144 myths · Page 3 of 5
Jonah bought a whole ship at Joppa so no one could turn it around. Every other boat that day had calm weather. Only his hit a wall of wind.
Ahaz had closed every Torah academy in Judah. When Hezekiah became king, he drove a sword into the ground and declared it was time to study or die.
Pharaoh's fleet was sailing north to break the siege. Then God filled the water with drowned Egyptian ancestors, and the fleet turned back.
The prophet sank in mud and lime, and a voice called his name. He had been mocked too many times to trust a friendly sound. He did not answer.
Ezekiel gave an uncertain answer about rescue. The three men declared they were ready to die regardless. That declaration was when the rescue became certain.
Daniel had outlived Babylon, but Jerusalem was still rubble. Persian officials could find nothing to charge him with, so they made his prayers illegal.
An officer heard Elisha promise cheap flour the next day and asked if heaven had windows. Elisha said he would see it and not eat it. The crowd trampled him.
Jonah did not flee from fear. He fled because he knew God would forgive Nineveh. He refused to save the empire destroying Israel.
Darius fed the lions until they were full, then threw Daniel's accusers in. He had to know whether the lions had spared Daniel or had merely been fed.
At the Golden Calf the Levites would come forward with swords. Judah's banner would lead every march. Neither had happened yet when Moses' arms went up.
Rabbi Simon taught that singing after a miracle forgives the singer, and Deborah proved it when her voice rose over the battlefield.
Ahaz meant to give his son to Moloch. The boy's mother rubbed him with the blood of a salamander first, and the fire could not have him.
The sailors on Jonah's ship were not cruel men. They tried their idols, cast lots, jettisoned their cargo, and rowed for shore before they touched him.
Elisha sent his servant ahead with his staff to revive a dead child. The boy did not move. The rabbis knew exactly why the wood failed.
Genesis gives Jacob's ladder vision in one night. The ancient Aramaic translators recorded five miracles that bent the world toward Jacob before he slept.
Moses refused to bring the plagues of blood, frogs, and lice himself. The river had once carried his basket, and he would not repay it with a rod.
The Egyptian army was closing in, and the people at the water were picking up pearls. The river Pishon had washed them out of Eden.
Zimri asked Moses what was wrong with a Midianite woman, since Moses had married one himself. Moses had no answer. A young priest stood up.
When Aaron's staff swallowed the staffs of Pharaoh's magicians, the rabbis said the real miracle was not the serpents. It was dead wood consuming dead wood.
Nimrod threw Abraham into the furnace and Abraham walked out alive. What followed the miracle was the part the tradition cared about most.
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.
A wasp was eating a spider in the garden and a fool was swinging a stick at both. David asked God what any of the three were good for.
An old man hung merchants' scales in front of the throne, put every noble in Egypt in one pan and a baby goat in the other, and the goat went down.
Sarah's barrenness was not a pause before the covenant. In Philo's reading and Bereshit Rabbah, the closed womb made Isaac impossible to explain without God.
The king gave them three chances to bow. They told him their God might not save them, and that it made no difference to what they were going to do.
Balaam beat her three times for stopping in the road, then told her he would kill her if he had a sword. The angel in front of them already had one.
Esau told his grandson he had failed to kill Jacob and left him the job. Watch for the stumble, he said. That is the only opening you get.
Honi the Circle-Drawer wondered how exile could feel like a dream. Heaven answered by letting him sleep through a lifetime and wake up forgotten.
The hill had no flowers and no rocks, and the tree at its summit was made of horn. David sat down at its foot to see what would happen.
