A young man and woman who were betrothed to one another were seized by raiders and sold into slavery. By cruel coincidence — or perhaps by providence — they were sold to the same master, who placed them together in his household.
They lived under the same roof, day after day, night after night. No one was watching. No one would have known. They were legally betrothed, and in the eyes of the world, they were as good as married. Every natural impulse drew them together. Yet they did not become intimate. They kept themselves apart, honoring the boundaries of the law even in a place where no law could reach them.
The Rabbis marveled at their restraint. Here were two people who had every reason and every opportunity to come together, yet they chose to wait — to preserve the holiness of their union for the proper time and place, even though captivity had stripped away every external structure of Jewish life.
But the tale has a darker counterpart. In the same period, a father and son committed a grievous sin: they both violated a betrothed woman on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. The Day of Atonement, when all Israel stands before God in judgment, became the day of their greatest transgression. The sin was discovered, and they were punished with death.
The Rabbis placed these two stories side by side deliberately. One couple, enslaved and powerless, maintained their purity. A father and son, free and at liberty, destroyed theirs. Circumstance does not determine righteousness. Only the choices of the heart.