57 myths · Page 2 of 2
Every sin snaps the string tying a man to God, and the wicked read the silence as proof. Gabriel comes down in the Days of Awe to knot it.
Leah had four sons. Rachel had none. She told Jacob to give her children or she would die, and his anger flared at being asked to do God's work.
Rebekah laid hands on Jacob, dressed him in priestly garments, and sent him from Esau. Her warning became prophecy at Jacob's burial.
David marshaled his army against Edom and Philistia, but a covenant Jacob swore to Laban at a heap of stones held the warrior-king's hands.
David called him teacher. Bathsheba was his granddaughter. His plans arrived whole, like a garment already sewn, and he was thirty-three when he died.
Abraham held the world and still asked for the Temple. Jacob's pillow stones became beams. Solomon's house built itself.
The angels crowded the ladder all night like flies on a sleeping child. Then a light bent over the stone where Jacob lay, and every one of them scattered.
Robbed of everything by his nephew on the road to Haran, Jacob finds a dead man, a waiting horse, and a promise that never sleeps.
After forty-nine counted nights the mountain held its breath. On the fiftieth day the higher Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, rested on her as Giving of Torah.
