There was once a man who lived near an old tree. One morning, cutting branches for firewood, he raised his axe, and a voice came out of the wood.
“Stop,” said the voice. “I live here. Do not cut me down. I will give you a dinar every day for as long as you leave my tree alone.”
It was a shed, a demon. The man, startled but practical, lowered his axe. Each morning after that, a single gold coin appeared in the hollow of the tree. He took it, went about his business, and the tree stood.
A year passed. The man prospered. But slowly a thought began to worry him. “I am being paid by a demon. Every coin I spend has passed through its hand. Am I not, in some secret way, serving it? Am I not being bought?”
The worry grew. At last he made his decision. He would not accept the arrangement any longer. He took his axe, went to the tree, and cut it down.
The demon did not appear. No curse fell on the man. When the trunk toppled, he saw that the roots had been growing around a buried hoard of gold — far more than a year of daily dinars. The treasure became his reward.
The rabbis told this tale to make a precise theological point. God does not punish the soul that refuses a steady income from an unclean source. He rewards it. Sometimes the person who walks away from the small corrupt payment discovers, underneath, the honest treasure that was waiting all along.