674 myths · Page 16 of 23
The first time God spoke to Moses, He used the voice of Amram, Moses's dead father, so that terror would not break him before he heard a single word.
Miriam stood watch over her floating brother for an hour. Heaven paid it back at seven days interest, with the entire nation frozen in the desert for her.
Moses refused to leave God's presence, so Heaven bargained like a king luring back a queen, then showed him the one sight even angels cannot glimpse.
Egypt's sorcerers could copy blood and frogs but failed at lice. From that single admitted finger the rabbis traced the whole open hand of Israel's rescue.
A voice fell from the highest heavens into the gap between two golden cherubim, and out of all Israel it reached one man alone.
At the Red Sea Israel trusted God enough to sing. Weeks later, with bread falling from heaven, some of them still went out hoarding on the Sabbath.
Ten plagues struck Egypt. Then the rabbis did the arithmetic on the sea and the number kept climbing, fifty, two hundred, two hundred and fifty.
Moses dies alone on the mountain, and Michael comes to bury him. But the Accuser blocks the grave, claiming the prophet's body as his own.
Moses mastered every vessel of the Tabernacle but one. The golden lamp defeated his hands, so God told him to cast the gold into the flame.
He paid four hundred coins and crossed the sea for one forbidden night, then his own fringes rose up and slapped him off the bed.
The sages counted every road out of the body and found nine hundred and three, the hardest a thorned rope dragged backward, the gentlest a kiss.
In his last year Moses hands Joshua sealed books, foretells Israel scattered, and swears his kneeling prayer will outlive his open grave.
The elders slipped away one by one until only two brothers faced a fortress of four hundred gates and lions, and an angel walked them in.
A dying Moses sings of the day God Himself arises with no champion to judge the nations and carry Israel above the empires on an eagle.
Moses scratched the hour on Pharaoh's wall and named the only storm to match it, the hail that would one day bury Gog in fire.
For seven days Moses served alone and the sky stayed empty. On the eighth morning Aaron stepped to the altar, and the Glory finally came down.
On the eighth day Moses called Aaron to the altar as his equal, then fire took Aaron's sons, and Aaron answered the loss with silence.
Moses walked the camp counting fighting men. At the tents of Levi a voice stopped him, and the count he was taking turned out to be a list of the doomed.
The manna left no residue, the quail came in deadly abundance, and Chovav could not stay. The desert was a long lesson in how Israel learned to receive.
Sifrei Bamidbar refused the idea that the Shekhinah withdrew when the Temple fell. She goes with Israel, the midrash teaches, even into foreign lands.
God lifts Abraham above the stars to count them, then the census of the wilderness counts Israel as love made visible in numbers.
God counts Israel in the wilderness, but the people exceed every number, carry the damage of the golden calf, and still march toward Canaan.
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.
Moses split the sea and stood at Sinai, but three commands defeated his imagination. Each time, God pointed. The third time, he showed Moses fire.
Miriam and Aaron mocked Moses for leaving his wife, and God answered with a single word that exposed everything they had missed about their brother.
Plague blood flows from Egyptian mouths, the spies doom a generation, Dathan and Abiram refuse to come to court, and Moses fears being forgotten.
Korah did not start his rebellion with a speech. He started it with a story about a poor widow that made every listener hate Moses on the spot.
A widow with two daughters loses everything to priestly law, and Korah turns her tears into a weapon against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
A Bedouin showed a Talmudic sage the fissures where the earth swallowed Korah alive. Every thirty days Korah surfaces and cries out that Moses was right.
Moses walked to warn Datan and Aviram before the earth opened. They would not come out to meet him. He gave the warning and left them to the ground.
