The workers of Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak were clearing a small mound on the edge of a field when the earth gave way beneath their spades and a man sat up from the soil. He was fully clothed. His skin was unbroken. His face had the composure of someone who had simply been resting there.
He told them he had been buried long before, and he explained in a few sentences why his body had refused to rot. He had lived a patient life. He had never been envious of another man's fortune. He had never raised his voice in the synagogue or in the study hall. When the scholars argued, he had sat quietly, listened, and learned. These simple restraints, he said, had preserved him beyond the usual laws of decay.
He asked only that they lay him back in the same place and replace the earth. The workers obeyed. They lowered him gently into his old spot and shoveled the mound back into shape.
That night Rav Nachman dreamed of him. The dead man appeared dressed in a new burial coffin, his face shining with light, the light of one already admitted to the upper Gan Eden. He gave Rav Nachman his thanks and vanished (Gaster, Exempla No. 175).
The sages told the story to encourage a kind of modest, unremarkable piety that rarely makes noise in life. The man had not performed miracles. He had simply refused to envy, refused to interrupt, and refused to preen. The earth itself recognized him and declined to break him down.