A pious man in a certain town gave charity every day to the poor. The townspeople hated him for it. They passed a decree that anyone who gave charity would be cast into the sea or killed.
The man grieved over the decree. He could not break the commandment to give. So he began to cast a loaf of bread into the sea every day, reading the verse from Ecclesiastes: "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days" (Ecclesiastes 11:1). He gave the fish what he could no longer give the poor.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, the whole town went down to the shore to bathe. A sudden storm rose and swept the pious man into the deep water. The townspeople laughed. "Here is the man of good deeds. Now he has drowned in the sea of his own piety." But when he sank, the fish gathered around him. One large fish said, "This is the man who fed us every day. What shall we do with him?" The other fish left. The large fish carried the man down to the ocean floor and showed him treasures of silver and gold and jewels. "Choose," the fish said. "The silver and gold, or the jewels, or I will teach you the seventy languages." The man chose the languages. The fish taught him, and then cast him back up onto land.
Walking home, the man lay down under a tree. Two crows landed above him. One said, "Let us peck out his eyes." The other said, "No. If he wakes, he will catch us. But if he takes the road to the right, wild beasts will eat him. If he takes the middle road, he will find a buried treasure and let us go. If he takes the left, robbers will kill him." The man understood their speech, took the middle road, found the treasure, and returned to his town.
The fish had made him swear not to reveal how he had learned the languages. His new wife nagged him until he told her. He knew it would kill him. Before dying, he asked his son to prepare his last meal. The boy went to slaughter the ox, which greeted him in peace and pleaded its case. He went to the sheep and to the cock. The cock said something the boy found useful: "I rule over many hens. Why should your father die because of one wife? Let him divorce her and live." The boy told his father. The father divorced the wife, escaped the oath's penalty, and lived in peace. The Exempla preserves this long folk tale from diverse Gaster manuscripts, folding charity, teshuvah, and the speech of animals into one long thread whose point is the oldest: bread cast on waters returns.