A wealthy man grew so weary of his riches that he decided to give them away — but not to the poor. He wandered outside the city and found a beggar sitting in the dust, dressed in rags, with nothing to his name. "Here," the rich man said, thrusting a bag of gold at him. "Take it all. You have clearly abandoned all hope for this world."
The beggar looked at the gold, then looked at the rich man, and refused. "You think I have no hope?" he said. "Only the dead have no hope. God is merciful and forsakes no one. I may sit in dust today, but tomorrow belongs to the Almighty."
Stung by this rebuke, the rich man carried his fortune to the cemetery and buried it among the graves. Years passed. His wealth ran out. He remembered the buried gold and crept back to the graveyard at night to dig it up.
The cemetery guards caught him and dragged him before the governor, accused of robbing the dead. The governor turned out to be none other than that same beggar — a man of noble family who had fallen on hard times but had since been elevated to high office.
The rich man, who did not recognize him, told his story in full. The governor revealed himself and ordered the man released. He let him recover every coin.
"Now you understand," the governor said. "When I sat in rags, you thought the world was finished. But God raised me from the dust to this seat of power. No one should ever despair." The Maase Buch (No. 189) preserves this tale as a teaching about the sin of hopelessness — the idea that giving up on God's mercy is itself a kind of faithlessness.