41 myths · Page 2 of 2
By nightfall Sarah was lying face down on the floor of Pharaoh's house, and an angel stood over the king with a whip, waiting for her to say the word.
Over Sarah's body Abraham calls himself stranger and resident at once. He buys Machpelah for full silver, and four couples will sleep folded in its stone.
Joseph waits outside Pharaoh's court in mourning, then leads Egypt's elders to Hebron while children stay in Goshen and Abraham's cave deed holds the claim.
Until forty, Akiva could not read a single letter. He tended flocks. Then he found a stranger's body in a field, unclaimed, with birds already at work.
Sarah dies at one hundred twenty-seven years. Abraham refuses free tombs, weighs four hundred shekels, and buys a cave that will hold his line forever.
After stoning, the body hung only while daylight still saw it. Leave it overnight, the sages warned, and the Name itself would be cursed in the street again.
The poor farmer walked down the mountain with juice still on his fingers and nothing else. The rich man's gold basket clicked against his belt.
A Nazirite under vow finds a corpse with no kin. He may not touch the dead for father or mother, yet he must become impure for the unburied stranger.
On his deathbed Jacob forced his body upright for Joseph the viceroy, begged the holy spirit for the blessing, and bound his bones to Machpelah.
Feeling death draw near, Jacob binds Joseph by oath to carry him home to Canaan, and armed kings who came to raid his funeral leave their crowns on his coffin.
A day had become the shadow of a bird crossing a field. At a hundred forty-seven, Jacob asked Joseph for one thing. Do not bury me in Egypt.
