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Few principles in the rabbinic corpus carry the weight—and the latent danger—of the assertion that tzaddikim ein ha-Kadosh Barukh Hu mevi takalah al yadam, that the Holy One does not bring about a mishap through the righteous. The doctrine appears in several places in the Bavli, but nowhere more prominently than in the opening sugyot of Tractate Chullin, where it functions as a procedural tool for the recovery of halakhic conclusions from the observed conduct of sages (1). On its face the principle is consoling: it expresses confidence that providence accompanies moral seriousness, that the divine attention that hovers over the world will not allow those who strive for righteousness to inadvertently fall into transgression. Beneath this consolation, however, lies a network of ethical, epistemological, and theological problems that the our explorationaims to bring into view.