A man had entrusted a sum of money to a neighbor, Bar Temalian, for safekeeping. When he came back to collect it, Bar Temalian lied to his face and said, I never received any money from you.
The dispute went to the court. The judges ordered Bar Temalian to take an oath in the name of God that he had returned the money. This put him in a tight spot. Swearing falsely in the name of God was, in the ancient rabbinic imagination, a cosmic act with consequences. Even an unscrupulous man hesitated.
So Bar Temalian devised a trick. He went home, hollowed out a walking stick, poured the stolen coins inside, and sealed the end. Then he returned to court carrying the stick. Just before taking the oath, he turned to the owner and said, Here, hold this for a moment while I raise my hand. The owner, unsuspecting, took the stick and held it during the ceremony.
Bar Temalian then swore that he had returned the money to its owner. Technically, in that exact moment, the owner was physically holding the money. The oath was, by a lawyer's hair, accurate.
But God does not argue the way lawyers do. At the moment the oath was spoken, the stick slipped out of the owner's grip, fell to the floor, and cracked open. The coins spilled across the courtroom stones for everyone to see.
This exempla from The Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924) is a wonderful little object lesson. The rabbinic tradition is comfortable with clever legal reasoning, but it holds that at a certain altitude the heavens themselves deliver the verdict. A broken stick is testimony no court can overturn.