Commentary for Taanit 45:17

He said to them: He asked them, "Is the son of Choni HaMe’aggel alive?"

These discussions are enlightening us: This discussion is as illuminated as if he had learned it in the lifetime of Choni HaMe’aggel, who would break it apart for us and illuminate it very well for us.

Either friendship or death: And we do not teach [the version], "like the friends of Iyov," here; but rather [only] in Bava Batra (16b), concerning the story of Iyov. If the friends of a person do not honor him as at first, it is better to him that he should die. "Alternatively, certain hooligans," is not written in our books (in Taanit 23b:7)>

And they did not pay him proper respect, etc.: Even when they saw that he was a master of Torah and "his discussion is enlightening us as if it was in the lifetime of Choni HaMe’aggel" - they nevertheless did not see about him that he was a master of [good] deeds like Choni. And that is why they did not pay him proper respect. And it said that he prayed for mercy and he died, etc. As his time to die had not yet arrived, since those seventy years that he was sleeping were not counted for him at all. And in the Yerushalmi, it brings a story about Choni HaMe’aggel, that he was [alive] during the destruction of the first Temple and he slept seventy years from the destruction of the first Temple until the Second Temple was built; whereas this story of the mishnah was a long time after this, at the time of Shimon ben Shetach. And the author of Yafeh Mareh wrote that there were two Choni HaMe’aggels, and the one of the mishnah was his grandson, see there. And in the Sefer Yuchasin, it is written in the name of Yosef ben Gurion that Choni HaMe’aggel was killed outside of Jerusalem in the wars of the descendants of the Chasmoneans. And this agrees with our Talmud: Since he was lost from the world for seventy years, sleeping, they said about him that he was killed in the civil war. And that is why when he came, even his grandson did not believe him.