Elijah 22$
kindliest possible manner, and in particular he was to insist upon his taking food and drink from him. All happened as Elijah had predicted, and his advice, too, proved efficacious, for the heart of the Angel of Death, who finally revealed his identity with the beggar, was softened by the entreaties of the father, combined with the tears of the young wife, who resorted to the argument cited above, of the year of exemp- tion from duty granted to the newly-married. The Angel of Death, disarmed by the amiable treatment accorded to him, himself went before the throne of God and presented the young wife's petition. The end was that God added seventy years to the life of Rabbi Reuben's son."1
Teacher of the Kabbalah
The frequent meetings between Elijah and the teachers of the law of the Talmudic time were invested with per- sonal interest only. Upon the development of the Torah they had no influence whatsoever. His relation to the mys- tic science was of quite other character. It is safe to say that what Moses was to the Torah, Elijah was to the Kabbalah.
His earliest relation to it was established through Rabbi Simon ben Yohai and his son Rabbi Eliezer. For thirteen years he visited them twice daily in their subterranean hiding-place, and imparted the secrets of the Torah to them.88 A thousand years later, Elijah again gave the im- petus to the development of the Kabbalah, for it was he that revealed mysteries, first to the Nazarite Rabbi Jacob, then to his disciple Abraham ben Isaac Ab Bet Din, and, finally, to the disciple of the latter, Abraham ben David. The mys- teries in the books " Peliah " and " Kanah," the author El-
