17 myths
Leviathan, Behemoth, the Ziz, and the mythological creatures that inhabit the margins of Jewish cosmology.
17 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines creatures, 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.
Seven hundred thousand people beat on the ark's door and drowned in the rain. One giant was already on the roof, fed through a hole in the pitch.
Rebecca's pregnancy became a battlefield before Jacob and Esau were born, forcing her to seek God's answer in the house of Shem.
A beast sprawls across a thousand hills, drinks a river that circles the earth, and roars once a year in Tammuz to silence every animal alive.
Sailors saw a bird standing in the sea with water only to its ankles and thought they could swim. A voice from heaven knew better about the Ziz.
God made the sea from fire and water, then set one tiny fish over Leviathan so creation would not drown beneath its own power.
David never caught the deer. He looked up in unfamiliar country, and a Philistine giant had recognized his face. Ishbi-Benob pinned him under a winepress.
Inside the fish, Jonah had light, space, and no urgency. He sat there for three days without praying once, until God sent a pregnant fish to change his mind.
Nebuchadnezzar presented Daniel with a living dragon the court worshipped. Daniel asked to approach it without a sword and fed it straw packed with nails.
Rabbi Loew built a clay guardian to defend Prague's Jews from blood libel violence. When the emperor promised protection, the Golem's work was done.
Solomon used a ring inscribed with God's name to call every beast, bird, and demon to his table. Every creature came dancing. Then one did not appear.
A wasp was eating a spider in the garden and a fool was swinging a stick at both. David asked God what any of the three were good for.
The hill had no flowers and no rocks, and the tree at its summit was made of horn. David sat down at its foot to see what would happen.
A poor man obeyed his dying father and bought a sealed casket, then fed a frog that grew into a teacher of Torah and all seventy human tongues.
Eve fed the fruit to Adam, then to every animal and bird in the garden, so she would not die alone. One bird kept its beak shut.
A traveler heard his host tell his wife to serve their man for dinner, and went out the door at a run. Nobody in that house ate people.
On the Ark, Noah sewed a cat-torn mouse back together with a hair and thread, then sentenced the lying raven to a stranger fate than death.
On the second day of creation the sky trembled like fresh milk in a bowl, waiting. One divine word dropped in and the whole expanse seized and stood.
