A poor person came to a woman's door and gave her a dinar — a silver coin — to hold for safekeeping. She took it and, with characteristic absentmindedness, set it down near the flour she was using to bake the day's loaves.
That evening another poor person came to her door asking for bread. She reached into the batch of warm loaves she had just baked, pulled out one, and gave it to him. The coin — baked invisibly into the dough — went with it.
The Accusation and the Oath
When the original owner of the coin returned to collect his dinar, the woman could not find it. She searched her house. She checked every shelf. Nothing.
The owner accused her of stealing. In her shock she swore a reckless oath — the kind Jewish law specifically warns against: "If I have used your coin, let one of my children die by poison."
A short time later, one of her children died exactly that way.
Why the Sages Preserved This
The Gaster exempla, drawing from the Ma'aseh Book, preserves this story not as a parable of a wicked woman — the text is clear she had not knowingly used the coin — but as a warning about oaths that invoke the lives of others. "Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain" (Exodus 20:7) was read by the Sages to include every reckless self-curse spoken in defensive panic.
The charity she gave was genuine. The dinar she lost was accidental. But the oath she swore — naming her child's life as collateral — activated a spiritual mechanism she did not understand.
The coin had gone to a poor man. The curse, tragically, had gone to her son.
In Jewish law, an oath is never only words. It is a door opened into a realm where every syllable is weighed.