114 myths · Page 4 of 4
The army had lost at Ai and men were dead. God offered no comfort, only a question about why Joshua was lying face down in the dust.
Ahab and Zidkiah seduce a court with borrowed holiness, then pull the high priest into a furnace test. They burn. Joshua walks out singed.
The pole of grapes still hung between two men. Ten mouths called the land a grave, so Caleb climbed until the camp had to look up.
The rabbis had just opened a tractate when Amasa came for Judah. David's three days were almost gone. He left the room without a single man.
A scarlet cord hung in a window while Jericho's walls still smoked. Rahab's household walked out past soldiers ordered to leave no survivor.
Joshua ordered sun and moon to stand, and the midrash says the righteous rule the lights, holding day open until Israel's battle was done.
Centuries after Jacob crossed with only a staff, the Jordan flees for his children, and Exodus still calls them by name like stars.
Six days of silent circuits, then seven on the seventh. The wall falls on Shabbat, and one kept Sabbath spans all of time.
Joshua heaps a hill of foreskins in the dust. Centuries later Elijah is bound to attend every brit, zealous still, seated in a chair of honor.
A sea had stood up in walls when he raised his staff. The Jordan in front of him was a morning's walk across, and God had told him he would not go over it.
Alexandria liked hard questions the way merchants like accurate scales. Each one its scholars sent east rested on two verses pulling opposite ways.
About thirty-six died at Ai, yet the sages hear one man worth a court. Joshua tears cloth, and a ledger of torn robes opens across ages.
A pilgrim standing where the wall of Jericho stood is supposed to say a blessing. There is nothing to look at. That is what the blessing is for.
At the Reed Sea the waters rose to drown a rebellious people, then saw the covenant of circumcision and fled, splitting only for that mark.
God offered Moses an angel to lead the way. Moses refused anyone but God. Years later Joshua met the same captain and the angel wept.
At ninety-nine he hit the dust while God named a son. The laugh stayed in his ribs. By night the tent smelled of blood and crushed herbs.
Days after the burial, Joshua still would not rise from the dust. God spoke into it. Moses died for Me too, He said, and Joshua lifted his head.
Every morning Moses took the middle of the path to the Tent. One day he stepped to the right and set Aaron where the camp would have to look.
After Ai's dead, Joshua tore his clothes before the Ark. Judah's stone dimmed on the breastplate, lots fell, and Achan's theft met the valley.
On his last day Moses tells Joshua he was made before the world to kneel between God and Israel, then seals the books of every age to come.
Joab grabbed the horns of the altar with both hands, bronze biting his knuckles. They dragged him off it and killed him there. David died in his own bed.
Jericho's walls were already dust. The kings of Canaan put their mouths together and came for Joshua as if they were one.
Every one of the thirty-one kings Joshua killed had once reclined at Abraham's weaning feast, their names later written in a column read in one breath
Joshua marched the whole nation into the hand's breadth between the Ark's two poles, and the small space held the many while the Jordan stood still.
