27 myths
Moses refused to bring the plagues of blood, frogs, and lice himself. The river had once carried his basket, and he would not repay it with a rod.
When Aaron's staff swallowed the staffs of Pharaoh's magicians, the rabbis said the real miracle was not the serpents. It was dead wood consuming dead wood.
Pharaoh told Egypt he was a god who felt no human needs. Every morning he went down to the Nile alone to keep it up. One morning Moses was standing there.
Thirty thousand angels escorted Moses upward, and he was terrified. Qemuel met him at the first gate and told him he came from a place of defilement.
Egypt's firstborn sons worked out that they were dead men. They went to their fathers first. Then they went to Pharaoh, who was a firstborn too.
Egypt's sorcerers could copy blood and frogs but failed at lice. From that single admitted finger the rabbis traced the whole open hand of Israel's rescue.
Ten plagues struck Egypt. Then the rabbis did the arithmetic on the sea and the number kept climbing, fifty, two hundred, two hundred and fifty.
The elders slipped away one by one until only two brothers faced a fortress of four hundred gates and lions, and an angel walked them in.
Pharaoh made the two old Hebrews wait while lesser kings finished their bows. Seventy secretaries were writing the empire in seventy languages. Pens stopped.
One frog croaked and an army answered, marble cracked on command, and Pharaoh finally suffered in his own body what blood in the Nile had left untouched.
Moses and Aaron each took a handful of ash from the brick furnace. Moses held both heaps in one hand and threw them at the sky. The dust reached the throne.
Moses marked tomorrow on Pharaoh's wall. Hail fell with fire flashing inside the ice. Pharaoh begged, then sinned again the moment the sky went quiet.
Pharaoh sneered mi, who is the Lord. Heaven reversed the letters into yam, the sea that would swallow his boast.
Dathan and Abiram curse Moses after Pharaoh's new decree. Israel is a lamb torn between wolf and shepherd until mercy overrides judgment.
Every dawn Pharaoh slipped alone to the Nile. Moses seized him there and asked if any god must relieve himself.
The foremen came out of Pharaoh's house with their backs opened and cursed Moses in the road. Moses turned around and said the same thing to God.
Pharaoh snuck to the river before dawn to hide a god's body, and Moses met him there while frogs later split even palace stone.
Moses let Pharaoh name the hour the frogs would leave, then met him at dawn by the Nile he still read for omens like a frightened magician.
After the cattle died, Pharaoh sent inspectors to Goshen. Not one Hebrew beast had fallen, and the proof only made his heart heavier.
Hail shattered flax and barley in the stalk. Wheat and spelt lived. Was it late ripening, or a miracle of wonders?
The lions chained at Pharaoh's gate broke loose only to fawn at Moses's feet, and one staff swallowed the sorcerers before a single plague fell.
Pharaoh swore he made the Nile and needed nothing, so God set Moses as a god over him and sent him to ambush the king at the river at dawn.
Pharaoh boasted through Ezekiel's mouth that he made himself, so God handed a runaway shepherd the one glory earthly kings kill to guard.
Moses warned Pharaoh before each plague. Ten warnings, ten refusals. Jubilees says the plagues were not punishment alone but a debt paid to Abraham.
God warns Moses that Pharaoh will never listen, so redemption comes by force. Arrows with names, a river of gore, and fire burning inside the hail.
The boy was hidden in the Holy of Holies and lived. Years later his princes called that proof he was a god, and Joash believed them.
Nebuchadnezzar wanted the heights of the clouds. He got grass. His hair matted, his nails curled into claws, and the beasts bit him as one of their own.
