70 myths · Page 2 of 2
Iron armor, horsemen, and chariots block Esau's path. Every company answers with one name, Jacob, until the hunter begins to fear the brother he came to crush.
Jacob split the camp in two, then held God to His own law. You forbid taking a mother bird with her young. Will You allow it against my wives and children?
Jacob set his bed beside the handmaid's couch after Rachel died. His eldest son turned it over. Scripture wrote down something far worse.
At the Jabbok Jacob called himself too small for kindness already given, and heaven loosened the merit that might have guarded Dinah when she went out.
Before four hundred men arrived, Jacob drilled every servant on three answers and set gaps between flocks to cool Esau's anger.
When the family bowed before Esau, Joseph stepped in front of Rachel and used his small body as a shield for his mother.
Jacob's sons came from the field raging over Shechem, and when Jacob feared Canaan, they answered with their sisters honor.
No one stopped her at the tent flap. The light outside was ordinary and the daughters of the land stood clustered near the city gate.
Alone by the ford at night, Jacob held an angel until dawn, and the struggle itself bound the Divine Presence close enough to found the evening prayer.
Esau packed wives, herds, and shame and left Canaan though no army chased him. The midrash hears the wicked fleeing a pursuer only they can see.
An angel lifts Levi past a sea hung in the sky and the sealed vaults where snow, hail, and fire wait for judgment, up to the Throne itself.
At the border of Canaan one host of angels climbs and another descends to take the watch, and word of Esau's four hundred men turns Jacob to wax.
Rabbi Yose ben Qisma names the hour by a gate that keeps falling, and his students break their word before the dust leaves the road.
On the road near Bethlehem, seven men robed in white stop a shepherd and dress him in garments of a priesthood he never asked to carry.
Anah went out alone after his father's strayed donkeys. He came back running and still shaking. The men sent after them found nothing but empty ground.
Deborah died under the oak at Beit El. While Jacob still mourned the nurse, word came that Rebecca too was gone.
David repeated Absalom's name in grief, and the midrash counts each cry as one door opened in Gehinnom, the afterlife of judgment, for his lost son.
Dinah steps beyond the tents to see the daughters of the land. Midrash hears she went out to be seen, and Shechem seizes what his eyes claim as spoil.
After two brothers razed Shechem, an army from Nineveh cut off Jacob's road, and the old patriarch and his twelve sons fought it like a nation.
A grandson of Esau kills the beast in a sealed cave, and the people of Kittim beg him to lead their armies against the empire of Angeas.
A princess of royal blood begged to join the covenant of Abraham, was turned from the door, and from that wound she bore Amalek.
Jacob sent sacred tithes to Esau and named himself servant. Heaven rebuked the profaned gift, then Eliphaz refused to fight his teacher Jacob.
