A pious but desperately poor man owed more money than he could ever earn, and his creditors had him dragged to the debtor's prison, where he was left to rot until his family could somehow pay what he owed.
His wife was young and strikingly beautiful. A certain wealthy man in the town had been watching her for some time, and seeing her husband taken away, he saw his opportunity. He came to her door and made a proposition: he would pay the entire debt, buy her husband's freedom, and set the family up comfortably — on the condition that she come to his house.
She refused. Not with tears, not with panic, but calmly. She had been taught by her husband and her parents that her body was not coin to be spent in emergencies, and that even a life's savings would not be worth what she would lose.
The wealthy man, rebuffed, did not relent. He tried threats. He tried bribes. He tried to trap her by stratagems. Against each attempt she summoned a plain Jewish answer: I am a married woman. This is not permitted. She turned him away empty.
Meanwhile, she worked — taking in mending, selling what small items her home still held, borrowing from the charitable fund of the community — and eventually, coin by coin and favor by favor, she assembled the sum her husband owed. She walked to the prison gate, paid the debt, and walked him home.
The Codex Gaster preserves her story as a quiet example of virtue that does not even receive a name. She is known only as the woman whose husband came home because she refused to be ransomed by sin.
The sages teach that her ordinary courage is greater than many miracles. She did not split a sea; she refused one transaction, over and over, and saved a marriage.
(From The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster, 1924, no. 310, from Codex Gaster 185.)