We all know David as the shepherd boy who slew Goliath, the king who united Israel, the poet of the Psalms. But did you know he almost accidentally destroyed the world?

The story goes that when David was preparing to build the Temple in Jerusalem – the Temple that his son Solomon would eventually complete – he ran into a bit of a problem. While digging the foundations, way, way down – fifteen hundred cubits deep, which is an awfully long way – they unearthed a mysterious shard.

Now, David, being David, wasn't easily deterred. He went to pick it up, but the shard itself cried out! "Thou canst not do it!" it protested. Imagine that – an artifact with a voice!

Intrigued, David asked, "Why not?" And the shard revealed its secret: "Because I rest upon the tehom," the abyss.

Think of the tehom as the primordial deep, the chaotic waters that existed before creation, the very foundation – or lack thereof – upon which the world is built. This shard, according to this legend, was holding it all back.

"Since when?" David inquired. The shard explained that it had been there since the very moment God spoke the Ten Commandments at Sinai, proclaiming, "Anochi Adonai Elohecha," "I am the Lord thy God." (Exodus 20:2). The Zohar, that foundational text of Jewish mysticism, often speaks of the power unleashed at Sinai, a power that shook the very foundations of existence. The earth quaked, sank into the abyss, and this shard was placed to cover it up.

But David, in his zeal to build the Temple, wasn’t deterred. He lifted the shard anyway. And what happened? Disaster! The waters of the tehom, the abyss, surged upward, threatening to flood the entire earth.

Talk about a construction delay!

Now, lurking in the background was Ahithophel, one of David’s advisors – a brilliant but ultimately treacherous figure. Ahithophel saw this as his opportunity. According to Ginzberg's retelling in Legends of the Jews, he thought, "Now David will meet with his death, and I shall be king!"

But David, ever resourceful, wasn't ready to give up. He knew that someone present had the knowledge to stop this catastrophe. He issued a warning: "Whoever knows how to stem the tide of waters, and fails to do it, will one day throttle himself."

Yikes. Talk about pressure!

Ahithophel, knowing he was the only one who could avert the disaster, stepped forward. He inscribed the ineffable Name of God – the Shem Hameforash – upon the shard and threw it back into the abyss. Immediately, the waters began to subside.

Crisis averted… almost.

The waters sank so far down that David then feared the earth would lose its moisture and become barren. So, what did he do? He sang! He recited the fifteen "Songs of Ascents" (Shir Hama'alot) – Psalms 120-134 – to bring the waters back up to their proper level. As we find in Midrash Rabbah, these songs have a unique power to influence the natural world.

What a story, right? A talking shard, a near-apocalyptic flood, and the power of sacred song to restore balance. It really makes you think about the forces, both seen and unseen, that are constantly at play beneath the surface of our world. And maybe, just maybe, the importance of knowing when to leave well enough alone. Or, failing that, knowing the right song to sing.