376 myths · Page 11 of 13
Smoke stained the Temple courts. Gold left on carts. Survivors walked east in chains while Av kept the lion in the sky.
God wrote the seller's name before light. In Shushan the crown sat on Ahashverosh. The first word of the book already said woe.
Four men received portents. Jacob and Moses missed theirs. David and Mordecai felt theirs. Mordecai paces the harem courtyard, waiting for the blow.
Judah looked south for horses and walls. An angel emptied the Assyrian camp by morning. The next generation packed for Egypt anyway.
Two masters compared their most beautiful slaves and struck a business arrangement. Neither of them knew the boy and the girl came out of one house.
Two lepers came to the healer's door, and neither knew her. She asked each man to name the sin behind his disease before she would touch him.
He carried his peppers up into the Land of Israel and sat in the market with nothing selling. An hour later his hands were empty and his purse was not.
Rome demanded a luminary and asked about pigs. Meir answered with profit and purity, while other sages faced matronas and royal courts.
Two Jews dragged from Mount Carmel tracked a one-eyed camel by the grass it left uneaten. Their captor called them too clever for any master but God.
The viceroy asked the king for a horse and money and rode out. He found her behind a veil, then drank from a red spring and slept seventy years.
A drunk priest at a banquet said his people were kinder than the Jews. Rabbi Judah answered with a riddle about a master who stores dishes in many houses.
A tailor in Tyre asked the pepper merchant for a pinch and was refused. A tailor in Jerusalem walked him into a courtyard and bought all of it.
From the ends of the earth David turned his whole body into praise, while Israel waited for a light no borrowed lamp could keep lit.
The priest asked for a son at the gate. The father named the small one still in school, the boy who sat over a verse.
A raven landed on the gunwale and croaked. Only the son understood. His father heard mockery and called for the sea.
Accidental killers fled to cities of refuge and waited for the high priest to die. His mother brought them food so their prayers would soften.
Nations mocked Israel for waiting on a distant God. She opened the Torah like a marriage contract and found strength to refuse their offer.
Blind Isaac held his hands above the wool and would not set them down. He had just watched a man walk out of the Temple with the lampstand.
Dust rose on the road and Jacob sorted his camp by love. Maidservants and their children in front. Rachel and Joseph at the very back, farthest from Esau.
Ammon and Moab wanted one sentence gone: no Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly. Cut that line out of the scroll and the ban dies with the ink.
In the age to come every offering falls silent except thanksgiving. Meanwhile each enemy of Israel mocks the last failed plan and forgets the Patron above.
The host saw his enemy at the table and ordered him out. Bar Kamsa offered to pay for the whole feast. The rabbis sat and watched.
Zion weeps in the night while God weeps day and night. David asks how long, and the ruined city remembers her old delights.
Gabriel inked a taw on the righteous and blood on the wicked. The Accuser argued the ink-marked had failed to protest.
One friend stood under the rope for another. A horseman arrived mud-covered, and a king asked to be their third.
Nimrod left the counsel of a divided generation, quit the tower cities, and built four new ones. God gave him place for refusing the scramble of Babel.
The boy would not stop weeping, so the king lifted him higher. One mess on the royal robe, and the child hit the floor.
They swore over wine that unborn children would marry, then forgot the inn. She kept the ring. He walked toward a test that killed the unwise.
A she-bear stood in a street hung with jewels. The crowd stared at the stones. Joseph watched the teeth, and left his coat in her hand.
The king had banned Torah, circumcision, and Sabbath. Judah ben Shamua asked a matron who hosted the city's great men. Cry at night, she said.
