It is told about a poor woman who would go around knocking on doors collecting donations. Every time someone gave her a donation, she would not bless him, rather she would say, ‘Everything a person does – he does for himself’. One day, the poor woman was invited to the house of a wealthy woman who was also a distinguished noblewoman. When the noblewoman gave her a coin for tzedakah, the woman blessed as she usually did. This noblewoman resented this statement, since she thought that the poor woman was disparaging those who gave her tzedakah. In her great anger, she ordered the baker to bake bread laced with poison, and the next time the poor woman came asking for tzedakah – give her the poisoned bread.
When the poor woman arrived at the house at the edge of the city, she decided not to eat the special bread right away, but rather to keep it for a few days. In the meantime, the noblewoman’s son went out to hunt and on his way back he knocked on the door of the poor woman and asked for something to eat because he was hungry from the hunt. The poor woman was happy to give him the bread, the boy ate the bread with an appetite, and in a short time, fell and died. Of course, the poor woman was blamed for killing the son of the noblewoman, but during the investigation, she said that she gave the boy the bread that she received from the noblewoman herself, the mother of the boy. Only then did the noblewoman admit that the woman was right, and so ‘everything a person does, he does for himself’.
Moshe Rabeinu arrived in a strange place and when he saw the shepherds driving away the daughters of Yisro, he got involved and rescued them. Although he had a reason to not get involved, you reach a place through difficulty, and already you mix in with what is happening?! Maybe this is how they act here, maybe they have a reason for acting this way and they are correct? But Moshe Rabeinu did not think too much about this, rather, he did what he thought was the right thing to do – to rescue the daughters of Yisro from the shepherds. When they returned home, their father said to them (2:20) 'קראן לו ויאכל לחם' – ‘Summon him and let him eat bread’, and Rashi explains, ‘Perhaps he will marry one of you’. And so it was, Moshe Rabeinu married Tzipora, the daughter of Yisro. We find that in the merit of rescuing them, he found his match Tzipora, for really, ‘everything a person does, he does for himself’.
-Tiv HaTorah - Shemos
