31 myths · Page 1 of 2
The seventy-two names of God, the ineffable Name, and the power that resides in the letters of divine speech.
31 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines divine names, 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.
Fiery serpents tore through the camp, so Moses raised a bronze serpent on a pole and told the bitten to lift their eyes and live.
Jehoiakim fed Jeremiah's scroll to the winter fire, column by column, but God sent Baruch back to write the words again.
The Book of Jasher records what Cain and Abel argued about before the murder. The Tikkunei Zohar says when Abel died, letters were removed from God's own name.
God spoke the names of Isaac, Solomon, and Josiah into the air before any of the three had been conceived, and each name held.
The angel moved from the front of the camp to the rear, set itself between Israel and Pharaoh's chariots, and a different Name rode with it.
Rabbi Elijah of Chelm shaped a man from clay and wrote truth on his forehead. The golem kept growing until Rabbi Elijah had to get close enough to stop it.
Rabbi Tarfon leaned close during the Temple blessing and heard the divine Name hidden inside the priests' chant, guarded by many voices.
The ministering angels were one breath from crying Holy over the new man, using the word kept for God alone. God put Adam to sleep in front of them.
Before the first wall fell, Joshua sent every nation a letter with three choices. One nation left. The others forced his arm into the sky.
Israel marched out of Egypt as an army and put on the Name of God at Sinai. Six hundred thousand angels came back one night to take it off them.
Before Adam breathed, the Torah warned God about anger and sin. Then God hid Yod and Heh inside human fire until blame split the garden open.
Inside the sanctuary the priest said the four-letter Name out loud. Anywhere else he said a substitute. Korah stood in the camp and watched Aaron do it.
Elisha's most gifted disciple inscribed the Divine Name on golden calves and made them utter the words of Sinai. Nothing after that could be undone.
Zedekiah dug a tunnel from Jerusalem to Jericho. God sent a deer, soldiers gave chase, and it led them straight to the exit as the king emerged.
Nebuchadnezzar built a golden idol that could speak the divine Name, using the High Priest's stolen diadem. Daniel dismantled the illusion by asking to kiss it.
Vashti would not walk into a hall where Daniel stood. He had read her father's ruin off a wall in Babylon, and he was not finished with her house.
Answer the prayer leader out loud in synagogue and you are keeping a rule from Moses' last poem. He calls the name. The people praise it.
A taskmaster's adultery in Egypt set off a chain two generations long. When a man cursed God before all Israel, the rabbis traced it back to that morning.
Seven palaces, seven gates, a guard at each one. Rabbi Ishmael asked which songs get you past them. Give the wrong seal and the guards kill you.
While digging the Temple foundations, David struck a shard that sealed the abyss, and when he lifted it, the waters of the deep began to rise toward the world.
A pregnant woman in medieval Europe kept a scrap of parchment in her clothes. It named Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and she wore it even into the bath.
Before the Temple was built, a stone already held the abyss under Zion, engraved with the Name, and King David nearly lifted it and flooded the world.
When the angel Shemhazai demands her love, Istehar agrees on one condition: teach her the Name. She speaks it and rises into the sky forever.
On the seventeenth day of the fast one old man wept harder than the rest. He knew of a boy in Tiberias. Tiberias was six days away.
Joseph rises in Egypt and needs his father's arrival to silence whispers. Moses kills with the Name, Amalek attacks, and Korah opens the earth.
Peninnah came in every morning to ask whether Hannah was washing her children's faces. Hannah went into the shrine at Shiloh with a threat.
Eli watched her lips move with no sound behind them and told her to sleep off the wine. She was not drunk. She was building a case out of her own body.
A guest from another town reached to eat for hunger alone. A hand caught his wrist, gentle and firm. Hunger is invited, the host said. Haste is not.
At the bush Moses demands a name for Israel. God answers that He is called by what He does, judge or warrior or merciful, and shields the camp from future pain.
When the calf rose in the camp, Moses darkened like a blind man. Angels closed in to kill him, and God opened a crack beneath the throne.
