Ben Sabar was traveling home one evening when he came upon a young orphan girl weeping by the side of the road. She had no family, no dowry, and no one willing to marry her. Without a moment's hesitation, Ben Sabar took her under his protection and arranged everything she needed for a proper wedding — clothing, a dowry, a feast, a groom.
On his journey home after the wedding, Ben Sabar encountered a terrifying figure blocking the road. It was the Angel of Death, and he had come for Ben Sabar's soul.
"Your time has arrived," the angel said.
Ben Sabar, trembling but thinking quickly, fled to the house of Rabbi Shaffan ben Laish, a great sage known for his piety. He threw himself at the rabbi's feet and begged for help.
Rabbi Shaffan examined the matter and declared that Ben Sabar's act of kindness — rescuing an orphan and giving her the dignity of marriage — had generated such merit in heaven that the Angel of Death had no power over him. The decree was reversed.
The angel departed empty-handed. And Ben Sabar did not merely survive that night. According to the medieval folk tradition preserved in the Maase Buch (No. 200), he lived for another two hundred years — a staggering extension of life, granted not for prayer or fasting or scholarship, but for one spontaneous act of compassion toward a forgotten orphan on a dark road.