480 myths · Page 5 of 16
Rachel died in the night on the road to Bethlehem. She named the boy Ben Oni with her last breath. Jacob renamed him and built a pillar over her grave.
Jubilees counts every soul who descended with Jacob into Egypt. Seventy names, twelve tribes, one family mirroring the whole human world.
Jacob slept on a stone with Esau's threat behind him. The thing in the dream was gold, sixty cubits high, and three men would not bow.
Seven Canaanite kings ringed the camp at Shechem. Jashub rode in iron, shooting from both hands. Judah ran at him first.
Gad pulled a lamb out of a bear's mouth and had to put it down. Joseph went home and told their father the handmaids' sons were eating the herd.
In the year Joseph was sold, Jacob was too broken to arrange marriages. His sons had to find their own wives in grief's shadow.
Joseph fell on his father's neck and wept. Jacob did not kiss him. He was in the middle of the Shema and he would not stop.
No other woman had suffered what Rebekah suffered. She climbs to the oldest living man she can find and demands to know what is inside her.
Esau was born with hair, teeth, and a serpent mark on his body. The signs on his skin read like a verdict before he had made a single choice.
After Isaac blessed Jacob with stolen goatskins, Rebekah laid her hands on Jacob and spoke a second blessing. The holy spirit finished it for her.
When Jacob stepped from Isaac's tent, celestial dew fell on him and changed his body. He was carrying his father's meal plates when it happened.
After Jacob fled with the blessing, Isaac tried to comfort Esau. God rebuked him for it. The exchange is one of the most unsettling in midrash.
Esau's men held the road to Haran. Jacob had a staff and no bread. The river stood in his way, and his brother was already ahead.
His parents told Jacob to run to Haran. He stopped at Beersheba first and waited. He needed to know whether leaving the land was God's will.
Leah wept over her promised fate as Esau's wife until her eyelashes fell out. What she feared, what she got instead, and what she named her sons.
Jacob swore that whoever took Laban's idols would not live. He had no idea it was Rachel. The words were already moving toward their target.
He looked at the host and said they were not Esau's men, and not Laban's. Then the messengers came back with four hundred riders.
Jacob wept when he heard of Esau's four hundred men. He sent word that the stolen blessing had left nothing in his hand but a few cattle.
Shechem seized Dinah while his city watched. Jacob's sons invoked the covenant of Noah, and the tradition holds the whole city answered for it.
Esau was riding in with four hundred men, so Jacob shut his daughter in a chest. God told him exactly what the lid would cost him.
Deborah had carried Rebekah's last message. Jacob buried her under an oak, and that was when he understood his mother was gone too.
Jacob held both boys against him and waited for the spirit that had never once failed him. Nothing came. Joseph took his sons out of the room.
Judah led Benjamin by the hand into the Egyptian's hall. By night the silver cup was in the boy's sack, and his brothers beat him in the road.
The funeral from Egypt stopped at the cave mouth. Esau filled the doorway and said the last empty place inside belonged to him.
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.
Jacob saw a vision of Joseph numbered among celestial beings, before Egypt, before the pit. He understood at once this greatness would cost Israel everything.
The firstborn was in the room. So was the son who would be king. Jacob sent for neither of them, because neither one could get a body past the border.
A Polish scholar compared his battle to Jacob's night fight with the angel. His enemy was not Esau but men who wanted to destroy the tradition from within.
Twelve wet-haired sons waited for a date. Jacob opened his mouth, and the Presence took the year away before a number could land.
The Egyptian governor made small talk with the youngest brother. How many sons do you have? Ten. And what are they called?
