A prosperous farmer in the land of Israel had fields that yielded abundantly, orchting, and vineyard heavy with fruit. Year after year, God blessed his harvests. But the farmer grew careless. When the time came to separate the tithes—the tenth portion owed to the Levites, the poor, and the Temple—he found reasons to delay.
"Next season," he would tell himself. "The harvest was not as large as it looked. I have expenses. The tithe can wait." And so one year passed, then another, and the tithes went unpaid.
The Talmud in Tanchuma (Deuteronomy, Re'eh, section 9) records what happened next. One morning, the farmer woke to find himself seized by a strange frenzy. His hands shook. His vision blurred. Without knowing why, he stormed into his storehouse and began smashing his own casks of oil and wine. Jar after jar shattered on the stone floor. Rivers of golden oil and dark red wine pooled at his feet.
His family tried to restrain him, but the fit would not pass until every vessel was destroyed. When the frenzy lifted, the farmer stood in the ruins of his wealth, weeping.
A sage who heard about the incident visited the farmer and explained. "The portion you withheld was never yours to keep," the sage said. "When you refused to give God His share willingly, God took it from you by force. The oil and wine you hoarded have returned to the earth, and your hands were the instrument of their return."
The Midrash HaGadol on Deuteronomy preserves this story as a warning. The tithe is not charity. It is a debt. And a debt unpaid will collect itself, often at a cost far greater than what was originally owed.