236 myths · Page 6 of 8
The tribes argued on shore about who deserved to go first. Only one tribe jumped without waiting. Midrash Tehillim records what they earned as their reward.
Reuben planned to rescue Joseph from the pit. He left before the caravan arrived and came back to find the boy gone.
A stranger told Joseph where his brothers had gone. That stranger was Gabriel. The same angel stood in Pharaoh's court when Joseph needed a voice.
Asher's territory produced olive oil that fed all Israel in lean years. Asher's daughters were so beautiful that kings came asking to marry them.
When the butler described three grape branches, Joseph saw Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob hidden in the vision and Israel's future encoded in a wine cup.
Genesis says Joseph's brothers did not recognize him in Egypt. The Aramaic tradition says Joseph spent years posting scribes at every gate to find them.
When Joseph's brothers returned with Benjamin, he prepared a feast with sinew removed from the meat and seated eleven men in exact birth order.
Jacob's funeral reached Canaan with royal ceremony. At the cave of Machpelah, Esau blocked the burial. Dan's deaf son Chushim ended the dispute with a sword.
On his deathbed, the patriarch Simeon gathered his children and named the force that had once brought him to the edge of fratricide: not hatred, but envy.
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.
Rachel prayed twelve years and fasted twelve days before Benjamin came. Then she died giving him life, and Jacob changed the name she left him.
On his deathbed Naphtali described two visions he had kept for a lifetime: a ship in a storm and stars falling from the hands of Levi and Judah.
Jacob had not received prophecy in twenty-two years. When the wagons arrived from Egypt carrying proof that Joseph was alive, the spirit returned in an instant.
When Benjamin arrived in Egypt, Joseph revealed himself privately before telling the others. Benjamin held the secret while the brothers struggled with guilt.
Of Jacob's twelve sons, Naphtali was famous for something almost trivial next to wrestling angels and prophecy: he could run faster than any man alive.
Pseudo-Jonathan traces one continuous blessing from the night sky over Abraham through the dew of heaven to Jacob, who passed it to Joseph at life's end.
After announcing the locust plague, Moses withdraws from the throne room and lets Pharaoh's own counselors argue the case for liberation before he returns.
Abraham feeds angels, Jacob sends animals ahead toward Esau, Joseph refuses to trust Pharaoh's butler, and a brother speaks one sentence of shame.
Rebekah's gold weighs out the half-shekel and the ten commandments. Later, Joseph and Benjamin weep over two Temples not yet built while they hold each other.
Famine sent Abraham into Egypt first, and generations later Joseph reached the same land through a pit, prison, and the dreams of a foreign king.
On the second day of creation, the waters resisted, and an angel sang for Israel before Israel existed; the same guardianship followed Jacob, Joseph, and Moses.
Pharaoh's anger puts a prisoner in position to feed nations. Joseph's brothers arrive for grain and find guilt waiting at the storehouse door.
Asenath strips off her jewelry, covers herself in ashes, and weeps for seven days. On the eighth morning an angel arrives carrying honeycomb from Paradise.
The moment Rachel bears Joseph, Jacob finds courage to leave Laban. Then Joseph dreams of sun and stars bowing, and no one in the family forgets it.
Judah steps into the Egyptian throne room and faces his unrecognized brother. Bereshit Rabbah turns the confrontation into a collision of two kings.
Rakyon turns Egypt's administration into kingship, then Pharaoh's nightmare arrives and no one in the palace can explain what heaven is saying about grain.
Joseph was sold to merchants who had followed birds to a pit. Manasseh stood beside him interpreting. Jacob confessed. The wound never finished traveling.
Egypt was a family that dissolved into the sea. Potiphar's house emptied on a festival. Manasseh stood at the gate so Joseph's brothers would not recognize him.
The count of Jacob's family going to Egypt comes up wrong. The rabbis sit with the broken sum until it opens a secret about how God keeps promises.
Joseph steps in front of his mother before Esau can look at her. Asher betrays Naphtali over a piece of land. Seven cows in a dream change everything.
