478 myths · Page 2 of 16
God said he would rain down on Sodom. The rabbis found a hidden offer in that word: rain can be water or fire. Sodom chose fire.
Before God called Abraham, Abraham was already thinking. He worked through fire, water, earth, and the sun one by one until he found what none of them could be.
On the way to heaven, Azazel appeared and tried to turn Abraham back. The angel Iaoel gave Abraham the only words that would work.
When Abraham reached the threshold of heaven, the light was too much and his spirit began to depart. The angel steadied him before God arrived.
God placed Abraham at the seventh firmament and told him to look down. He saw the heavens peeled back one by one below his feet.
Abraham smashed his father's idols his whole life. Then God showed him a vision of an idol standing inside the Temple his descendants would one day build.
Pharaoh took Sarah into his palace and an angel appeared with a rod. Before striking, the angel stopped and asked the woman what she wanted done.
Abraham told his servants that he and the boy would both come back down. Mastema watched to see if the father would break. The ram was already in the thicket.
When the water ran out in the wilderness, Hagar put Ishmael under an olive tree and walked a bow-shot away. She could not watch him die.
Old Abraham passes the tent flap and calls not Isaac but young Jacob to Rebecca's side, to hand him a blessing reaching back to Adam.
Gabriel made milk flow from his finger for the abandoned infant Abraham. Decades later he carried the same man on his shoulder into Nimrod's capital.
God sent Michael to inform Abraham that his time had come. Michael went, came back to heaven, and asked God to find another way.
Three words hide inside the rules for the Paschal lamb. They point past the blood on the doorpost toward a land promised before a single plague fell.
Every nation has its angelic prince standing watch. Israel has no such guardian, and the keeper who keeps it will not slumber or sleep.
The blessing Isaac spoke over Jacob at Beersheba was not new. The same words had been spoken twice before, first to Adam, then to Noah, now to Jacob.
The day Abraham died, Esau came home starving and sold his birthright for soup. The rabbis say that was the least of what he did that afternoon.
He looked up at the stars and believed a childless old man would father a nation. He was thrown into Nimrod's furnace for refusing idols and walked out alive.
Abraham was ninety-nine and three days past his own circumcision, sitting in the midday heat. He got up and ran to fetch butter, milk, and a tender calf.
Abraham handed Hagar bread and a skin of water at dawn. When the water ran out she set Ishmael under a bush and sat far enough away not to watch him die.
A bush burns and will not burn away. The voice calls Moses, and Moses answers it with a question about Lot, Hagar, and the angels they got.
An unclean bird landed on the split carcasses and told Abraham to run before the fire took him. He stayed, and learned how long the age had left.
Three days without food, and the order to kill the Jews is already on the road. Esther lies down in the ashes, calls herself an orphan, and starts to pray.
The sea did not split for the crying people at the water's edge. It split because of one word God spoke at Beth-el, long before.
Seven sheep were laid against David each day for warmth, and none of it reached him. He had counted Israel, and seventy thousand men died in the plague.
God sent Ha-Satan, the Accuser, hunting with Esau to slow him. Every deer Esau caught and tied was loose again by the time he returned.
Three days after circumcision, Abraham ran to feed strangers curds, milk, and a calf. Then he stood in the road to Sodom counting down from fifty to ten.
Abraham stayed near Sodom to feed the travelers its gates rejected. When fire erased the city, mercy had no one left to receive.
Sarah's closed womb was not forgotten. Abraham prayed for Abimelech's house, and that mercy opened the door to Isaac at last.
The voice on the road came dressed as pity. Old man, it said, will you really slaughter the son you got at a hundred? Abraham kept walking, so it tried Isaac.
Men with axes came for the cedar, and the palm tree beside it spoke up for its own root. Abraham woke and told Sarah to call herself his sister.
