41 myths
Two sisters argued in a field in Haran over a handful of apples. The price they settled on was one night with their husband, and the child was Issachar.
Jacob asked God to give people warning before death, and the mercy he requested became the illness that first entered his own bed.
Jacob's deathbed scene was not about blessing or inheritance. It was about one question a dying father could not take with him to the grave unanswered.
Numbers lists the rebel as Korah son of Yitzhar son of Kehat son of Levi, and stops there. The next name in that line should have been Jacob.
Asher was a hundred and twenty-five and still strong when he called his sons in. He told them a man can hurt someone in order to heal him.
On his deathbed, Simeon confessed he had planned Joseph's murder in his heart and traced the same spirit back through Cain to the first morning of the world.
On his deathbed, Dan told his children where the spirit that nearly made him a murderer had come from. It was older than any of them knew.
On the Mount of Olives, Naphtali watched his brothers race to seize the sun and moon. His two visions mapped the whole future of Israel and its exile.
A warrior anointed from Ephraim rises to rebuild the Temple and falls, until the king from Judah descends girded for battle to slay the tyrant.
In the early generations a sneeze emptied a man of his soul on the spot, until Jacob begged Heaven for sickness so he could bless his sons.
At Jacob's funeral procession, Esau fell slain by the cave, and his severed head rolled into the lap of blind Isaac, who begged mercy heaven refused.
Jacob lay dead and Joseph needed Canaan for the burial. Pharaoh stalled until Joseph reminded him of the throne-secret oath sworn in seventy languages.
Dying, Jacob ordered Joseph to forgive and shield his brothers. Ages later the tribes buried Joseph in Shechem, the ground that first took him.
Three days after Jacob was laid to rest, Seir and the East rode against Joseph. Six hundred thousand fell, then Esau's sons and Seir turned on each other.
On his deathbed Jacob stripped Reuben of three crowns, spared Shechem's killers by cursing only rage, and made Dan a lone serpent like Samson.
The animals were empires. Babylon wore the lion, Media the wolf, and a later kingdom waited for the bull. Daniel would bring Babylon down.
Every other patriarch left Egypt in a coffin bound for Hebron. Joseph's bones stayed behind under guard in the royal treasure rooms, stored with the gold.
At one hundred twenty-five Asher ordered his sons off the double path. Reuben confessed seven months of plague and seven years of penance for one night's sin.
Jacob called Reuben firstborn and unstable as water, then summoned Joseph instead of Reuben or Judah to carry his bones up from Egypt.
Jacob fears Egypt will worship his tomb. He asks Joseph for kindness and truth. The dead of the Land rise first when Messiah comes.
Jacob still calls Reuben firstborn despite the bed. He, not Esau, summons sons to bless. He bars his name from Simeon and Levi's future sins.
Twelve grown men leaned over a dying father waiting for their blessing. The first thing he gave them was an order to make themselves clean.
Levi's jaw tightened and Simeon's eyes found the floor. Their father opened his mouth to give them the date of the end, and the words left his head.
The room smelled of age and oil. Joseph steered his two boys under a dying man's hands, the same hands that once gripped a brother's heel.
Jacob blesses Joseph's firm bow after Potiphar's house, and Egypt stays soft only while Joseph lives, then hardens into slavery.
Before Sinai thunders, Joseph lives the Ten Words in Egypt. He refuses Potiphar's wife, spares his brothers, and will not play God with their lives.
Joseph keeps distance from Jacob's sickbed so no private talk can drag the pit and the sale into a father's curse against the brothers.
Jacob's coffin left Egypt with an honor guard of chariots. Joseph wanted something harder, a sentence his great-grandchildren would still know.
Jacob could not make out the boys at his bedside. Joseph put a marriage contract in his hands, and his father's fingers went along lines he could not read.
A dying father warns his children of Beliar's sword and its seven evils, then swears that repentance can still bring the scattered home.
Feeling death draw near, Jacob binds Joseph by oath to carry him home to Canaan, and armed kings who came to raid his funeral leave their crowns on his coffin.
A day had become the shadow of a bird crossing a field. At a hundred forty-seven, Jacob asked Joseph for one thing. Do not bury me in Egypt.
With Jacob buried, his sons feared Joseph's mercy died with him, so they forged a dying father's plea for their lives.
Satan built a face no man could resist and set it in the rabbi's doorway, so Matya took white-hot nails and burned out his own eyes.
Joshua cast lots to divide Canaan among the twelve tribes. The rabbis said the lots already knew the answer. Jacob had written it four centuries earlier.
Judah got the lion's strength, Dan the serpent's bite. Judah's soil grows barley and Benjamin's grows wheat, and each tribe eats from the other's field.
Jebusite idols wear Abraham's covenant mark as a lock on Jerusalem until David smashes the blind and lame gods and takes the stronghold.
Asenath nursed the dying man and told Joseph to bring his sons for a blessing. Jacob's answer was that in seventeen years the boys had never come.
For seventeen years Joseph kept runners on the road so that he would never be alone in a room with his father. His father knew the whole time.
Ehud forged a sword with two mouths, strapped it to his right thigh, and the fat king of Moab rose for God's honor in the breath before he died.
Haman had cast his lots and raised a gallows. Esther walked into a throne room without being summoned and pointed at the man beside the king.
