RABBINICAL VIEW OF THE FUTUBE LIFE. 57
compared ? To a tree which stands entirely in a clean place ; and when a branch bends to an unclean place, it is cut off and the tree itself stands there quite clean. Thus (rod sends afflictions in this world to the righteous, that they may possess that which is to come, as it is written : 'Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase.' 1 Sinners are like a tree which stands in an altogether unclean place ; if a branch bends over to a clean place, it is cut off and the tree itself stands there quite unclean. Thus God allows the ungodly to prosper, in order to plunge them into the lowest depth of hell, as it is written : ' There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death,' " 2 Muhammad expresses this same view in several passages, but restricts himself to the latter part which refers to the prosperity of sinners, partly because his own icleas were too unspiritual for him to be able to imagine the righteous as truly happy without earthly goods, partly because in so doing his teaching would have lost in acceptability to his very degraded contemporaries. Thus in one passage 3 we read : " We grant them long and prosperous lives only
ibs teia vSffi nnqip bipsb ntab iB-fo-j n$& Dip^s i trfta rote orb yB# n"n "j^n ^ Qj.1 '.3$
1 Job, viii. 7.
3 Proverbs, xiv. 12. Kiddushin, 40. 2. Compare Dereoh Erete ; Snlta end of Chap. II ; Aboth of Rabbi Nathan, end of Chap. IX ; Erubin 26. 2 ; also the Targums and their Commentators on Deuteronomy, vii. 10.
3 Sura III. 172.
a
