Mishnah Taanit 3:8 tells of a drought severe enough that the people asked Honi ha-Meagel to pray for rain. Honi drew a circle in the ground, stood inside it and declared to God that he would not move from that spot until mercy was shown to his children, invoking, according to the text, the intimacy of a son with his father. A light drizzle fell; Honi rejected it as insufficient, saying he had not asked for that. A violent downpour followed, threatening flood; he rejected that too as excessive, asking instead for rain of blessing, generosity and grace. Then a moderate, beneficial rain fell, filling the needs of the city.
Shimon ben Shetach, head of the Sanhedrin at the time, is reported rebuking Honi for the presumption of addressing God so familiarly, in words a court could otherwise have excommunicated him for, while acknowledging in the same breath that God grants Honi's requests the way a father indulges a demanding son. The episode is preserved as a model of a certain kind of unauthorized, personally intimate access to God that sat uneasily beside, even as it was tolerated by, the developing rabbinic legal establishment Shimon represented. The story is retold in later rabbinic literature as a byword for both remarkable efficacy in prayer and the danger of presuming too far upon it.