20 myths
Divine retribution in Jewish tradition: the flood, Sodom, Korah's rebellion, and the consequences of defying heaven.
20 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines divine punishment, 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.
Three advisors stood before Pharaoh. One fled, one stayed silent, and Balaam found the loophole that drowned Hebrew babies in the Nile.
Korah saw Samuel shining in his bloodline and read the vision as permission. He reached for the fire-pan, and the fire reached back.
After the Tower of Babel fell, Nimrod did not repent. He built four cities and named them after what God had done to him. Then he threw children into a furnace.
The Philistines set the captured Ark beside their god Dagon. In the morning Dagon was face down on the floor in front of it, and they stood him back up.
Sodom's stones held sapphire and its dust held gold, so the city closed its roads to the wayfarer. The fire answered.
The army at the water could not agree. Some wanted the gold and no killing. Some wanted the killing and no gold. The third group wanted both at once.
A Bedouin showed a Talmudic sage the fissures where the earth swallowed Korah alive. Every thirty days Korah surfaces and cries out that Moses was right.
Bread fell, water ran from stone, and still the camp whispered against God. The answer came as fire at the wilderness edge.
Cain killed his brother with stones because no one had ever died before. Then he stood before God and said the punishment was more than God could carry.
Korah's rebellion dragged families toward a living grave, but On slept while his wife blocked the tent, held the bed, and prayed him back.
Twelve angels stood around Eve while she gave birth. The newborn did not lie there. He rose to his feet and brought his mother a stalk of straw.
On the sixth day, Behemoth rose from the earth, ate a thousand hills each day, drank from the Jordan, and waited for its appointed end.
Peletith hid bread in her water bucket and carried it to the starving man in her street. Sodom burned her for feeding him.
At Babel, a fallen brick was mourned for a year while a fallen worker was ignored. Then the builders shot arrows at heaven and saw blood on the tips.
Isaiah asked God to show him Gehinnom (afterlife of judgment). God showed him five chambers, each punishment fitted exactly to the sin. Pharaoh sat at the.
Cain built cities and survived the mark, but the count ran to seven generations. His blind descendant Lamech shot him in the dark, mistaking him for an animal.
One pair of serpents could have done all of humanity's work and dug up gold and pearls besides. Then one of them decided it wanted Adam dead.
He would not hand her the fruit until she swore by the throne of God that her husband would eat it too. Then he climbed the tree and poisoned what grew there.
Adam lay dying and sent his wife and son to the gate of Eden for oil. On the road, an animal knocked Seth down and argued with Eve.
God asked Balaam a simple question. Balaam used it to boast. The reply cost him an eye and stripped his curse of force before it began.
