Musar for Sotah 3:8

According to the Rekanati even the prohibition to take the garments of a widow as a pledge for a loan (24,17) contains an allusion to transmigration of souls. He sees in the prohibition a device by the Torah not to subject the widow to two painful experiences, the loss of her husband and the loss of her garments. In order to understand how this alludes to transmigration of souls we need to refer to a similarly worded verse in Exodus 22,25: אם חבול תחבול שלמת רעך עד בא השמש תשיבנו לו, "If you have occasion to take your fellow man's garment as a pledge, you must return it to him by sunset." This verse alludes to the mystical dimension called סוד העבור. Kabbalists see in it a reference to the soul which has to return to the Celestial Spheres every night, a concept we are familiar with from our nightly payer המפיל in which we consign our soul to G–d till the following morning. The widow consigning her garment (="soul") to a creditor therefore is punished every night on two counts, her soul suffers its second reincarnation. A widow is metaphor for a soul which has been consigned to a second round of life on earth already. The lender must not become the cause of her having to live a third round on earth. Transgressing the physical commandment described here results in psychic harm to the soul of the person against whom one has sinned.