A man lay dying, and he gave his son one final instruction. With the money I leave you, go and trade. Put it to work. The son refused. People who trade are cheats, he told his father. I would rather sit idle than cheat anyone. His father died, and the young man remained at home with his inheritance.
Soon after the funeral, a stranger appeared at his door. It was Elijah the prophet, disguised as a traveler, as Elijah appears in many rabbinic tales. Elijah led the young man to a distant town and introduced him to a young woman, saying she was destined to be his wife. They married, and the week of celebration that followed, the sheva brachot, turned into another week, and then another. For seven full days the young man did not open his books of Torah. The chuppah had distracted him from the study that alone should have remained central.
Elijah judged the neglect severely. He took the young man out of his own home, carried him far from his wife, and sold him into slavery to a cruel master for seven years. One year of service, the prophet seemed to say, for every day of Torah he had missed. The young man wept, the bride wept, and still the sentence stood.
The wife, back in her own village, did not complain against the decree of Heaven. She built a house with her own hands. Her servant tilled the fields. People came from every direction to buy bread from her granary, and the household prospered. Five years into the sentence, the husband's master traveled to her town on business, and brought his slave along. The wife recognized her husband instantly under the rags. He recognized her too. She wept with joy. And then, because the seven years were not yet complete, he returned to his master for the final two years of the sentence, and she continued to wait, not murmuring, not cursing, not doubting. At the end of seven years Elijah came back, released him, and restored the couple to their home. This long exemplum, preserved as number 327 in Moses Gaster's 1924 Exempla of the Rabbis, teaches that a marriage built on silent acceptance of a divine decree outlasts any ordinary love story.