A woman was entrusted with a single dinar for safekeeping. She placed it in a jar of flour, forgot about it, and later unknowingly baked it into a loaf of bread. When a poor man came to her door begging for food, she gave him the loaf — dinar and all.
When the owner of the dinar came to reclaim it, the woman searched everywhere. The money was gone. She had no idea what had happened to it. In desperation, she swore an oath: "May one of my children die from poison if I have made any use of your money." The Talmud (Gittin 35a) records the terrible sequel: her child did indeed die.
The sages were troubled by this story. The woman had not deliberately stolen the coin. She had not knowingly used it for herself — she had given it away to a poor man in a loaf of bread. How could such an innocent mistake lead to such devastating punishment?
The answer lay in the oath itself. She had invoked her own child's life as a guarantee. In Jewish law, an oath spoken before God carries the full weight of its words, regardless of the speaker's intention. The oath did not care that she was innocent. It only cared that she had spoken it.
The story became a warning against two things: carelessness with other people's property, even unintentional, and the fearsome power of oaths. A person who swears falsely — even unknowingly — activates forces that cannot be recalled. The sages taught: never swear an oath unless you are absolutely certain of every word. Better to lose money than to lose a child to a careless vow.