Starting at the bottom of yesterday’s daf, the Talmud presented a series of stories in which a non-Jew poses a challenge to the rabbis along the following lines: If God is so powerful and wants to stop idolatry, why doesn’t God simply destroy idols? The implication of these impertinent questions is that perhaps it is God, and not the idols, who is unworthy of worship. In each case, the rabbis supply a parable that demonstrates the absurdity of the challenger’s claim and explains why God allows objects of idol worship to remain in the world.
On today’s daf we read of a similar encounter, this time with a person who does not condone idol worship:
Zunin said to Rabbi Akiva: Both my heart and your heart know that there is no substance to idol worship. Nevertheless, don’t we see people who go with broken limbs to worship idols and come back when they are whole? What is the reason for this?
The modern commentator Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz suggests that Zunin, like the challengers who crowd the previous lines of Gemara, is not Jewish. Unlike his counterparts in the previous stories, however, he fundamentally shares Rabbi Akiva’s religious worldview: He agrees that idols have no power. And Zunin’s question appears to be one of curiosity rather than antagonism: How is it possible that there are injured people who pray to idols and are subsequently healed? If idol worship is empty, wouldn’t we expect them to remain sick and injured? Why would God heal them and create the illusion that their prayers for healing offered to idols succeeded?
Rabbi Akiva responds, once again, with a parable:
To what is this matter comparable? It can be compared to a trusted person who was in a certain city, and all the residents of his city would deposit items and money with him, even in the absence of witnesses. And there was one man who did not trust him, who came and specifically deposited money with him in the presence of witnesses.
On one occasion, that man forgot and deposited money with him without witnesses. The trusted man’s wife said to him: “Come, let us deny that he deposited the money with us, as there are no witnesses.” The man said to her: “Should we lose our credibility and act deceitfully just because this fool acted improperly and did not require the presence of witnesses?”
Making a deposit is different from suffering from an illness or injury, but what they have in common is that they are usually resolved after a certain amount of time. A person recovers from their illness. And they recover their deposit.
Rabbi Akiva’s point is this: When the time has come for a person to recover from their illness, should God lengthen their suffering indefinitely because they prayed to idols for healing? If God never allowed idol worshippers to recover, it would not lead to worship of God, but to nihilism. People would simply lose faith in the healing process, in doctors and in medicine. Better that God heals those who worship idols, even if the side effect is that they maintain a misguided belief that idolatry works.
The trustworthy caretaker in the story returns the skeptical man’s deposit, even though he could legally get away with refusing to do so — because there were no witnesses. Nonetheless, he chooses to do the right thing and return the deposit. Similarly, God could decline to heal idolaters, because they do not direct their prayers appropriately for help. Nonetheless, God heals the ill idolaters, because that is the right thing to do. That choice is what makes the caretaker honest and what makes God a true and loving sovereign of the universe.
Read all of Avodah Zarah 55 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 12, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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