283 myths · Page 3 of 10
God told Solomon to ask for anything. Solomon asked only to judge his people. What God gave him in return was everything he had not asked for.
Twenty-four thousand were already dead and the people stood weeping at the tent. Moses did not move. Aaron's grandson walked in carrying a spear.
Elijah worked eight wonders in his life. Elisha asked for a double share and worked sixteen, while his servant Gehazi chased silver and caught leprosy.
Moses trembled before the decree after the Golden Calf, then held God to the mercy and humility already written into Torah.
Peletith hid bread in her water bucket and carried it to the starving man in her street. Sodom burned her for feeding him.
He was out picking before they arrived every single morning. The students decided he suspected them of stealing his fruit, and quietly moved to another tree.
Two students of Rabbi Yehoshua disguised themselves in Roman dress. An officer who had heard the rabbi teach stopped them at a crossroads.
Sodom gave visitors coins stamped with the city's name, then refused to sell them food. The stranger starved, and the coins came back off his corpse.
The angels showed Enoch the rule of the sun and he wrote it down. He did not hand the record to his son. He buried it in the earth before the flood came.
Jacob rebuked his sons for the slaughter at Shechem. A heavenly record reached a different verdict. Both accounts survived.
Seven hundred thousand people begged at the ark door and Noah shouted them down. He had been standing outside it himself a moment earlier.
Lot was saved from Sodom once in battle, once from fire. Both times he returned. The texts explain what the city offered him and what the return cost.
Sodom handed its beggars silver and forbade anyone to sell them bread. Lot's daughter hid a loaf in her water jar, and the city burned her in the street.
At the final judgment Abraham refuses to plead for Israel. Jacob refuses too. Then Isaac steps forward and negotiates a number God cannot deny.
Standing before Egypt's Viceroy, Judah invoked the law of companions taken together. Joseph answered that only the one who stole should remain.
Samuel was the most incorruptible judge Israel ever had. His sons took bribes. The story does not end there: one of them became the prophet Joel.
David rode out with four hundred armed men to wipe out one household. A woman met the column in the dark holding a lamp and a legal question.
A man with two heads stood in Solomon's court demanding a double share of his father's estate. Both mouths were talking. Solomon ordered hot water.
A serpent arrived in court with a man's neck in its coils and a verse from scripture as its legal brief. Solomon stripped it of the advantage.
Two men were lurking near the palace walls. Solomon put on servant's clothes, introduced himself, said he had a key, and proposed a robbery.
Zedekiah dug a tunnel from Jerusalem to Jericho. God sent a deer, soldiers gave chase, and it led them straight to the exit as the king emerged.
Two elders condemned a righteous woman with false testimony. A young man with no standing interrupted and asked each elder which tree they had stood under.
God told him to make the lampstand and Moses could not do it. God built a model out of four fires. Moses looked at it and still could not do it.
When Saul lost divine favor, the watcher angels shifted roles. Their change from observers to enforcers was the first sign that his protection was gone.
God summoned all twenty-two letters to testify against Israel. Before aleph could speak, Abraham stepped forward and argued them all into silence.
Iron combs tear Akiva's flesh while he finishes the Shema, Hear O Israel, and heaven records his blood as a legal claim not yet settled.
Two young women met at the well in Sodom. One of them was starving. What the other one did about it brought the fire down on the whole city.
The beasts were saddled and the camp was ready to march when the pillar of cloud failed to move. Moses was missing. So was the well.
Moses stood before Israel, read every word of the Torah aloud, and sealed the covenant in blood. Then God told him none of it would protect him from dying.
The terms of Jacob's judgment were set inside the covenant God made with Abraham. Every blessing he received came with an obligation he had not chosen.
