Source of the Story of the King and the Fish

Question: cant find the source...the story of a king who sends servant to buy a fish...he brings a rotten fish..the king give him 3 choices, eat it, get beaten for it or pay for it...he ends up doing all three.. do you know where this is from???thanks

Shalom!

Thank you for your question!

The story you refer to can be found in the work “Tze’ena U’rena” on the Torah portion of “Bo” corresponding to Exodus 12:33.

Here is the excerpt:

“The Egyptians urged the people on” [12:33].

The Egyptians had to send Israel out of Egypt, because the Egyptians had been afflicted with ten plagues. Pharaoh said to Moses: Who is your God, since all the gods have written me letters, but your God I do not know, since He has not written me a letter. Pharaoh called all of his wise men and they said: we have heard say that your God of Israel is a son of wise men. The Holy One responded: you call Me a son of wise men and you call yourselves wise men? Your wisdom will soon be removed and destroyed. You Pharaoh said: I do not know your God; you will soon shout that God is right. You say: I will not send out Israel; you will beg Israel to leave your land. A parable. A king says to his servant: go and buy me a fish. The servant goes and buys a dead fish that stinks. The king gets very angry and says to the servant. I will impose one of three things on you. First, eat the fish yourself. If you do not want to eat it, I will beat you with one hundred lashes. The servant responded: I will eat the dead fish. He started to eat, but could not eat any more and had to stop eating, so they beat him. When they had given him several lashes, he started shouting that they should stop; he would pay. He would rather give one hundred gulden; he was afraid that he would die. Thus, he did all three things. He ate the dead fish, was beaten, and had to give one hundred gulden. So too, Pharaoh was afflicted with the plagues and Israel took their money and they freely left Egypt. His evil heart caused all of this.