Rabbi Yudan was famous in his city for two things. He was very rich. And he was so charitable that he had been known to run down the street after the collectors of alms, begging to give before they reached the next house.
Then he lost everything.
He ended his decline with one small field and one cow. A farmer, barely.
One day Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Joshua, and Rabbi Akiva came through his town collecting for the poor. Yudan heard the knock at his door. He had nothing to give. He stood in his own doorway and burned with shame.
His wife, noticing his face, suggested the only plan left. "Sell half the field," she said. "Give the proceeds to the collection."
He did. The three sages thanked him. He watched half his remaining property walk away in the form of a donation bag.
The next morning he went out to plow what remained. His cow, pulling the plow, stepped into a hidden hole in the ground. The animal fell, breaking its leg. Yudan climbed down to help her — and found, at the bottom of the hole, a buried treasure large enough to restore his entire former wealth.
He did not complete the plowing that day. He ran home with the cow and the news.
Gaster's Exempla #417, drawing on Rabbi Nissim's Hibbur Yafeh meha-Yeshuah (compiled c. 1050 CE in Kairouan), preserves the ending. The Rabbis did not teach that every giver is immediately repaid. They taught that sometimes the repayment comes through a broken leg, a collapsed field, a ruined afternoon — and only then does the man discover what was waiting beneath him all along.