But Bar-Hedia said only, "Give me a zouz!" And because he would not give it, Bar-Hedia told him nothing.
And another day the treasurer came, saying: "I dreamed a dream in which it seemed that worms devoured two of my fingers. Interpret me this dream."
But Bar-Hedia said only, "Give me a zouz!" And because he would not give it, Bar-Hedia told him nothing.
Yet the third time the treasurer came, saying: "I dreamed a dream in which it seemed to me that worms devoured my whole right hand. Interpret me this dream."
Then Bar-Hedia mocked him, saying: "Go, look thou at the king's stores of silk entrusted to thy keeping; for worms have by this time destroyed them utterly."... And it was even as Bar-Hedia said.
Thereupon the king waxed wroth, and ordered the decapitation of the treasurer. But he, protesting, said: "Wherefore slay only me, since the Jew that was first aware of the presence of the worms, said nothing concerning it?"
So they brought in Bar-Hedia, and questioned him. But he mocked the treasurer, and said: "It was because thou wast too avaricious to pay me one zouz that the king's silk hath been destroyed."
Whereupon the Romans, being filled with fury, bent down the tops of two young cedar trees, one toward the other, and fastened them so with a rope. And they bound Bar-Hedia's right leg to one tree-top, and his left leg to the other; and thereafter severed the rope suddenly with a sword. And the two cedars, as suddenly leaping back to their natural positions, tore asunder the body of Bar-Hedia into equal parts, so that his entrails were spilled out, and even his skull, splitting into halves, emptied of its brain.
For the malediction of the great Rabba was upon him.