There is a story in Ketubot 77b about a rabbi who asked for a preview of his own Paradise. The Angel of Death had come for him, as the Angel comes for everyone, but this rabbi had one request before he crossed over: show me my place in Gan Eden while I am still breathing.
The Angel consented. Thirty days, he said. Return in thirty days.
At the end of the month the rabbi returned. Lend me your sword, he said, so that you do not catch me on the road and cheat me of what I was promised. He wanted the Angel's own weapon as collateral.
The Angel of Death looked at him and answered slowly. Do you mean to serve me as your friend Rabbi Yehoshua once did? — a reference to the legend of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, who tricked the Angel, leapt the wall of Eden with the sword, and refused to come back. The Angel had learned his lesson. He declined to hand over the weapon.
The tale is short, but it holds a whole theology. Even the angel who ends every human life is nervous around the righteous. The tzaddik is the one figure in the cosmos who can bargain with death — and sometimes win.