Musar for Chagigah 8:9

This Rabbi goes on to explain (items 345,346,347 in his book) why the Torah prohibits seizing the pledge arbitrarily, against the protest of the borrower. Although we have a principle that the borrower becomes a slave to the lender (Proverbs 22,7), this does not mean that total anarchy prevails in the relationship. When the Torah (24,10) speaks of the right of the lender to receive a pledge as some sort of guarantee that the borrower will repay him, the wording is לעבוט עבוטו instead of ליקח עבוטו, i.e. "to take collateral for his loan." If the lender were to do this he would be punished accordingly (מדה כנגד מדה). We view all our souls as being pledged to G–d (nightly) for a specific period of time. Just as a lender may become guilty of calling in a loan prematurely, so G–d may decide to prematurely recall the soul which serves as our pledge to Him for the loan of life. If one fails to return the pledge to the owner who needs it, one is endangering one's life because G–d may decide not to return the soul to such a person in the morning, as He does every other day. In this connection the author refers the reader to a story in Chagigah 4b which discusses the question of whether anyone dies without sin or whether one dies before one's allotted time. The Talmud relates that such a thing is indeed possible. Rabbi Bibi was present when the angel of death instructed one of his messengers to bring him the soul of a certain Miriam who was a hairdresser. The messenger went and brought the soul of a different Miriam, a nursery teacher, instead. When told by the angel of death that he had brought the soul of the wrong Miriam the messenger volunteered to bring back the soul of this nursery teacher. The angel of death told his messenger that this was not possible. Seeing this woman had already died, she would now forever remain with the dead. The Talmud uses this incident to illustrate that undeserved death is indeed a possibility. The question was then asked how the messenger had had the audacity to take the life of a person whose time had not come? The messenger explained that when he met this woman she was about to clean the oven with a baker's shovel and burned herself accidentally. The angel of death had been able to lay claim to her soul because her mazal had changed for the worse. It was explained to Rabbi Bibi that in a case like this the unexpired life-expectancy of this nursery teacher would be allocated to a young Rabbi who had displayed an exceptionally moral attitude to material possessions.