340 myths · Page 7 of 12
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 in goat skins. Isaac's eyes were dim. The smell that rose off the clothes was not goat. It was a garden he had never walked.
Potiphar's wife faked illness to empty the house. Joseph fled, left his garment, and kept the Name that never left his lips.
The Ishmaelites learned Joseph was Jacob's son and pressed him to confess. He kept the slave story so his brothers would not die for selling him.
Joseph walked as viceroy and son toward Machpelah. At the cave mouth a twin still wanted a plot. A head came to rest on a blind father's knees.
After they threw Joseph in the pit, the brothers sat down to eat. Only Zebulon refused food and kept watch, while Judah blocked a blessing over murder.
Ten times the brothers called Jacob a servant. Joseph did not correct them. Heaven took ten years. Then he rode to the border.
Reuben stalled murder with a pit and hid on a mountain to save Joseph by night, but nine brothers sold the boy while the eldest watched the wrong ridge.
Ten years in prison, one for each brother Joseph had once carried reports about to Jacob. In the dark a letter of the divine Name was added to his: Jehoseph.
Ganoon said God had spoken and it was time to leave. Two hundred thousand of Ephraim walked out with bows and no blood on the doors.
The cloth still held the shape of his shoulder. She kissed it. Then her friends came back from the river and told her how to use it.
Blind with tears for Joseph, Jacob wrote to Egypt's ruler and prayed for two lost sons, never guessing the viceroy was the first.
Simon came out of prison looking like a leather bottle. Judah pled for Benjamin while the man on the throne still wore Egypt's face.
Simon and Gad lifted their hands. Joseph hid behind Zebulon. Years later a sword found his throat in an Egyptian doorway.
Guards at the grain gates wrote down every buyer's father and grandfather. Joseph read the lists, waiting for ten names from Canaan to show up.
The cup rose out of Benjamin's sack, planted the night before. Back in the hall, Manasseh stamped his foot once and the whole palace shook.
Asenath nursed the dying man and told Joseph to bring his sons for a blessing. Jacob's answer was that in seventeen years the boys had never come.
Pharaoh told Joseph to drop the burial vow. Joseph named a second vow, the one that hid the king's missing Hebrew.
For seventeen years Joseph kept runners on the road so that he would never be alone in a room with his father. His father knew the whole time.
Joseph put a price on empty streets. Nobles pulled on purple. Women climbed the walls with drums while an old shepherd from Canaan came in under the noise.
Dying, Jacob ordered Joseph to forgive and shield his brothers. Ages later the tribes buried Joseph in Shechem, the ground that first took him.
Joseph sent his oldest son first, then the next, each on a horse. From far off Jacob kept mistaking every rider for the son he had lost.
Joseph took both rudders after his father vanished. Judah named the course. After the wreck, only the masts showed above the water.
Ganon told Ephraim that God had sent him out of Egypt. They packed gold and swords and no bread. At Gath the shepherds would not sell sheep.
Joseph sent clothes up from Egypt, a turban among them for his father. Jacob put it on, then slaughtered sacrifices asking whether he should go at all.
Joseph would not walk into Pharaoh's hall in mourning clothes. He sent the king's household ahead, then Seir rode down three days later.
The famine grew sore in Canaan. Jacob saw silver back in every sack. He would not send Benjamin until the house had no bread left.
Jacob would not send Rachel's last boy down to Egypt. At the table a man they did not know piled Benjamin's plate seven times higher than theirs.
The pit had no water. It had snakes. When they hauled him up, the face Jacob loved had gone white, and the buyers paid shoe money.
