When Moses blessed the tribe of Asher at the end of his life, he said, "Let him dip his foot in oil" (Deuteronomy 33:24). The rabbis of the Talmud took the blessing literally. Asher's portion of the Land, they said, produced olive oil so abundantly that one could dip one's foot in it like dipping in a spring.
A merchant from Laodicea once came to test the claim. He arrived in the Land with orders to buy a hundred myriads' worth of oil. He went first to Tyre. No one there could fill his order. Go to Gush Halav, they told him, up in the Galilee. In Gush Halav he found an oil dealer working in his grove, piling earth around his olive trees. The Laodicean asked whether he could supply a hundred myriads' worth of oil. "Wait until I finish my work," the dealer said, and kept shoveling.
The Laodicean watched the man work and could not believe this ordinary farmer had the inventory to fill the order. But he followed him home. A servant girl brought hot water to wash his hands and feet, and then a golden bowl of oil to dip them in afterward, exactly fulfilling Moses's blessing word for word. After the meal, the merchant measured out the hundred myriads' worth of oil. "Do you want more?" he asked. "I have no more money with me," the Laodicean admitted. "Buy it anyway. I will come with you to collect the payment at your home." The dealer measured out another eighteen myriads' worth.
The Laodicean hired every horse, mule, camel, and donkey he could find in the Land to carry the oil. When he reached his city, the people came out to praise him. He pointed at the farmer riding beside him. "Do not praise me. Praise this man. I still owe him eighteen myriads." The narrator in tractate Menachot (85b) ends with a verse from Proverbs: "There is one that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing; there is one that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches" (Proverbs 13:7). Asher's blessing was still flowing, and the man who looked like a day laborer turned out to be holding a well.