124 myths · Page 2 of 5
Caleb read illness and awakening in her name. Two words in Chronicles carried the whole arc of Miriam's life into the house of David.
A chariot of fire took Elijah up alive, and he never got to rest. He writes down every deed any person does, and he walks the dead into paradise.
The drawn sword outside Jericho carried an old refusal. Moses had turned away the angel, but Joshua bowed low enough to receive him.
Shiphrah and Puah faced Pharaoh in the birth room, fed the children he wanted dead, and were repaid with priests, prophets, kings, and builders.
The meal in Paradise was over. A cup of blessing waited for a mouth that could praise after judgment. Abraham set it down.
Rain hit the roofs on the first of Nisan. The last grain was still in the sacks. Joel told the hungry to bury it in the fields.
Ahaziah sent fifty men up a hill to drag the prophet down. Fire took them. The next fifty burned the same way, still on their feet.
The angel clapped a hand over the mystic's eyes. Seven lightnings struck as one. David was coming, and the fourth heaven could not hold still.
Jacob wrestles through the night over a forgotten tithe, a stolen blessing, and an angel whose first song waited since creation.
The oxen stumbled on the road to Jerusalem. Uzzah put out a hand, and the king who had sung before angels learned what a wagon could not hold.
Two tall men stood over Enoch's bed. They put a reed in his hand in heaven, and he wrote for thirty days without stopping.
An angel pulled Enoch from seclusion to rule the earth. He taught 130 kings for 243 years. When God called him back, eight hundred thousand men watched him go.
Levi asked the angel for a name he could cry on a bad day. He woke holding a sword, and found the brass shield lying in the road.
Gabriel led Moses through Gehinnom (afterlife of judgment) first, then to Paradise, where two angels at the gate said something no living visitor had ever.
David rode out with four hundred armed men to wipe out one household. A woman met the column in the dark holding a lamp and a legal question.
He had already been called a false prophet in Jerusalem. Nineveh would repent. He would rather live on the sea than wear that name twice.
Hegai gave her seven attendants and Esther gave them names. Nobody in the palace heard anything strange in them. She was counting to the Sabbath.
Elijah never died. He was taken to heaven in a whirlwind and has moved between worlds ever since, present at every seder, every circumcision, every crossing.
Moses shaved him bald as part of a purification rite. Korah walked back through the camp and his own neighbors asked him who he was.
David hid at Adullam and decided the anointing had been a cheat. Samuel had poured oil on his head for nothing, and Saul was still coming.
Saul took off the crown and walked to Endor at night. The woman called a name she did not know, and an old man in a mantle rose.
Two frauds sentenced to burn in Babylon gave the king a third name, the high priest's, hoping his merit would put the fire out for all three of them.
A man in the Shechem field sent Joseph toward Dothan. Joseph was seventeen. Thirteen years later Pharaoh put a ring on that same hand.
When Joseph revealed himself to his brothers in Egypt, the rabbis say the matriarchs were watching from above. His rise from the pit had a celestial audience.
Moses asked his brother to step into a cave with him. Inside was a made bed, a burning lamp, a table set with food, and angels standing in attendance.
He was twenty, out with the flocks, when the sky opened and an angel told him to come in. On the road home he found the shield lying there.
If my Torah had been among the ten generations before this, God told Shem, I suppose I would not have drowned the world. Go and ask the nations.
Two sisters, two brothers, and everyone in Haran knew which went with which. Leah heard what her half of the bargain was like and started weeping.
The sun went backward for Hezekiah. The Assyrian army died overnight outside Jerusalem. God had arranged everything. Then Hezekiah failed to sing.
Agag was still breathing when the voice came down. Do not be more righteous than your Creator. Years later the same mouth ordered priests killed.
