339 myths · Page 1 of 12
Moses' hands went slack at the tent door. Zimri dragged Kozbi past the elders by the hair, and twenty-four thousand were already dying.
At Sinai, Israel said na'aseh v'nishma, doing before hearing, and heaven answered with crowns, terror, and a mountain overhead.
The first word emptied them. Angels pushed the bodies twelve mil back to the mountain. Dew had to fall before they could hear the second.
Orpah kissed her and took the road back to Moab. Ruth's hands stayed on the older woman's sleeve. Neither of them was carrying bread.
A razor moves toward Samson's hair in Delilah's room, and what falls is not a hairstyle but the visible edge of a vow set on him before birth.
The priests carry the Ark to the flooded Jordan and stop at the edge. The river will not part until their feet touch the water first.
Seven nations shut themselves inside Jericho because whoever held it held the country. Israel walked around it for six days and said nothing.
Jericho fell without a siege, so its spoils were sacred. One man decided otherwise, buried them in his tent floor, and thirty-six men died at Ai.
He was threshing wheat in a winepress so Midian would not smell the food. That is where the angel found him and called him a mighty warrior.
Samson tore the lion apart and told no one. Months later he scooped honey from the ribs and let his parents eat it in ignorance.
Sheilah put her case to every sage in Israel and not one could answer her. God said afterward that he had shut their mouths himself.
Barak would not face nine hundred iron chariots unless Deborah came with him. She came, and a hailstorm sank the chariots in the Kishon mud.
Samuel heard his name in the sanctuary night and ran to Eli three times before the old priest taught him how to answer God.
David chose five stones at the brook, but the midrash makes the whole created world hurry into his hand before Goliath fell.
No one ever saw a handsbreadth of palm or heel uncovered on a king of Saul's line, Michal told him. David answered with the word she had chosen.
The oxen dropped. Uzzah's hand met the chest. David stopped the music, and the road took a new name from the man who tried to save it.
Three times the old prophet told him to stay behind. Elisha swore he would not leave, and then fire came down between their feet.
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.
A prophet in the court of the guard weighed out silver for farmland he would never plow. Outside the wall, Babylon was building its ramps.
Jehoiakim sat in the winter house and fed Jeremiah's columns to the brazier. Three officials begged him to stop. No one in the room tore his clothes.
The innermost room was not empty. Two gold children held each other over the Ark, and the men who broke in hauled that closeness into the street.
Job's children were still at the table when the court opened above him. The Accuser asked for the wall around the man. God said the body was off limits.
Job had a case ready in the ashes. The storm did not open a file. It asked where he had stood when the morning stars sang together.
Three kings saw his face go dark in the gold on their heads. They rode to Uz. For seven days they did the one holy thing they would do.
The emperor asked what the Torah does to a man who sells his brother. The scholars named death. Then he asked which generation still owed that death.
Jeremiah found the Temple daughters thrown from Chaldean chariots. God walked the burned house and asked where His priests had gone.
Sennacherib's letter named the gods of every city he had burned. Hezekiah spread the scroll on the Temple floor and asked God to look at it.
Darius sealed the pit with his own ring and went home to a night with no food and no music. In Judea, a prophet was carrying lunch out to his workers.
The tablets God gave Moses were sapphire, the letters cut all the way through, the writing readable from both sides without mirror reversal.
In Deuteronomy's 98 curses, Moses trembled as he spoke. Synagogues still whisper them. The curses were aimed at Israel, not enemies.
