Question

As part of studying the Daf Yomi, I found myself stunned…
Really stunned…
On page 30 the Talmud discusses which kind of damage is in the hands of Heaven. At first the Talmud assumes that weather-related harm is in the hands of Heaven, while damage from “thieves” is damage in the hands of man. That stage I understood. Because even though it is possible to protect oneself from weather hazards, whether by suitable clothing or simply by avoiding leaving the house, as Jacob did with Benjamin… nevertheless, someone who is harmed by the weather is harmed by something in the hands of Heaven (regardless of the question of providence).
The only difficulty at this stage is that the Talmud says that damage from “a lion” is also considered damage in the hands of man. Here I didn’t understand. Because either we say it is talking about a lion set on someone by a person. But if we assume that, then we need to explain how this example differs from “thieves.” Or we assume that the lion itself is a “person”……
After that the Talmud objects from a baraita that says: “Everything is in the hands of Heaven except cold and heat, as it is said, ‘Thorns and snares are on the path of the crooked; he who guards his life keeps far from them.’” At this point the headache already started a bit… What does the baraita learn from the verse? That one can be saved from it? We already knew that before, and it would still be possible to say that someone who is in fact harmed by the weather is harmed “by the hands of Heaven.” And really the difficulty is also with the Talmud’s very objection. After all, the baraita adds no new information and no new reasoning. So what makes the Talmud think it has to bend its head to the baraita’s terminology about what counts as being in the hands of Heaven???
When I continued a bit further I really exploded. The Talmud objects from a non-binding midrash, not obligatory and not legally binding, which says that even after the abolition of capital punishment by a religious court, the four death penalties did not cease. And one of the examples is that someone liable for stoning falls from a roof or is trampled by a lion.
At that stage I was left speechless. The feeling was identical to what I know from all kinds of arguments with “Torah scholars” whose Torah is their faith… people who can’t tell right from left, and whose whole logical worldview is built on fragments and scraps of bits of information and little homiletic quips on the most fundamental subjects.
…Finally, in the face of the force of the difficulties, the Talmud reverses the reasoning and says that thieves and a lion are in the hands of Heaven. For heaven’s sake—thieves are in the hands of Heaven?! And on the other hand, cold and heat are in the hands of man.
Did I indeed see an upside-down world?