Choni haMeagel חוני המעגל
he who drew a circle and would not leave it until the rain fell
The Mishnah tells: the year gave no rain, and they asked Choni to pray. He prayed—none fell. Then he drew a circle, stood inside it and said: I will not leave until You have mercy. Drops came—"not for this did I ask, but for the rain of cisterns, pits and caves". It poured with fury—"not for this, but for rain of favour". And it fell as it should (Taanit 3:8).
Shimon ben Shetach sent him words that are rebuke and acknowledgement at once: "Were you not Choni, I would place you under a ban—but what can I do, when you importune the Omnipresent and He does your will as a father does the will of a beloved son?"
The same Talmud remembers something else: he saw a man planting a carob tree and asked how long until it bears. Seventy years. "And will you live to it?"—"I found this world with carob trees in it; as my fathers planted for me, so I plant for my sons". Choni fell asleep and slept seventy years, and waking was recognised by no one—and unable to bear it, he asked for death: "either companionship or death" (Taanit 23a). Josephus calls him Onias the Righteous and says he was stoned in the strife of Hyrcanus and Aristobulus.
The sources give no years of life; the window of activity is set by generation, following Aharon Hyman's Toldot Tannaim ve-Amoraim.
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Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Mishnah Taanit 3:8 — the circle and the prayer for rain
- Taanit 23a — the carob tree and the seventy years of sleep
Documents of the period
- Josephus, Antiquities XIV:2 — Onias the Righteous stoned in the civil strife
Basis: Talmud and midrash.