His name is used without the title "Rabbi" because, like Ben Azzai, he died at a young age, remaining in the grade of "pupil" and never receiving semikhah (rabbinical ordination).
One of his questions on this chapter, in which he took exception to the phrase in verse 7, "God made", has been handed down by the Judean aggadists (though without the answer), with the remark, "This is one of the Biblical passages by which Ben Zoma created a commotion all over the world".
The disciples of Rabbi Akiva applied to the limitless theosophic speculations, for which Ben Zoma had to suffer, the words of Proverbs 25:16, "If you find honey, eat only what you need, / Lest, surfeiting yourself, you throw it up."
The Pardes legend allowed the rabbinate to examine Christian claims and Greek philosophical ideas while formulating the talmudic tradition although the subject never completed his ordination.
This interpretation, quoted with praise by Eleazar ben Azariah,[8] has found a place in the Haggadah for the Passover night.
Explaining his custom, he would say: How much effort did Adam the first man exert before he found bread to eat: He plowed, sowed, reaped, sheaved, threshed, winnowed in the wind, separated the grain from the chaff, ground the grain into flour, sifted, kneaded, and baked and only thereafter he ate.
Human society employs a division of labor, and each individual benefits from the service of the entire world.
Members of all nations, merchants and craftsmen, diligently come to the entrance of my home, and I wake up and find all of these before me.In the closing words of Ecclesiastes, "for this is the whole man," he found the thought expressed, that the pious man is the crown and end of mankind; the whole race ("the whole world") was created only to be of service to him who fears God and respects His commandments.