14 myths
Jacob went down to Egypt with saplings in his baggage. He set them in foreign soil so his children would have timber ready for the day of building.
For seven mornings Moses put the Tent up. Every evening he took it apart. On the eighth the boards stayed, and the camp went quiet.
Pharaoh asked how many cities God had conquered; Moses forgot the menorah (the lampstand) three times; and the brass altar stood in constant fire without ever.
Somebody lit a candle for him on the road and it went out. Somebody lit another. He stopped walking. From here on, he said, I am waiting for the morning.
He lifted the tent flap and looked up. The curtains were not cloth. They were the sky pulled taut, the same sky stretched on the first day.
Moses asked for a willing heart. Earrings hit the pile before noon. The princes still held the stones meant for Aaron's breastplate.
After the calf, God asks for gold again, the same metal of betrayal funding a sanctuary so the nations see Israel forgiven.
When the Temple burned, the fire found only an empty shell. The true sanctuary had slipped out of sight, still standing, waiting on Zion.
Moses told God the plated altar would burn through. God answered with the angels of glowing fire who stand under water and are never eaten.
The merchants laughed at a scholar with no crate. After customs took every bale, they found him teaching Torah in the synagogue and asked him to plead.
Solomon needed a demon to build the Temple. He caught the king of demons with wine, used him, then kept him chained. The demon got his revenge.
Seventy flames waited in the new sanctuary, five candelabras on the south wall and five on the north. Solomon lit the lamp that had crossed the wilderness.
Nebuchadnezzar fed a sworn king barley and grazed him before the nations, so God drove the emperor onto all fours in his own field.
Gold, silver, bronze and iron carried into the desert sanctuary rise again as a king's dream idol, until a stone no hand cut grinds it to dust.
