486 myths · Page 5 of 17
Moses had come to Midian as a fugitive. Jethro took him in, Zipporah married him, his sons were born there. He would not throw a stone into that well.
Pharaoh warned Josiah to step aside and let the Egyptian army pass. Josiah quoted Moses and refused. He was struck by three hundred arrows before nightfall.
Pharaoh's fleet was sailing north to break the siege. Then God filled the water with drowned Egyptian ancestors, and the fleet turned back.
Haman told the king's advisors the God who split the sea was senile now. His evidence was the ruins of the Temple and the silence of heaven.
The firstborn was in the room. So was the son who would be king. Jacob sent for neither of them, because neither one could get a body past the border.
A Polish scholar compared his battle to Jacob's night fight with the angel. His enemy was not Esau but men who wanted to destroy the tradition from within.
Jonah prays from the bowels of the fish. The Tikkunei Zohar hears the same prayer Israel prayed from the mud of Pharaoh's building projects.
Egypt's envoys reached the camp at Ramses and said the three days were up. The argument lasted about a minute before somebody drew.
The Torah uses a singular verb for Egypt's entire army at the sea. The Mekhilta reads it as the most unified force ever assembled, and the water opened anyway.
A stranger told Joseph where his brothers had gone. That stranger was Gabriel. The same angel stood in Pharaoh's court when Joseph needed a voice.
On the first Passover night, Israel ate and sang in their houses while Egypt screamed over the firstborn. The rabbis preserved both sounds at once.
Two officers of Pharaoh woke up frightened. Joseph looked at their faces and asked why they seemed worse this morning than on all the mornings before.
Genesis says Joseph's brothers did not recognize him in Egypt. The Aramaic tradition says Joseph spent years posting scribes at every gate to find them.
When Joseph's brothers returned with Benjamin, he prepared a feast with sinew removed from the meat and seated eleven men in exact birth order.
Moses refused to bring the plagues of blood, frogs, and lice himself. The river had once carried his basket, and he would not repay it with a rod.
A woman went into labor while she was treading mortar for Pharaoh. The child came out into the brick mold, and an angel came down for the mold.
Jacob sent Judah ahead to Egypt before the family settled. Not to scout, not to cook. To build a house of Torah study before anyone else arrived.
Three hundred mules carried only the keys to Korah's storerooms. The rabbis trace that fortune to Joseph and ask what it means when the richest man rebels.
The woman of Memphis sent Joseph a dish laced with spells. He looked up and saw a figure standing behind the servant, holding out a sword.
Jacob engraved the child's whole history on a gold plate and hung it around her neck. Then he left her at the border of Egypt for somebody else to find.
Pharaoh told Egypt he was a god who felt no human needs. Every morning he went down to the Nile alone to keep it up. One morning Moses was standing there.
Pharaoh's daughter had a Hebrew infant who would not nurse and a line of Egyptian women who had all failed. A girl was watching from a distance.
An old man hung merchants' scales in front of the throne, put every noble in Egypt in one pan and a baby goat in the other, and the goat went down.
Before his court was awake, Pharaoh went to the Nile alone. Gods do not need bathrooms. He was protecting a lie he had built his entire reign on.
Jacob had not received prophecy in twenty-two years. When the wagons arrived from Egypt carrying proof that Joseph was alive, the spirit returned in an instant.
When Judah raised his voice in Egypt demanding Benjamin's release, the rabbis said his cry shook the earth and made the angels tremble in heaven.
A well followed Israel forty years in the desert. The Talmud named whose merit sustained it. The morning after Miriam died the people found nothing to drink.
When Miriam led the women at the Red Sea, she had a tambourine ready. She packed it in Egypt while Pharaoh's army lived and the plagues were still running.
Three men were asked how to deal with the Hebrews. One gave the murderous answer, one shrugged, and one argued and left Egypt that day with a stolen staff.
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.
