483 myths · Page 9 of 17
Amalek cut the sign of the covenant from the dead and flung it at the sky. The wars over that covenant began long before, with Jacob's sons.
For fifteen years no one could tell Esau from Jacob. Then the myrtle breathed out fragrance, the thorn showed its thorns, and the world finally saw them.
Jacob counted the warlords of Esau and went cold. God answered him with a single name, the boy who would burn them all to ash.
Rebekah begged Jacob to flee for his life, and he refused to take one step until his father blessed him out loud and aimed him at the road.
Seven Amorite kings crouch in the woods of Canaan plotting slaughter, until Judah leaps the battle line and the war the Torah left silent begins.
In the early generations a sneeze emptied a man of his soul on the spot, until Jacob begged Heaven for sickness so he could bless his sons.
Jacob counted it out loud. Joseph gone, Simeon gone, and now Benjamin. His sons waited in the doorway with the grain sacks already roped to the donkeys.
Esau brings a host to besiege the tower, deaf to every oath of peace, and Jacob looses twelve arrows that scatter the army and end the war.
On Moriah the ministering angels broke into weeping above the bound boy, and their tears dropped into Isaac's eyes and stayed there for life.
The angels crowded the ladder all night like flies on a sleeping child. Then a light bent over the stone where Jacob lay, and every one of them scattered.
No messenger told Rebecca. Her prophecy cut a furrow inside a furrow and read the murder Esau had sworn only in his own silent heart.
Robbed of everything by his nephew on the road to Haran, Jacob finds a dead man, a waiting horse, and a promise that never sleeps.
Esau's sons goad him into war and he swears peace will come only when the lion plows beside the ox, but the war ends with Edom under a yoke.
A doorway with a will of its own waits three fingerbreadths from paradise, while a father mourns a son the empty pit had already spared.
After two brothers razed Shechem, an army from Nineveh cut off Jacob's road, and the old patriarch and his twelve sons fought it like a nation.
Fleeing Esau, Jacob pillows his head on the stones of Moriah, and the angels race up the ladder to match his sleeping face against the Throne.
Their own advisors told the kings to remember what two of Jacob's sons did to Shechem. They marched anyway, and old Jacob killed twelve thousand.
Jacob offered Esau the whole of this world for a share of the next, and Esau's friends counted the price in someone else's four hundred years.
Fleeing his brother's rage, Jacob nearly died of despair, and the divine presence withdrew until the angels argued him back into life.
After twenty pounds of silver changed hands, Jacob's sons ran after the Midianites to reverse the sale. The caravan was faster than their regret.
Afraid the shock would kill their father, the brothers gave Serah a harp and one line of song. Joy woke the holy spirit that grief had choked for years.
Jacob came into the tent in goat skins and borrowed clothes. He walked out crowned like a bridegroom, his bones strengthened by dew from heaven.
Esau sold the birthright for lentils and Methuselah's blade, then deeded the land and Machpelah to Jacob. Heaven repaid him with provinces ending at Rome.
Esau was coming with four hundred men. Jacob sent the camps across the ford and stayed behind alone. Something took hold of him in the dark.
At Haran's well Jacob kissed Rachel and the East judged him. Years later Laban covered a week's road in a day to accuse the nephew who had finally left.
Laban's words rekindled Esau's old fury. Four hundred men marched while Rebekah sent seventy-two retainers, and Jacob named the place Mahanaim for God's host.
Isaac brought water for a stranger's feet. Abraham foresaw he would never wash a guest again. Michael wept into the basin, and the tears became stones.
Esau lunged to bite his brother to death, but Jacob's neck hardened like ivory, and the hunter howled while his own teeth cracked.
Simeon and Levi emptied a whole city after Dinah's shame, and surrounding nations whispered that if two sons could do this, twelve would end the world.
At Jacob's funeral procession, Esau fell slain by the cave, and his severed head rolled into the lap of blind Isaac, who begged mercy heaven refused.
