51 myths · Page 2 of 2
Abraham sent his servant east to find a wife for Isaac. Rebecca watered all ten of his camels, and her family stalled, but she said she would go.
Three years after Sarah dies, Rebecca enters the tent and Isaac's mourning finally breaks. Love turns toward the wife while honor still climbs to the parents.
Isaac's eyes had failed, so he could not leave the tent. Esau's Hittite wives burned incense to their gods in the rooms around him.
After ten childless years in Sidon, a wife carried her sleeping husband home as her only treasure, and a rabbi's prayer opened the sealed year.
He was forty and could not say the blessing over bread. She sent him away to study and took in piecework from neighbors to pay for it.
A husband locked his wife out unless she spat in Rabbi Meir's face. Meir asked for seven doses of a folk cure. Beruriah had taught him mercy first.
On his wedding night Rabbi Akiva's son asked for sandals, opened Torah, and left his bride to keep pace until dawn.
A childless couple of Sidon comes for a bill of divorce. Rabbi Shimon sends them to feast first, and she chooses the only treasure that matters.
A woman dreamed her house beam cracked. Students told her she would bury her husband. Their words nearly made it so.
Aaron and Miriam spoke against Moses over his wife. Heaven answered that he alone was ordered to stand apart, mouth to mouth with God.
A man locked his neighbor's silver in a chest and swore it was stolen. Confess first and he repays a fifth more. Wait for witnesses and he pays double.
An Arabian king nearly killed his wife for bearing a white son. Rabbi Akiva pointed to white images in the house and to Jacob's flocks at the troughs.
Two sisters in two cities wore the same face. One was accused, the other went to Jerusalem in her clothes, and the swap held until the doorway.
Judah's firstborn married Tamar and refused her a child to keep her beauty. Heaven struck him, while fathers still feared barrenness and worse.
A grown educator confesses he cannot stop staring at the woman next door. The infant Ben Sira answers with a coal, a well, and a chase for wisdom.
Sold in a famine year, a Hebrew girl learns the master must give her food, clothing, and time as he would a free daughter, not a tool in his house.
A man with grown sons planned a solitary old age. The sages answered with Eden's oldest verdict and the miracle of a child held nine months in the womb.
In Posen a goldsmith keeps a secret wife in the cellar. On Passover his human wife follows him down and sees the truth.
After civil war, Israel cursed any father who gave a daughter to Benjamin. On the fifteenth of Av the vow loosened and a tribe lived.
Solomon read in the stars that his daughter would wed a pauper, so he sealed her in a tower at sea. Then an eagle dropped one onto her roof.
When Hosea tells God to swap faithless Israel for a better people, God weds him to a harlot and lets him love her children until the words turn back on him.
