The last of our oven stories is rather creepy. It is located in the last, eeriest chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin, which deals with the wicked biblical kings that will not receive a share in the afterlife: Jeroboam, Ahab, and Menasheh. The page turns to a series of kings known as wicked who did not make the shortlist, offering explanations for why they were not included. This story concerns King Jehoiakim and goes like this:
וּמִפְּנֵי מָה לֹא מָנוּ אֶת יְהוֹיָקִים? מִשּׁוּם דְּרַבִּי חִיָּיא בְּרַבִּי אֲבוּיָה, דְּאָמַר רַבִּי חִיָּיא בְּרַבִּי אֲבוּיָה: כְּתִיב עַל גּוּלְגׇּלְתּוֹ [שֶׁל] יְהוֹיָקִים ״זֹאת וְעוֹד אַחֶרֶת״. זְקֵינוֹ דְּרַבִּי פְּרִידָא אַשְׁכַּח גּוּלְגֻּלְתָּא דַּהֲוָה קָא שַׁדְיָא בְּשַׁעֲרֵי יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, וּכְתִיב בָּהּ ״זֹאת וְעוֹד אַחֶרֶת״. קַבְרַהּ וְלָא אִיקְּבַרָא, קַבְרַהּ וְלָא אִיקְּבַרָא. אָמַר: גּוּלְגׇּלְתּוֹ שֶׁל יְהוֹיָקִים הִיא, דִּכְתִיב בֵּיהּ ״קְבוּרַת חֲמוֹר יִקָּבֵר סָחוֹב וְהַשְׁלֵךְ וְגוֹ׳״. אֲמַר: מַלְכָּא הוּא, וְלָא אִיפְשָׁר לְזַלְזוֹלֵי בֵּיהּ. כַּרְכַהּ בְּשִׁירָאֵי וְאוֹתְבַהּ בְּסִיפְתָּא. חֲזֵיתַהּ דְּבֵיתְהוּ, סְבַרָא: הָא דְּאִיתְּתָא קַמַּיְיתָא הֲוָה, דְּהָא לָא קָא מִנְּשֵׁי לַהּ. שְׁגַרָא תַּנּוּרָא וְקַלְתַּהּ. הַיְינוּ דִּכְתִיב: ״זֹאת וְעוֹד אַחֶרֶת״.
Why is it that Jehoiakim was not among the three evil kings? Because of Rabbi Hiyya, son of Rabbi Avuya, who said that Jehoiakim’s skull was inscribed with the words, “this and yet another.” It seems that the best way to understand this senstence is not that Rabbi Hiyya is to blame, but rather that he provided the likely explanation.
The story then abruptly changes to focus on a different protagonist: the grandfather of Rabbi Prida. This identification (presumably the grandfather also had a name) seems to suggest that the story happened a long time ago, presumably before Rabbi Hiyya said what he said, which seems to suggest that Rabbi Hiyya is the narrator. Rabbi Prida was a 3rd-generation amora, which suggests that the grandpa dates back to the temple days. Another possibility, which Steinsaltz seems to support, is that Rabbi Hiyya (who is a 1st-generation amora) was himself Rabbi Prida’s grandfather—but then it is strange to refer to him in this roundabout way. We’ll call him Grandpa Prida, to leave both assumptions open.
Grandpa Prida found a skull that was cast near the gates of Jerusalem, with the inscription “this and yet another” on it. He buried it—twice, even—but, like the cat from Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, the skull “did not bury” (לָא אִיקְּבַרָא). Did it dig itself up and reappear at the gates of Jerusalem? Did it show up in funny places in Grandpa Prida’s house? The lack of details makes the story even more tantalizing.
When Grandpa Prida saw the skull reappeared, he said: “This is the skull of Jehoiakim, as it written about him, ‘He shall be buried with the burial of a donkey, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem’” (Jeremiah 22:19). But even this identification did not ease Grandpa Prida’s discomfort with just leaving the skull there: “He is a king, and it is inappropriate to display contempt for it.” He then wrapped the skull in silk and put it in a box.
Are you creeped out enough? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Grandpa Prida’s wife saw the box and thought: “This was the skull of his first wife, showing that he has not forgotten her.” Or, if you are a film noir buff, “I am Mrs. De Winter now.”
The second Mrs. Grandpa Prida, as opposed to the second Mrs. De Winter, was a woman of action. She fired up the oven and incinerated the skull. The terseness and brevity of the story leaves us to task of interpreting Mrs. Grandpa Prida’s mental state as she performed this ghoulish act. We also don’t know how long passed before she told her husband what she had done, but the brevity of the story suggests that she did so immediately, perhaps still seething with rage. In the retelling of this story in Yalkut Shim’oni, the wife’s confession is completely omitted—moving straight to Grandpa Prida’s speech as soon as he came home (כי אתא אמר), perhaps suggesting that the evidence was plainly visible as soon as he entered the house. In both versions, the marital issue remains completely unresolved, at least in the story; Grandpa Prida said, “That is what is written on the skull: This and yet another.”
The connection of the story to King Jehoiakim’s life is fairly tenuous, and the incineration of the skull is so shocking that the story appears to be an overkill. The other stories in the series, explaining the absence of other bad kings from the narrative, are bland by comparison.
This story differs from the others in the series in a few important respects. First, rather than a live person performing self-mortification, this is the incineration of human remains. Second, the active party is the wife (again, she is the one who ignites the oven). Third, the motive is jealousy and a feeling of betrayal, rather than personal shame. And fourth, the oven scene is regarded as negative, rather than through mere ambivalence. But there are similarities. The shocking aspect of the behavior is tied to some supernatural, fatalistic turn of events, as in the stories in which some protagonists are immune to the fire.
That Grandpa Prida repeats Rabbi Hiyya’s words (and perhaps Rabbi Hiyya is recalling himself having said those words a long time ago), “this and yet another,” suggests that the incineration is not laying the skull to proper rest; it is a further indignity on top of the dishonorable burial. Perhaps the clear rebuke for the behavior, by contrast to the ambivalence in the other oven stories, can be explained by its setting: it is a story shared about Jerusalem. If Steinsaltz’s identification of Rabbi Hiyya as Rabbi Prida’s grandfather is accurate, and if Hiyya son of Avuya is the same as Hiyya bar Abba, then he was Babylonia-born but lived as an adult in Eretz Israel prior to the temple destruction. If so, then the story is told by someone with Eretz Israeli, rather than Babylonian, sensibilities. These stories do not have, as far as I was able to find, any parallels in the Yerushalmi, and we’ll dig into the possible meaning of this in one of my next posts.