376 myths · Page 11 of 13
Smoke came off the Temple courts. Gold vessels went out on carts and the survivors walked east in chains. The month was Av, which sits under Leo.
Before creation, roles were cast. Ahashverosh would sell. Haman would buy. The first word of Esther already groans vai, woe that this king reigned at all.
Four men received portents. Jacob and Moses missed theirs. David and Mordecai felt theirs. Mordecai paces the harem courtyard, waiting for the blow.
Three times the nation sought safety in Egypt and three times the refuge collapsed. The Mekhilta reads the pattern as a silly dove flying straight into the net.
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.
Below the city, in the Valley of ben Hinom, a hollow idol stood behind seven partitions. Fine flour opened one. Birds two. A child opened the seventh.
A son laughed at a raven's prophecy, his father threw him overboard, and years later the same boy judged ravens for a king.
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 reached for the boy's head and stopped. Down that bloodline he had just watched a man walk into the burning Temple and take 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.
A servant invited the wrong man to a banquet, pride expelled him, and the road from that door ran straight to the burning city.
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.
A king lifted his weeping son from knees to arms to shoulders, then cast him down at once. So the splendor of Israel fell from heaven to earth.
An emperor and a king vowed their unborn children would marry, then forgot. The children found each other anyway, and pride set death as the bride-price.
A crowd once mobbed a bear hung with jewels. One man in the street watched her teeth instead. Joseph did the same thing, and it cost him his coat.
Under a ban on Torah, circumcision, and Sabbath, sages cried in the streets at night. The edicts fell, while other ages still tasted God as a near enemy.
