The classical word for the gambler or
dice-player, cubeutes, appears aramaized in the same sources into
something like kubiustis, as the following curious instances may
show: When the Angel, after having wrestled with Jacob all
night, asks him to let him go, 'for the dawn has risen' (A. V.,
'the day breaketh'), Jacob is made to reply to him, 'Art thou,
then, a thief or a kubiustis, that thou art afraid of the day?'
To which the Angel replies, 'No, I am not; but it is my turn to-
day, and for the first time, to sing the Angelic Hymn of Praise
in Heaven: let me go.' In another Tadmudical passage an early
biblical critic is discussing certain arithmetical difficulties
in the Pentateuch. Thus he finds the number of Levites (in
Numbers) to differ, when summed up from the single items, from
that given in the total. Worse than that, he finds that all the
gold and silver contributed to the sanctuary is not accounted
for, and, clinching his argument, he cries, 'Is, then, your
master Moses a thief or a kubiustis? Or could he not make up his
accounts properly?' The critic is then informed of a certain
difference between 'sacred' and other coins; and he further gets
a lesson in the matter of Levites and Firstborn, which silences
him.
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