11 myths
Myths, legends, and mystical writings about Envy from across Jewish tradition.
11 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines envy, 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.
When God commanded the angels to honor the newly made Adam, Satanael refused to bow before dust, and his refusal drove him toward Eden.
The Torah says Rachel envied her sister. The rabbis say she was not jealous of babies. She was jealous of the virtue she believed caused them.
Simeon confessed at one hundred and twenty years that he had wanted Joseph dead. He had hated him since the pit, and his deathbed speech names the shame.
The conflict between Joseph and his brothers was never about a coat. It was about two mothers, two marriages, and which one Jacob loved.
On his deathbed, Simeon confessed he had planned Joseph's murder in his heart and traced the same spirit back through Cain to the first morning of the world.
On his deathbed, Simeon traced every act of tribal violence back to the hatred he felt whenever Joseph had more than he did.
On his deathbed at one hundred and twenty, Simeon told his sons the truth about Joseph and described what envy feels like when it takes hold of a man.
On his deathbed, the patriarch Simeon gathered his children and named the force that had once brought him to the edge of fratricide: not hatred, but envy.
David rides toward Nabal with four hundred men and blood in mind, and Abigail rides toward him with bread and the truth about burning candles.
Haman had the king's ring, a signed decree, and ten sons. Every person in the empire bowed when he passed. Except the man at the gate.
Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai floods a valley with gold to answer disciples who envy a classmate grown rich, and names the price of a portion above.
