22 myths
The war of Gog and Magog, the Day of Judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and the dawn of the world to come.
22 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines end times, 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.
Noah lay uncovered in his tent. Ham laughed and called his brothers. Shem lifted a cloak and walked in backward, his face turned away.
On his deathbed Jacob blessed Dan and saw Samson fighting alone, and for one breath he believed the Messiah had finally come to Israel.
Amalek was at the camp's edge, and Moses passed over every warrior to find one Ephraimite, because only Joseph's line could strike Esau while Rachel wept.
Psalm 118 sees nations circling Jerusalem three times, Judah taken captive, and God waiting until the last hour before a wall of fire rises around the city.
Pharaoh's army sank like lead into the sea. The same water still waits, holding its breath for the armies of Gog at the end of days.
At the sea the nations confessed God for one shaking heartbeat, then went home to their idols. One day they will throw those idols into the clefts of rock.
Numbers commands trumpet blasts before battle. Rabbi Akiva heard in those blasts one specific war: the war of Gog and Magog that ends all wars.
Rabbi Ishmael ascended through the heavenly palaces and descended with a prophecy about Rome, war, and what comes after the last empire falls.
God lifts the curtain on the last age for Abraham showing ten plagues, a trumpet blast, and one figure descending with all the divine power in a single measure.
Sennacherib marched on Jerusalem with millions of soldiers. His first division drank the Jordan dry. Jerusalem still did not fall.
Moses sang about divine arrows drunk with blood on the edge of Canaan. Six centuries later, Ezekiel announced that the day Moses described had finally arrived.
Nimrod lit a furnace in Casdim and nine hundred thousand came to watch Abram burn. The grasshopper climbed the trellis. Then it fell.
Esau waits for his father to die. Pharaoh counts a swarming people. Haman seals a letter to kill every Jew in one day. Each plot is smarter. Each fails.
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.
Ezra cannot sleep in Babylon and demands to know why Israel suffers. Uriel takes him back before creation to show how the ending was always built in.
Thirty years after Babylon burned Jerusalem, Ezra could not sleep. He put God on trial, demanded an answer, and the angel who responded refused to give him one.
Fasting in a field, Ezra sees a mourning woman become a city of light, an eagle devour the earth, then a man rising from the sea's deepest heart.
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai needed Rome to rescind its decrees against Israel. His ally was Ashmedai, king of the demons.
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi finds the Messiah at Rome's gate and hears him say today. He returns to Elijah and discovers the word had a condition attached.
God burned the angels who doubted man, then folded a pure light beneath His Throne for the Messiah and a star to time the end.
The Baal Shem Tov climbs through the heavens on Rosh Hashana, enters the Messiah palace, and asks when he will come. The answer destroys his certainty.
Rabbi Ishmael seated the Sanhedrin at the Temple gate and laid out fifteen signs, three wars, and a figure emerging from Edom in crimson garments.
