his hold upon Joab's balls and fell dead to the ground (Yalḳ. l.c.).
ellauri156.html on line 539: His One Sin: The rabbis agree that Abner deserved this violent death, though opinions differ concerning the exact nature of the sin that entailed so dire a punishment on one who was, on the whole, considered a "righteous man" (Gen. R. lxxxii. 4). Some reproach him that he did not use his influence with Saul to prevent him from murdering the priests of Nob (Yer. Peah, i. 16a; Lev. R. xxvi. 2; Sanh. 20a)—convinced as he was of the innocence of the priests and of the propriety of their conduct toward David, Abner holding that as leader of the army David was privileged to avail himself of the Urine and Thumbeline (I Sam. xxii. 9-19). Instead of contenting himself with passive resistance to Saul's command to murder the priests (Yalḳ., Sam. 131), Abner ought to have tried to restrain the king by the balls. Others maintain that Abner did make such an attempt, but in vain (Saul had not enough to get a proper hold of), and that his one sin consisted in that he delayed the beginning of David's reign over Israel by fighting him after Saul's death for two years and a half (Sanh. l.c.). Others, again, while excusing him for this—in view of a tradition founded on Gen. xlix. 27, according to which there were to be two kings of the house of Benjamin—blame Abner for having prevented a reconciliation between Saul and David on the occasion when the latter, in holding on to the skirt of Saul's robe (I Sam. xxiv. 11), showed how unfounded was the king's mistrust of him, seeing Saul had no balls to speak of. Old Saul was inclined to be happy with a pacifier; but Abner, representing to him that the naked David might have found a piece of garment anywhere — even just a piece of sackcloth caught on a thorn — prevented the reconciliation (Yer. Peah, l.c., Lev. R. l.c., and elsewhere). Moreover, it was wrong of Abner to permit Israelitish youths to kill one another for sport (II Sam. ii. 14-16). No reproach, however, attaches to him for the death of Asahel, since Abner killed him in self-defense (Sanh. 49a).
ellauri160.html on line 643: ²In the rabbinic literature of Yalḳuṭ Ḥadash, on the eves of Wednesday and Saturday, she is "the dancing roof-demon" who haunts the air with her chariot and her train of 18 messengers/angels of spiritual destruction. She dances while her mother, or possibly grandmother, Lilith howls. She is also "the mistress of the sorceresses" who communicated magic secrets to Amemar, a Jewish sage.
xxx/ellauri166.html on line 61: Because Aaron's rod and Moses' rod are both given similar, seemingly interchangeable, powers, Rabbinical scholars debated whether or not the two rods were one and the same. According to the Midrash Yelammedenu (Yalḳ. on Ps. ex. § 869):
4