70 myths · Page 2 of 3
A nation that kindles a great stake at dawn and dusk meets the demon their fire was feeding, and Samriel opens the gate.
Before Moses died, he saw mud, fire, venom, and souls held by the limbs that sinned. Gehinnom had a terrible order beneath mercy.
A guardian angel sees the eye-covered Angel of Death arrive, and five angels descend into the grave to collect the Torah a dead man never lived.
Driven out as a bastard, Jephthah won Israel and lost his daughter to a vow, and his scattered body climbed toward the company of heaven.
David repeated Absalom's name in grief, and the midrash counts each cry as one door opened in Gehinnom for his lost son.
Psalm 145 praises God through the alphabet, but David left out Nun, the letter the sages heard as falling, and answered it anyway.
At the feast in Paradise, every righteous giant refuses the blessing cup until David lifts it and brings even Gehinnom to answer.
Saul banned necromancy, then broke his own law. What rose at Endor was not a ghost but a prophet still in service.
Seven fiery chambers where lions eat the dead and begin again, traitor-kings warden the nations, and scorpions with countless mouths lash the prostrate.
After his fiery ascent, Elijah took on two tasks at once: recording every human deed until the end of days, and guiding souls through the gates of paradise.
The rabbis could not place Solomon in paradise or Gehinnom. They placed him at the gate between them, which is where he had always lived.
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi descended through all seven chambers of Gehinnom and returned. Solomon never went himself, but he sent his workforce there instead.
Moshe walks Gehinnom where worms five hundred parasangs long withhold death, then rises to Rigyon, the carbuncle gates, and the couch where the Messiah waits.
Isaiah asked God to show him Gehinnom. God showed him five chambers, each punishment fitted exactly to the sin. Pharaoh sat at the gate of the last one.
God carried a prophet to a valley full of sun-bleached bones, asked whether they could live, and waited for the answer before giving one of his own.
Inside the fish, two lamps lit the dark and a pearl hung from the ceiling so Jonah could see every wonder in the deep.
Psalm 88 ends in darkness with no rescue. The rabbis heard Israel's whole voice in that pit, and found God's answer waiting inside the prayer itself.
At Eden's feast, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua all refused the cup of blessing. Only David knew how to lift it.
At Gehinnom, two walls of angels cry Give, while souls pass through fire, snow, darkness, confession, and remembered deeds.
Two scribes write every name over a place in fire and in the garden before the soul is judged, and the verdict only decides which room you keep.
Ezra cannot sleep in Babylon and demands to know why Israel suffers. Uriel takes him back before creation to show how the ending was always built in.
The prophet appeared to Rabbi Joshua on the road and offered him two tours no living person had seen: Gehinnom and the gates of the world to come.
Granted one final wish by Heaven, Joshua ben Levi asked to see his place in Eden, then took the angel's knife and leaped over the wall alive.
Rabbinic legend describes a city outside the Angel of Death's jurisdiction, built where Jacob slept, guarded by a bone that cannot be destroyed.
At the gates of Gehinnom, two angel bands call out a single word forever, and beyond them lie seven named compartments of fire, scorpions, and venom.
Before converting, the Roman nobleman Onkelos summoned Titus, Balaam, and other enemies from the dead to ask what nation is honored in the world to come.
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi asked who would sit beside him in the World to Come, and the answer was a butcher who cared for his aging parents.
Shabbat stops punishment in Gehinnom, leads the pious to mountains of snow, and proves that holiness reaches even the depths of judgment.
When the Angel of Death comes to escort Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, the rabbi borrows the sword, asks to see Eden, and refuses to come back.
A blind man and a lame man steal figs together, then each blames the other. God listens to both excuses and reunites them for judgment.
