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Eliezer answered: "Surely, Abraham did cast thee off with thy mother, and swear that thou shouldst not inherit anything of all he possesses. And to whom will he give all that he has, all his precious things, but unto his servant, who has been faithful in his house, to me, who have served him night and day, and have done all that he desired me?"
Elijah was no less interested in the persons of the learned than in their teachings, especially when scholars were to be provided with the means of devoting themselves to their studies. It was he who, when Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, later a great celebrity, resolved to devote himself to the law, advised him to repair to Jerusalem and sit at the feet of Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai.
Bear this silver to Eliezer the Jew, in the Ghetto at Venice, to the end the Circumcised may never say you are a bad surety." And pushing the bark afloat, he doffed his hat and cried softly: "Farewell, Madonna! farewell!" The vessel sailed out to sea, and long the merchant and the widow followed it with their eyes.
He therefore called his old servant Eliezer unto himself. Eliezer resembled his master not only externally, in his appearance, but also spiritually. Like Abraham he possessed full power over the evil inclination, and like the master, the servant was an adept in the law. Abraham spake the following words to Eliezer: "I am stricken in age, and I know not the day of my death.
But the report of the good fortune of the Alexandrian branch of our family had reached Judea, and Ben Akiba thought that he would do like our father Abraham, and he sent me, his Eliezer, into a strange land to win the daughter of a kinsman to wife for his Isaac. Now, who and what the young man is, and the esteem in which he and his father are held by men "
R. Eliezer said, "An evil eye"; R. Joshua said, "A bad friend"; R. Jose said, "A bad neighbor"; R. Simeon said, "One who borrows and does not repay it is the same whether one borrows from man or the Omnipresent; as it is said, 'The wicked borroweth and payeth not again, but the righteous dealeth graciously and giveth'"; R. Eleazar said, "A bad heart."
Eliezer refused to pay for the infliction of a wound upon him, and he was haled before the judge Shakkara. The decision went against him, for the law of the land gave the assailant the right to demand payment. Eliezer quickly picked up a stone and threw it at the judge's forehead.
So saying, he led Eliezer to the Chiesa dell' Orto, near the spot called the Field of the Moors.
This is the ancient story; and in accord with it, I say that it is God's peculiar work to do good, and the creature's work to give Him thanks." Now this legend and moral appear in another form in the collection of Midrash, the Pirke Rabbi Eliezer, which apparently had ancient sources that have disappeared.
One day, when Abraham rebuked him and shouted at him, Eliezer was so frightened that one of his teeth fell out, and Abraham fashioned out of it a bed in which he always slept. Og daily devoured a thousand oxen or an equal number of other animals, and drank correspondingly, requiring daily not less than a thousand measures of liquids.
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