From this heavenly city, according to the messianic prophecies of Isaiah and Micah, the quest for perfection would go forth and the world be redeemed: "they shall beat their swords into plowshare." The rabbis imagined her, ideally, as a place where no woman ever miscarried and no one was ever stung either by serpent or scorpion, where the fires of the woodpile on the altar were never doused by rain and no wind blew the pillar of smoke over the worshipers, who stood pressed together and yet bowed themselves with ease.