116 myths · Page 3 of 4
In the dark years after the Flood the world forgot God, until a boy of fourteen ran at Mastema's ravens and turned the black sky back.
Wherever Abraham pitched his tent he planted one tree, and its branches rose or fell according to the soul that stood in its shade.
Abraham protested he had no army. The angel Gabriel set him on a shoulder, set him at Babylon's gate, and watched him shake a king's throne barehanded.
God sealed east, west, and south where sky meets earth, then left the north open. Any pretender claiming divinity would fail the unfinished quarter.
Ishmael was seventeen, no toddler on a hip. The bottle had run on Abraham's merit until Hagar drifted back to her father's gods. He fainted under a shrub.
Two years after the furnace, Nimrod dreamed Abraham rising from fire with a sword and an egg that drowned kings. A chick pecked out the tyrant's eye.
He sat a scoffer beside every honest man in the room and asked the pair the same four questions. The fourth one was the trap.
The first prisoner went into the cell and never came out. The second one warned them, before they took it, what would happen if they won.
Manasseh filled the Temple with a four-faced idol and chased Isaiah into a tree. They sawed the cedar until the blade reached the prophet's mouth.
God told Moses to descend as Israel unhitched an ox-face from the chariot vision. Gold for the mishkan also cast the calf, and impurity entered the camp.
A father may carry a child who has grabbed a stone and will not let go. The rabbis proved it from God carrying a people that had packed an idol.
Ishmael was fifteen when he brought the idols home to play with. Abraham was rich in cattle and silver, and sent him out with a loaf and a waterskin.
He could have climbed a rock and shouted the terms to the whole camp. The old men heard them first, and he stayed until they understood every word.
Israel had bowed to Baal Peor, and a plague killed the guilty. When the war with Midian came, soldiers blackened women's faces and took their jewelry.
While Moses stays on the mountain, the camp melts gold into thirteen calves and feeds them manna taken from God's own table.
At Bethel's illicit altar Jeroboam seized toward the man of God, and his arm dried in midair until he begged the same prophet to heal him.
On Carmel Elijah rebuilds a broken altar with twelve stones, one for each tribe. Fire falls, idolatry burns, and a prophet matches Moses step for step.
Joshua cuts Amalek's ranks below while Moses' arms fail on the hill, and Aaron and Hur hold them skyward until the enemy breaks at dusk.
Israel wants a king to judge them and fight their wars. Samuel hears idolatry under the request. Saul will rise. Thunder waits for a tree.
Men of belial cast off heaven's yoke and turn a whole town. Judges search, houses fall, and even a stolen stick must drown in the Dead Sea.
The king had a verse ready. Their own God, he said, had told them to obey the crown. They offered him his taxes and kept their knees locked.
Hezekiah hired tutors for his son. Manasseh filled Jerusalem with idols anyway, and only Assyrian hooks in his flesh made him pray.
Rabbi Chanina said Molech means anything people let rule them, even a splinter or a pebble. Idol makers switch to cheaper metal when money runs short.
Scouts return with proof of a city's idolatry, courts dig until truth holds, and fire claims the square while holy writings are hidden from the flames.
A father led his child toward the fire and named Molech. One abomination was enough. Seed, flame, and a foreign name braided into a single crime.
Nimrod stood like a green high tree over the nations until God dried him and raised the low, while Israel was told to keep no strange god inside the camp.
Isaac's eyes had failed, so he could not leave the tent. Esau's Hittite wives burned incense to their gods in the rooms around him.
Twice Balaam walked out alone to look for an omen, and twice he came back blessing. His employer had one idea left, and it was a mountain.
At Sinai the people saw sounds and lightnings unlike any storm, each voice calibrated to every heart while fire hewed words into stone before their eyes.
Gamliel mourned Akiva until the drowned man walked up the beach on one plank. A poor boy quieted another storm while merchants clutched idols that did nothing.
