123 myths · Page 1 of 5
The thirteen attributes of divine mercy, God's compassion for creation, and the rabbinic teaching that mercy sustains the world.
123 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines mercy, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
Impure men who had carried the dead refused to lose Passover. Moses waited, God answered, and a second date entered Israel's calendar.
God decides to tell Abraham what he is about to do to Sodom. Abraham recognizes an opening and presses it, bargaining God down from fifty righteous to ten.
The brothers spread a meal beside the pit. One of them could not swallow anything, so they made him the guard and he watched the sale.
Solomon built the Temple and knew its prayer would one day be needed. Daniel stood in exile and tested whether that prayer still worked. Both were right.
Rebekah died with only the disgraced Esau free to walk at the head of her burial, so the family carried her body out at night.
God sent Michael to inform Abraham that his time had come. Michael went, came back to heaven, and asked God to find another way.
Jethro the Midianite lays burnt offerings on the fire while Aaron and the elders come to eat bread, and Moses stands and serves them all.
Eve begged to lie beside Adam, but only Seth had seen the grave. So an archangel came down to teach the first burial.
Noah lay uncovered in his tent. Ham laughed and called his brothers. Shem lifted a cloak and walked in backward, his face turned away.
A sword sharp beyond compare came down on Moses's neck ten times and could not cut it. Then an angel climbed the scaffold dressed as the executioner.
Rachel said nothing on her wedding night, Saul said nothing to his uncle, and a thousand years later Esther found the silence she needed.
Three days without food, and the order to kill the Jews is already on the road. Esther lies down in the ashes, calls herself an orphan, and starts to pray.
On his last night, Moses would not bless Reuben and Judah quietly. He argued for two sons who had no grounds to stand on, and refused to stop.
In a grove at Yavneh, an old teacher explains why Joseph's kidnappers carried spices, and why Judah's tribe earned a crown.
Before a single wave moved, one man waded into the crashing sea up to his throat, and that step decided who would rule Israel.
The first murderer walked out of his sentencing in a good mood. His father, who had only eaten fruit, never got out from under his own.
Seven sheep were laid against David each day for warmth, and none of it reached him. He had counted Israel, and seventy thousand men died in the plague.
Sarah's closed womb was not forgotten. Abraham prayed for Abimelech's house, and that mercy opened the door to Isaac at last.
Peninnah's children filled the house, and Hannah had none. At Shiloh her lips moved without sound, and the priest watching decided she was drunk.
Jacob woke beside Leah and accused her of deceit. She answered with his own history, and God saw the wife bowed down in pain.
Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah carried closed wombs into the Day of Remembrance, and heaven opened what years of waiting had sealed.
Moses prayed to cross the Jordan 515 times and was refused. But the rabbis preserved three deeper desires he had long before he asked about the land.
Before Moses died, he was shown the Temple burning and Israel in exile. He found Jeremiah on the roads to Babylon and walked alongside the dead.
Zuleika tried to possess Joseph by force. Asenath fasted, cast off her idols, and waited until heaven remade her soul for covenant.
A man gathered wood on the Sabbath and Moses held him in custody because he did not know the punishment. The rabbis called this gap mercy being built.
Before the burning bush, before the plagues, God watched Moses chase one exhausted lamb across the desert to find out what kind of man he was.
The angels sent to destroy Sodom left at noon but arrived at evening. They were angels of mercy who lingered on the road, hoping God would reverse the verdict.
Shechem seized Dinah while his city watched. Jacob's sons invoked the covenant of Noah, and the tradition holds the whole city answered for it.
Rachel was treading clay for bricks when her labor came. The child dropped into the mud and sank. An angel went down after it.
Eighty-five priests and their whole town had already died for feeding him. Twice he stood over the king who ordered it, and twice he walked away.
