114 myths · Page 2 of 4
Enemy kings sent their ultimatum on the eve of Shavuot. Joshua read it, folded it, and let the people celebrate before he answered.
After Joshua died, Israel needed a leader. God's method was a purity test followed by lots, and the man selected was almost nobody's first guess.
Psalm 19 says day pours speech to day, and the rabbis turned that into a chain: Joshua's miracles handed forward to Deborah, and Deborah's to Barak.
Two frauds sentenced to burn in Babylon gave the king a third name, the high priest's, hoping his merit would put the fire out for all three of them.
Jericho fell to trumpets and silence. Then thirty-six men died at Ai, and Joshua lay face down before the Ark unable to understand why.
Moses asked for a leader who goes out before the people, not behind them. Sifrei Bamidbar heard this as a rejection of every safer model of command.
God told Moses to give some of his glory to Joshua, not all. The rabbis built the entire theology of succession from that one missing word.
Two spies lay flat under drying flax on a Jericho rooftop while the king's soldiers searched the river roads for them and found nothing.
Ten spies came back saying the cities were walled and the men were giants. Two men said the land was good, and the crowd reached for stones.
Sacred song does not stay inside the moment that produced it. The rabbis said shira moves freely through past, future, the messianic age, and the world to come.
Ten men came back from the land certain it would kill them. When Joshua stood up to answer them, they shouted that a childless man had nothing to lose.
After the golden calf, God said He would send an angel instead of coming Himself. The people heard it, took off their ornaments, and never put them back on.
Amalek came from the far south and covered sixteen hundred miles in a single night, driven by a grudge that ran back to Esau and Jacob in the womb.
The Angel of Death came with orders to be generous. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi borrowed the angel's blade, vaulted the wall of Eden, and made heaven honor his oath.
Seven years of war ended with a harder problem than any battle: the lots spoke aloud and each tribe received the land prepared for it.
A herald went through the camp calling everyone to gather around Joshua, and not one Israelite came. They hung back, shaking, complaining of headaches.
When Israel entered the promised land under Joshua, they carried two arks. Everyone remembers the Covenant. Almost no one remembers what traveled beside it.
When Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, the rabbis said every power he had came from Moses. The moon was still the moon. Its light was borrowed.
Moses said let my people go ten times. Joshua raised a javelin at Ai. Belshazzar locked the palace doors and then could not get out himself.
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi descended through all seven chambers of Gehinnom (afterlife of judgment) and returned. Solomon never went himself, but he sent his.
Sifrei Bamidbar refused the idea that the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, withdrew when the Temple fell. She goes with Israel even into foreign lands.
When Moses's final day arrived, Devarim Rabbah says the sun refused to set and the day itself filed a complaint before God about being forced to end.
One afternoon in a garden bent every birth after it. God's presence climbed seven heavens away. Six righteous bodies slowly dragged it back down.
When Moses died, heaven's bread fed Israel thirty-nine more days. His silver trumpets disappeared before Joshua could touch them.
A harlot on the wall hears the sea split for runaway slaves, hides the spies, and drags every branch of her house out of the doomed city.
On the last day of his life, atop Mount Nebo, Moses is shown not a map of the land but the centuries of war and rescue that will sweep across it.
A barred city, a stranger with a naked blade, and the night Joshua learned who was truly commanding the war for the Land.
Nebuchadnezzar hoped two silly riddles would break the boy, but Ben Sira answered with Jericho, the ark, and a king left strangely instructed.
Moses climbed Abarim at a hundred and twenty and looked out at the country he would not enter. He was still speaking to Joshua when the cloud came down.
Moses told the twelve to keep to the back paths. In a city they were to walk in the open and say they had come to buy pomegranates and grapes.
