1,019 myths · Page 12 of 34
When Moses asked how to find the Israelites who sinned at Peor, God proposed peeling back the cloud so the sun would mark the guilty.
Cozbi had said she would give herself only to Moses or the High Priest. Zimri brought her to the Tent door and asked whether she was permitted. Moses wept.
Moses divided the blood of sacrifices at Sinai in a ceremony that bound both Israel and God. The rabbis read it as a two-way oath sworn at sword-point.
Enoch vanished without a grave. Moses left no known tomb. Elijah rose in fire. Jewish sources say some lives end not in death but in translation.
Exodus names a nameless angel in the flame. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gave him a name, Zagnugael, and split the Burning Bush into two voices.
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.
When Moses ascended to receive the Torah, an angel sixty myriads of parasangs tall blocked his path and unleashed lightning with every word.
Moses recited Psalm 91 on Sinai to ward off demons, and when the Mishkan rose, the noon demon Ketev Meriri lost dominion over the world.
The Angel of Death came with orders to be generous. Rabbi Joshua asked to borrow the sword, then jumped the wall into Paradise while still alive.
Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon burns inside a Torah scroll and tells his students what he sees: the parchment burns, but the letters are flying up.
While Reuel kept Moses imprisoned in a pit, Zipporah secretly brought him food for ten years before pulling him out into his destiny.
Pharaoh broke out in sores, and his doctors told him to bathe in the blood of Hebrew children. He signed the order for three hundred a day.
The rod Moses carried was carved from the sapphire Throne of Glory, engraved with the Name, and became a basilisk before the king of Egypt.
For seven days Moses raised the Tabernacle each morning and took it down each evening. On the eighth it stayed standing, and fire came down on the altar.
Moses spends forty days in a cloud where the sun does not reach and learns to tell time by what God teaches him, not by the sky.
All Egypt was out at the festival. Joseph stayed in an empty house doing his master's accounts, and the road to Pharaoh's court started there.
Solomon denied himself nothing his eyes desired. Then he looked at what his hands had made and called it vanity, the houses and the gardens and the pools.
The elders set out with Moses for Pharaoh's court. One by one they found reasons to slow down, and only Moses and Aaron reached the door.
Joseph's deathbed password reaches Moses, Levi lives long enough to see the deliverer born, and Jethro hears of the mountain of glory before Moses arrives.
They wept until heaven sent meat, and it came down in layers. The laziest man in the camp gathered ten kor of it. Nobody finished the first mouthful.
Sifrei Bamidbar refused the idea that the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, withdrew when the Temple fell. She goes with Israel even into foreign lands.
An archangel calls Moses up, the tablets are cut from the throne's sapphire floor, and the glory he glimpses is the knot of God's tefillin, prayer straps.
Moses prayed for forgiveness after the Golden Calf but asked too narrowly. The Tabernacle smoke was how the nations knew the husband had returned.
Fire was ruled out. The sword was ruled out. Egypt worked down the list and settled on the river, because God had sworn off floods.
Moses promises locusts, then walks out before Pharaoh can answer. With him gone, the advisers finally tell the king that Egypt is ruined.
Two Hebrews watched Moses kill the Egyptian, and one of them said so out loud in the street. By morning the executioner had him.
A congregation told God there was nobody righteous left alive to lean on. God answered by naming three men who went into a fire in Babylon.
Six hundred thousand people backed away from Sinai saying the voice would kill them if it spoke again. Moses was told to come closer.
David cannot build the Temple but cannot stop wanting it, and God credits the longing as if stone had already been laid on stone.
Israel drinks from a gushing rock and eats bread from heaven, then mocks the miracle before learning what a new song costs.
