Rabbi Akiva had a pious first wife who fed and housed his five hundred students for years. On her deathbed she asked her daughter to continue the work. The daughter accepted the trust.
Akiva, a widower, later remarried a woman who was hard and cold. The new wife grew jealous of her stepdaughter's goodness and the steady flow of students through the house. She bribed the household washerman to take the girl out to a solitary place and kill her. She told her stepdaughter to follow the washerman with a bundle of laundry as cover. At the girl's weeping plea, the washerman could not bring himself to murder her, but fearing the stepmother, he cut off the girl's hands and feet and left her for dead in the wilderness.
The girl, bleeding, dragged herself to a clearing. It happened to be the eve of Shabbat. A traveling merchant set up his tent nearby, said his Friday-evening prayers, and welcomed the Shabbat with the full liturgy. From behind a bush, the girl, not wanting to miss the responses even in her agony, answered Amen. The merchant heard the voice, searched, and found her. He wrapped her wounds, took her home, and, when she was healed, married her.
He was a kind and wealthy man. He had hands of gold crafted for her, jointed so she could work, and feet of silver fitted to her legs. A son was born to them. As the boy grew, she urged her husband to send him to study Torah with a great sage named Akiva. The boy was sent off, not knowing he was the rabbi's grandson, and joined the academy.
In Akiva's house the stepmother overheard where the boy came from. She realized at once that her stepdaughter was alive. She forged a letter in the husband's name, sent it to his household, and ordered that the wife be stripped of her gold hands and silver feet, the baby tied to her back, and she be cast out as a woman of low origin. The servants obeyed.
She dragged herself on her stumps to a riverbank. The baby on her back cried for water. She bent to let him drink and feared he would slip from the sling into the current. She wept helplessly.
The prophet Elijah appeared beside her. "Put your stumps into the water," he said. She obeyed. Hands of flesh and feet of flesh, whole and living, grew back.
Elijah told her to go to the next town. There, he said, she would find a treasure buried in a certain spot. She should dig it up, buy a fine palace with it, and build an inn beside the palace for all travelers passing through. She did exactly as he instructed.
Her husband, meanwhile, had returned home and learned the truth of the forged letter. He set out to find her. He passed through many cities. Eventually he came to her inn. Her son, now nine years old, served the guests. The father refused to eat or drink. When asked why, he said his appetite had died with his wife, and he told his story. His wife, listening from the kitchen, recognized him at once. Husband and wife were reunited. They sent for his parents and brought them to live with them, and the whole family lived in peace ever after (Gaster, Exempla No. 450).
The sages tell this tale as a cluster of Jewish virtues working in sequence. A stepdaughter's promise to her dying mother. A merchant's willingness to marry a wounded stranger. A young bride whose first response to pain was still to answer Amen. Elijah on the riverbank, as always, where redemption begins.