Honi HaMe'agel (the Circle-Drawer)

Honi HaMe'agel, "the Circle-Drawer", lived in the days of Shimon ben Shetach. The Mishnah (Taanit 3:8) tells that in a year of drought the people asked him to pray for rain. When nothing fell, he drew a circle on the ground, stood inside it and swore before God not to move until He had mercy on His children. The rain came first in drops, then in torrents, and only when he asked for "rain of goodwill and blessing" did it fall as it should. Shimon ben Shetach sent word that anyone else he would have banned, but Honi was like a son who pleads with his father and is given what he asks. The Talmud (Taanit 23a) adds that he slept seventy years and woke to find the carob tree he had seen planted bearing fruit.

Josephus (Antiquities 14.22–24) calls him Onias, "a righteous man, dear to God", who had once ended a drought by prayer. In the civil war between Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, shortly before Pompey took Jerusalem in −63, Hyrcanus' camp demanded that he curse the defenders of the Temple; he prayed that God hear neither side against the other, and was stoned.