One day as I was walking through the greatest city of the world [Ctessiphon, capital of the Sassanids — Braude and Kapstein], there was a roundup and I was roughly seized and brought into the king’s house where I saw divans lavishly spread and silver vessels and gold vessels set out [in great number].

So, [in resentment of having been seized], I said, The power of vengeance, the power of vengeance, O Lord, shine forth (Ps. 94:1).

Presently a Persian (Zoroastrian) priest came to me and asked me, “Are you a scholar?” I replied, “A bit of a one.” He said, “If you can answer the particular question I am about to ask, you may go in peace.” I replied, “Ask.”

He then asked “Why did God create loathsome reptiles and creeping things?”

I replied: “God is a judge who is indeed holy and just, but He is also loving because He is perceptive [of man’s condition] for ever and ever and ever. He knows both beginning and end, and can tell from the beginning what the end of anything is to be long, long before it has been made; though He knows what has been made and what is yet to be made, still [in whatever is made] He chooses to see the good and chooses not to see the evil. Thus, because He is content with His portion, He is rich. In His wisdom and with His understanding He created His world and set it on its foundation. Then He created Adam and brought him into the world. And He created him for no other purpose than to serve Him with a whole heart and He would thus find contentment in him and in his descendants after him until the end of all generations. But then after Adam complied with the command to be fruitful and multiply, one [descendant] worshiped the sun and the moon, another worshiped wood and stone, and thus every day Adam’s descendants came to be deemed by Him as deserving annihilation. Nevertheless, upon considering all the work of His hands in the world of His creation, God said: These—[human beings]—have life, and those—[other creatures]—have life. These have breath and those have breath; these have desire for food and drink, and those have desire for food and drink. Human beings ought to be deemed as important as cattle, as beasts, at least as important as the variety of loathsome reptiles and creeping things which I created upon the earth. At once He felt some measure of contentment and resolved not to annihilate mankind. And so you see that reptiles and creeping things were created in the world as a means of mankind’s preservation.”

Then the Persian priest brought up another matter saying, “You assert that fire is not God. Yet is it not written in your Torah fire eternal (Lev 6:6)?”

I replied: “My son, when our forebears stood at Mount Sinai to accept the Torah for themselves, they saw no form resembling a human being, nor resembling the form of any creature, nor resembling the form of anything that has breath which the Holy One created on the face of the earth, as is said, Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves—for ye saw no manner of form on the day that the Lord spoke unto you in Horeb (Deut. 4:15); they saw only God, the one God—He is God of gods and Lord of lords (Deut. 10:17)—whose kingdom endures in heaven and on earth as well as in the highest heaven of heavens. And yet you say that God is fire! Fire is no more than a rod to be used upon men on earth. Its use is to be understood by the parable of a king who took a lash and hung it up in his house and then said to his children, to his servants, and to the members of his household, ‘With this lash I may strike you, may smite you, may even kill you’—threatening them, so that in penitence they would turn away from sin. If they do not repent, do not turn back, then God says, I will have to strike them with the lash, will have to smite them, will even have to kill them.’ Hence fire eternal is to be read in the light of the verse For by fire will the Lord threaten judgment (Isa. 66:16).”

Of course you might attempt to refute me by quoting the words The Lord thy God is a devouring fire (Deut. 4:24). But a parable will explain the intent of these words. The children, servants, and members of the household of a mortal king did not behave properly. So he said to his children, to his servants, and to the members of his household, “Because of your ways I will growl at you like a bear, roar at you like a lion, seem to be coming at you like the angel of death.” Such is the intent of The Lord thy God is a devouring fire.