7 myths
Myths, legends, and mystical writings about Arrogance from across Jewish tradition.
7 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines arrogance, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
Sodom had judges, courts, and laws built to punish kindness toward strangers and reward their suffering. Cruelty was the civic code, not the exception.
Titus defiled the Holy of Holies, stabbed the curtain, and sailed home victorious, but God sent a gnat into his nose that gnawed at his brain for thirty years.
A brick fell off the tower and the whole work line sat down and wept. A man fell the same morning and nobody turned his head.
The builders of Shinar counted years to the next flood and raised pillars to prop heaven. An east wind scattered them the way it once drowned worlds.
The tongue that refused to know the Lord later begged for flight, and the same mouth that cursed itself taught Israel how to bless.
The Assyrian king drinks the water of strangers and counts his hosts, then an angel answers with a body count of one hundred eighty-five thousand.
Haman tallied kinship, nations, and the hidden queen. Every line of his ledger said the Jews would fall. Esther kept her secret until his math burned.
