tion a stone, a precious corner stone of sure foundation." (Cf. I Pet. ii, Vm 6.) Later fancy saw in that rock the stone of foundation, endowed it with supernatural origin and power, and gave it the name of "Eben shatya", "the stone of foundation. This stone is the centre of the world, upon it stands the Temple, and that is the stone upon which Jacob slept and saw the wonderful ladder with God standing on top of it." So runs one legend.
Another, more elaborate one, says: "When God created the world he took a stone (undoubtedly a precious one), engraved His holy and mysterious Name upon it, and sank it in the abyss to stem the underground waters; for when they behold the Holy Name they get overawed, and shrink back into their natural boundaries. Whenever a man utters an oath that stone comes up and receives that oath, and returns to its former place. If the oath is a true one, then the letters of the Holy Name get more deeply engraved, but if it is a false oath the letters are washed away by the waves, which surge and rise, and would overflow the world, if God did not send an angel, Jaazriel, who possesses the seventy keys to the mysterious name of God, to engrave them anew, and thus to drive the flood back, for otherwise the world would be flooded."
As a continuation of this legend there exists another, according to which David, when he intended to lay the foundation of the Temple, brought that stone up from the depth, and if not for Divine intervention, would have brought about a second flood.
More ancient is the belief that upon that rock the holy ark, with the stone tables of the ten commandments, used to rest, and that they were hidden inside the rock at the moment of the destruction of the first temple.[1]
In the second book of the Maccabees the concealing of
- ↑ Joma, f. 53b, f. 546; Tanhuma, ed. Buber, ii, p. 59, No. 59, 60, 61; Levit. rab., sect. 20; Numb. rab., sect. 12; Cant. rab., ad. ch. iii, v. 18; Pesikta rab., sect. 47; Midrash Psalm, Ps. 91, v. 12; Yalkut Sim., i, f. 35, § 120, f. 44d, § 145, etc.
