157 myths · Page 1 of 6
The great deluge, the building of the ark, the raven and the dove, and the covenant of the rainbow that followed.
157 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines flood, 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.
Seven hundred thousand people beat on the ark's door and drowned in the rain. One giant was already on the roof, fed through a hole in the pitch.
A drunk old man slurs a curse over his grandson Canaan. Generations later, the prophet Joel finally lets those words land.
Three advisors stood before Pharaoh. One fled, one stayed silent, and Balaam found the loophole that drowned Hebrew babies in the Nile.
God warned them that the pull toward their own desire would rise in them too, down there in bodies. They went anyway. Azazel crafted the paint and the gold.
When Noah divided the world between his three sons, Japheth's blessing surprised everyone, his beauty would lead him into the academies of Shem.
Enoch had seen the ten heavens and the face of God. Now he had one month back home with his family, and then an angel would come to take him for good.
Noah lay uncovered in his tent. Ham laughed and called his brothers. Shem lifted a cloak and walked in backward, his face turned away.
Noah could have boarded the ark in the dark. God set him on the gangplank at the noon hour instead, daring the crowd to swing their axes.
The flood that drowned the world tore a vine loose from the garden of Eden and carried it downstream, straight into Noah's waiting hands.
The sages gave God a daily schedule, but after the Temple burned, the last hours no longer belonged to play with Leviathan.
Before Noah, wheat could produce oats and the ground resisted human hands. His birth restored order to the soil before the Flood.
Most people know how the flood ended. Almost no one knows what Noah did next, he drew lots to divide the entire world among his three sons and wrote it down.
Enoch told them every morning to turn around and go home. Some did. On the eighth day the kings sent men out to count the ones who had stayed.
The dove returned to Noah with a torn olive leaf, proof that somewhere beyond the flood a living world had refused to drown.
The dove came back the first time with an olive leaf in its beak. Noah waited seven more days and sent it out again. It did not return.
Moses arrived at Eden's gate with his face still shining, and Adam was waiting at the threshold with a claim no mortal had ever answered.
Noah had built the ark. God had the animals covered. Each species arrived with its own angel and a year of food already loaded.
After Abel died, Seth was born into a wounded house and raised a line that carved its wisdom into stone before the Flood.
A prophet came in from the harvest with a dish of food for the reapers. An angel took him by a lock of hair and put him down in Babylon, in the pit.
The flood ended, but Noah would not open the ark until God swore. On dry ground, his grief turned into an accusation against heaven.
Noah delayed marriage until God commanded him. He did not want children born under a flood decree, but survival carried its own grief.
Noah carried Raziel's sapphire book into the ark, where its hidden light marked night and day until the waters finally fell.
The dove brought green from Jerusalem, but Noah would not leave the ark until God swore that the Flood would not return.
Noah planted a vineyard and Ha-Satan, the Accuser, claimed a share. Blood of lamb, lion, pig, and monkey fed the soil as stages of drunkenness.
The angels showed Enoch the rule of the sun and he wrote it down. He did not hand the record to his son. He buried it in the earth before the flood came.
After a year on the water, Noah's first act on dry ground was to build an altar. Before shelter, before planting, before anything else, he made atonement.
After killing Abel, Cain built a walled city, dug trenches around it, and named it for his son. The mark of God did not make him feel safe.
At Babel, a fallen brick was mourned for a year while a fallen worker was ignored. Then the builders shot arrows at heaven and saw blood on the tips.
Cain built cities and survived the mark, but the count ran to seven generations. His blind descendant Lamech shot him in the dark, mistaking him for an animal.
Seth's descendants learned fire and flood were coming. They carved their star charts on two pillars, one brick for the fire, one stone for the water.
