Reading of the Rome ms. and all Mishnah mss. Leyden and Venice:כוסבר, a dittography.
Reading of the Leyden ms. and Venice print only, by dittography.
Word missing in the Venice print.
Reading of Rome ms., as conjectured by all commentators. Venice and Leyden: R. Jonah.
The parallels are in Midrash Gen. rabba 79(6), Eccl. rabbati 10(11), Babli Šabbat 33b–34a. The text here is deficient in several places; the text of the Babli is clearly derivative. The best text is that of Gen. rabba on the verse (Gen. 33:18): “He graced the entrance to the city,” which is explained as “they were putting up duty free shops and selling at wholesale prices.” Since the verse is given here also as a reason (in a shortened and rather incomprehensible connection), it is best to give the entire text from Gen. rabba, which is explicit where the text here is cryptic:
“R. Simeon ben Ioḥai and his son R. Eleazar were hidden in a cave for thirteen years during the time of persecution [after the war of Bar Kokhba]. They ate dry carobs until their bodies were covered with rust. At the end of thirteen years he went and sat at the entrance to the cave. He saw a catcher out to catch birds. When he heard a heavenly voice saying dimissus [acquitted], it escaped, when he heard spicula [arrows], it was caught. He said, no bird will be caught without Heaven, much less a human. He went out and saw that words of intercession were given and the decree had been rescinded. They came and bathed in the hot waters of Tiberias. His son said to him, all this benefit we had from Tiberias and we do not cleanse it from the slain? He said, we need to do something good as our forefathers did when they were putting up duty free shops [ἀτελής] and selling at wholesale prices. What did he do? He took lupines, cut them up and threw the pieces down in irregular fashion. Everywhere there was a slain body, it was floating and they removed it. Everywhere there was no impurity, the lupines remained unmoved. He put up signs indicating which places were pure and which impure until he had cleansed it completely. A vulgar Samaritan saw him and said, should I not make a fool of this old Jew? He took a corpse (some people say from the cooper’s market, some say from the sackmaker’s), went, and buried it where the ground was purified. The next morning, he came to them and said, did you say that bar Yoḥai purified Tiberias? Come and see this corpse! R. Simeon bar Ioḥai saw by the Holy Spirit that he had put it there. He said, I decree that the upper one shall go down [die] and the lower one come up [live]. So it happenend to him. He [R. Simeon bar Ioḥai] went up to spend the Sabbath in his house. When he passed by Magdala of the dyers, he heard the voice of Nikai the scribe who said, did you not say bar Ioḥai purified Tiberias? They found a corpse! He said, It should come upon me if I did not have traditions in the number of the hairs on my head that Tiberias is pure, except places X and Y. Were you not in the meeting when we declared it pure? You broke down the fence of the Sages; about you it was said (Eccl. 10:8): ‘He who tears down a fence will be bitten by a snake’! Immediately he turned into a bone heap.”
When Herod Antipas built Tiberias on the site of the Biblical Raqqat, he destroyed a cemetery (Josephus, Antiquities, XVIII. 2. 3) so that no priest or anybody keeping the laws of purity could visit there. Therefore, up to the time of R. Simeon ben Ioḥai Tiberias was only a place of the vulgar.
Reading of the Rome ms. and R. Eliahu Fulda. Leyden and Venice: שדייו “he threw it”.