518 myths · Page 11 of 18
Pharaoh asked how many cities God had conquered; Moses forgot the menorah (the lampstand) three times; and the brass altar stood in constant fire without ever.
She threw her idols from the tower window. On the eighth morning a man like Joseph put honeycomb from Paradise on her tongue.
Pharaoh mocks the messenger God sent him. Shemot Rabbah says that insult forced God to enter Egypt personally rather than let His emissary be disgraced.
Moses sees fire in a thornbush that does not consume the branches. Shemot Rabbah hears God choosing to stand inside Israel's suffering before speaking.
Israel at the sea begs God to speak close enough for song. Shir HaShirim Rabbah reads the Song's first verse as the moment thunder became tenderness.
At Horeb the people were armed, and the Name was cut into the weapon. After the golden calf an angel came down and peeled it off the metal.
Esau ran at his brother with his mouth open like a man biting bread. Jacob's neck turned to marble. Esau's teeth broke on it, and the two of them wept.
The Temple falls by human hands. The Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, argues for the poor, descends into exile, and waits for a house built from above.
Jacob flees east from Esau, sleeps on the bare ground, and finds the place where a ladder connects earth to heaven in his own dream.
God dictated the words let us make man, and Moses stopped writing. Heretics will read that and claim there are two powers, he said.
Doeg the Edomite told King Saul nothing but true things about the priest at Nob. Eighty five priests died for it, and so did Saul, and so did Doeg.
A moon punished and promised future glory, a wrestling match with an angel, a scandal that turned out to be a divine appointment. Heaven was running traffic.
Adam was the ideal man, towering and luminous. He lost it all to one mistranslated fence, and the Garden has been collecting the pieces ever since.
Eve prayed for Adam. Michael wept for Abraham. Hanamel conjured a heavenly army. Three petitions reached the throne, and only two came back answered.
Jacob held the wrestler until the sky paled. He wanted a name in return. The angel reached for one and found the mission already gone.
Students found one letter changed in Rabbi Meir's scroll. Very good had become good is death. The rabbis argued the limits of creation were its real structure.
The men of Sodom had Lot's door in their hands. At dawn, inside the house, a guest said we are destroying this place.
Strangers walked into a tent in Haran and walked out as different people. Later a scribe turned a verse around so nobody would see God waiting.
Adam was nine hundred and thirty years old and dying. He asked what came next. God sent Michael to say the dew that wakes the dead was already stored.
Moses asked the Angel of the Face to pray that he not die. The angel had been standing behind the curtain. He already knew the answer.
Seraphim cover their faces before the throne. Moses asked to see the glory itself. The court of angels stood ready to kill him.
Ashmedai had worked under Solomon's orders while the Temple went up. Then the king sinned, and the demon put him off his own throne.
He had asked if she was free. Every mouth in the caravan said sister. God still named him a dead man in his own bed.
Tobiyyah offers the man who guided him home half the silver he carried, and the man refuses, then names himself one of the seven.
Michael and Gabriel served as witnesses when Esau sold the birthright, then Michael carried Levi to the Throne before Jacob sent him as tribute to his brother.
When the angels rose to sing as the Egyptians drowned, God stopped them with a sentence that cut through triumph and made mercy part of the judgment.
Rabbi Abdimi counted the angels who came down with God at the mountain. Every one of their chariots looked like the one Ezekiel saw by the river.
God gave the shepherd a fire that ate nothing, so the mountain would not frighten him. At the last threshold two angels had to carry him in.
Sodom burned people for putting bread into a beggar's hand. Lot fed two strangers anyway, after dark, and then his wife refused them salt.
The angel who jumped Jacob in the dark had not come to test his character. He had come about an unpaid debt, and he wanted it settled by morning.
