485 myths · Page 11 of 17
While Greeks piled disagreeing volumes, Israel kept twenty-two sacred books, and Egypt and Babylon trusted priests with their annals.
Ten hungry men bowed to the viceroy, blind to who he was. Asked what they would do if a master kept their brother, they said they would kill the master.
At the hairsbreadth of midnight, no angel takes the blow. God walks Egypt alone while firstborn fall and blood marks the doors.
At the sea, fire burns chariot wheels while heavy labor returns on Egypt; clouds of glory still shelter the people who walk free.
After the sea splits, the land and the water fight over Egyptian corpses, each refusing burial until God swears by His right hand.
Ten brothers bowed for bread and did not know the face above the throne. Joseph let them speak Hebrew. He did not smile.
While Israel grabbed Egyptian gold, Moses spent three days hunting Joseph's sunken coffin until Serah bat Asher led him to the river's secret.
The king of Sodom pushed the goods across the dust. Abraham would not take a strap that would let that king claim him.
He sold a country-seat he had never walked. The buyer dug and pulled gold and pearls from the dirt. On the shore Egypt began to choke.
Jacob blesses Joseph's firm bow after Potiphar's house, and Egypt stays soft only while Joseph lives, then hardens into slavery.
Pinned between Pharaoh's chariots and the Reed Sea, Israel flings Egyptian idols into the sand, then Moses is told only to go forward.
On the night of the tenth plague, Israel carves blood into the threshold while neighbors keep twelve months of silence and trust.
On the tenth plague night, clay images of dead sons crumbled to powder and house-dogs dragged old bones into the courtyards of Egypt.
On the fourteenth, between the evenings, Israel slaughters the lamb in the Temple courts or is cut off for missing the fixed season.
The cattle walked empty. Households swung wet dough onto their own backs. Egypt's gods left with them as lumps of metal.
Hatred makes a king his own stable hand, six hundred chariots rise from Egyptians who once feared hail, and at the sea Israel splits into four panicked plans.
The king of Israel wanted them dead and asked the prophet for permission. Elisha said no and set out bread and water for the men sent to bind him.
The king who once sneered at the Lord hands over flocks and gold, then asks the people he whipped to bless him before they go.
Brothers meet in the wilderness. Aaron asks why Moses is bringing a wife and sons into Pharaoh's fire, and the family turns around.
Joshua cuts Amalek's ranks below while Moses' arms fail on the hill, and Aaron and Hur hold them skyward until the enemy breaks at dusk.
Israel took three days to reach the shore. Pharaoh burned that same road into one day of rage. At the sea the water was already waiting.
Chariots at their backs, the people turn on Moses. Death in the open desert, they cry, is worse than bondage with a proper burial.
In the study hall Serah bat Asher corrects the sages. The sea walls were mirrors of all Israel. Earth and sea then fight over Egypts drowned host.
Grain filled Joseph's storehouses. On the bed in Goshen, Jacob watched roads of exile his grandsons would never walk. He did not tell them.
Young men oiled spearheads and waited for a war they could see. Moses wanted them angry at the trap that had already entered the camp.
Joseph held the foundation of life-force in Egypt while a great fish of decrees closed its jaw, and prophecy poured into him from sun, moon, and stars.
A servant picks the lightest penalty for a rotten fish and still pays all three. Pharaoh bargained the same way through every plague in Egypt.
Moses told Pharaoh the last plague would make him shove Israel out. At midnight the king hunted the brothers through the dark himself.
While sages hunted the missing seventieth soul, Serach of Asher sang Joseph living to Jacob and was carried into Eden alive.
Reuben sat in sackcloth on a hill, saving his own soul. Below him Joseph waited in the pit for a rope that never came.
