17 myths
The war of Gog and Magog, the Day of Judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and the dawn of the world to come.
17 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.
Terah told the king it was Haran who had advised the swap. It was a lie to save himself, and it put his own son in front of the fire.
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 hit the back of the column first, where the old and the footsore walked. Moses passed over every fighting man and called one young man from Ephraim.
He once prayed so long his Hasidim drifted out one by one. The last man let the door slam behind him, and the ladder of letters collapsed.
An unclean bird landed on the split carcasses and told Abraham to run before the fire took him. He stayed, and learned how long the age had left.
Noah lay uncovered in his tent. Ham laughed and called his brothers. Shem lifted a cloak and walked in backward, his face turned away.
The angel gave him three jobs instead of an answer. Weigh the weight of fire. Measure out a measure of wind. Call back the day that is past.
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.
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 Roman counselor found a way to repeal every decree against the Jews without losing face. He argued that the Sabbath would keep them poor.
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.
Sennacherib marched on Jerusalem with millions of soldiers. His first division drank the Jordan dry. Jerusalem still did not fall.
Rabbi Ishmael ascended through the heavenly palaces and descended with a prophecy about Rome, war, and what comes after the last empire falls.
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.
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 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.
