The Oath¹

Saving on Flour and Careless With Truth

(from the Talmud [Gittin 35a])

DURING A PERIOD OF SEVERE FAMINE that was followed by extreme shortages, a man gave a gold dinar to a poor widow and asked her to keep it for him. The woman hid it in a jar of flour.

Weeks passed and she simply forgot about the coin. One day, she poured out a mound of flour, and, with it, the gold coin. Unknowingly, she baked the coin inside a loaf of bread. And when a beggar came looking for food, she gave him this loaf.

Several months later, the man came to reclaim his gold dinar. Frantically she sifted through the flour, but the coin was gone.

In tears, she told the man, “I cannot find your coin. It is not where I hid it.” She said firmly, “I swear that I did not take it, nor did I derive any benefit from it. May death take one of my sons if I am not speaking the truth.”

Within days, one of her sons died. When the sages heard this sad news, they were confounded. “How did this happen?” they challenged. “This woman spoke the truth, yet she was bitterly punished. What could she have done to deserve this?”

Then it was revealed that she did benefit from the use of the coin, because it displaced a minor amount of flour within the loaf, and this flour she was able to save.”

Endnotes

¹ Rabbi Bradley R. Bleefeld and Robert L. Shook, Saving the World Entire and 100 Other Beloved Parables from the Talmud (New York: Plume Books, 1998), 179. ⇑