59 myths · Page 1 of 2
Famine and scarcity in Jewish tradition, from the seven years in Egypt to the siege of Jerusalem and the miracles that sustained Israel.
59 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines famine, 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.
The grain from Egypt ran out in Canaan. Jacob's grandchildren pulled at his robe and asked for bread, and the tears that came to him were scorching.
Joseph chained Simeon in front of his brothers, then ordered good food sent to the cell as soon as they left. The cruelty and the care were the same plan.
Benjamin was trapped, Joseph was hidden, and Judah stepped forward. The brothers had to answer for the sale they buried.
Isaac never left Canaan. He tithed when others hoarded, dug wells others filled with sand, and turned enemies into witnesses without a single battle.
Joseph prayed for the Ishmaelites hauling him into slavery. Then he trusted a butler over God and paid with two extra years in prison.
Pharaoh's throne sat atop seventy steps. A foreign prince could climb thirty-one, a petitioner three. Joseph came from the cell and climbed all seventy.
At 930, Adam called his children close as sickness entered the world. Seth offered Paradise fruit, and Eve begged to share the pain.
After seven years of famine, Joel told Israel to plant the last grain. The seed came from ant hills, and the covenant held.
Saul kept troubling Israel after death, through a famine that exposed an old royal debt and a curse David spoke by mistake.
Mastema sent ravens to strip the fields bare when Terah was born. The famine that named him shaped the world his son Abraham would one day defy.
Terah married twice in the years Mastema's ravens stripped the fields bare. The hungry world he survived was the one he passed on to Abraham.
The soup was real. So was the hunger. But Jubilees and the Midrash say Esau traded away his burial place beside the patriarchs along with his inheritance.
Joseph sent every Egyptian out before he wept. Twenty years of silence broke the moment only his brothers were left to hear it.
Clothing, Abram told the official at the border. He paid that toll, then the toll for silk, then more. Then the lock came off and light filled Egypt.
Egypt had sold him its silver, its cattle, and its fields. Then Joseph emptied its towns and moved the whole population, and his brothers never learned why.
Genesis says Joseph's brothers did not recognize him in Egypt. The Aramaic tradition says Joseph spent years posting scribes at every gate to find them.
Eikhah Rabbah follows Jerusalem's wealthy through the siege from golden baskets lowered over walls to the shame of being called impure in the nations.
Famine sent Abraham into Egypt first, and generations later Joseph reached the same land through a pit, prison, and the dreams of a foreign king.
Eikhah Rabbah faces the siege famine through children who remembered abundance, a stream that ran dry, and women who gave away their last loaf to a mourner.
Famine drove Abraham south. Border men prized open a chest of light, Pharaoh took Sarah, and leprosy answered on the fifteenth of Nisan.
Banished as a slave's son to desert pastures, David learned to feed lambs first, then stored war gold for a Temple while a famine starved his people.
Famine drove them to Egypt. At the river Abraham saw Sarah's face like the sun, locked her in a chest, and bargained tax rates until the lid was forced open.
The cup rose out of Benjamin's sack, planted the night before. Back in the hall, Manasseh stamped his foot once and the whole palace shook.
In the fat years some mocked the warehouses. In the famine they lined up. Jacob's sons went home with grain and found their silver back in every sack.
Joseph stored Egypt's grain, seized Simeon, and heaped Benjamin's plate seven times high before the silver cup closed the trap.
Legend names Cushan as Laban reborn in cruelty. Othniel restored forgotten Torah, suffered eight years of oppression, and walked into Paradise alive.
No slaves through the border. Nobody entering with two donkeys. Every traveler documenting his lineage. The rules were written to make ten men walk in.
Ten grown sons hung back from the road to Egypt. Their father hoped past the bloody coat, then sent them off with the name of the God who says Enough.
Two widows walked the same road out of Moab. One turned back after four miles and four tears. Goliath was the payment for those four miles.
Simeon sat in an Egyptian cell. Benjamin clung to Jacob's sleeve. Hunger pressed the house until Judah forced the choice.
