518 myths · Page 13 of 18
On Moriah the ministering angels broke into weeping above the bound boy, and their tears dropped into Isaac's eyes and stayed there for life.
Manoah pressed a messenger for his name, and the answer was that he changes shape every hour and cannot be called anything at all.
Abraham rode against four kings with too few men, so the sages named who fought in the dark beside him, an angel called Night.
An angel carries each unborn soul through heaven by day, then lets it go down into labor, into affliction, into the long accounting.
A barred city, a stranger with a naked blade, and the night Joshua learned who was truly commanding the war for the Land.
Ridya stands the size of a young ox, his lower lip split open, hooves resting on nothing. Rabbah swore he watched him tell the sky to drip its water down.
Potiphar's daughter mocks the slave Joseph, then sees him from her tower and falls. Seven days in ash, an angel, and paradise honey remake her.
Bethuel laid poison for Abraham's servant, but an unseen angel turned the deadly cup so the host drank his own death before dawn.
Tobias went looking for a road guide to distant Media and hired a traveler named Azariah, never guessing the man was an angel.
An idol, a furnace, and seven men who would not bow, until heaven sent the lord over fire to turn the tyrant's flames back on his own servants.
An angel digs through the dark for everything the world drops, while a sage walks out of Jerusalem each week to gather the lost souls.
Jerusalem's guardian angels boasted of walls of water, fire, and iron. Then heaven turned their offices, and their old names answered no one.
Fleeing Esau, Jacob pillows his head on the stones of Moriah, and the angels race up the ladder to match his sleeping face against the Throne.
Adam named every pair that passed him and found no match. Above his head the two highest ranks of angels were already keeping still.
Jacob sat in the dust with Esau behind him and no prayer left. The presence that had ridden his life went out, and the road became only a road.
Abraham protested he had no army. The angel Gabriel set him on a shoulder, set him at Babylon's gate, and watched him shake a king's throne barehanded.
He ferried sheep that would not thin. A finger touched the earth, fire boiled up from the bank, and Jacob told the stranger he was not afraid.
After the curse, Adam feared eating from the same manger as cattle. Heaven gave him bread, a book of secrets, and the first craft of writing.
Before Esau's four hundred, Jacob prayed, sent gifts, and readied for war. He cited a future Torah law so God would not kill mothers with sons.
Promised all of Canaan, Abraham still stood in Hebron as a stranger and paid for Sarah's tomb, then refused to bless Isaac lest jealousy crack the house.
For fifty-two years the mountains quaked over Sodom as a call to return. When the city refused, the same heaven that sends manna poured fire instead.
Seven grooms had married Sarah and died before morning. On the eighth night her father sent a maid to look. She found them asleep.
At midnight God arrived with ninety million angels of destruction. He held them back and struck Egypt Himself, from firstborn sons to the oldest in each house.
Nebuchadnezzar had victories stacked like bricks and Jerusalem still gnawed at him. When he finally came, the walls held for three years.
Hands beat Lot's door and asked for the strangers. He stuffed them into a roof beam. In the morning one finger turned the city.
Sarah heard the birth-word from the tent. That messenger left. Two others still had to drag Lot out and turn the plain at evening.
A king told his quarrelsome wife to make herself a royal robe. She sewed for months and never once picked a fight. Then he looked at it and said woe.
God measured the earth before Sinai. Nations refused, Israel accepted, and only the living received laws of food and a call to be holy.
She put the dish in his hands and stepped back. Goat skins were tied to his arms. Then the old man said, "Come near, that I may feel you."
Moses comes down blazing and does not know it. Glory clings from the cave, from the gap between hands on the tablets, and from leftover ink on the pen.
