1,019 myths · Page 16 of 34
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.
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.
Zebulon's last words were about fish. Noah fed animals in the ark. Moses retrieved Joseph's bones. All three were carried by the same mercy they had shown.
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.
The sea drowned Pharaoh and then paid Israel in gems every morning. Moses dragged them away from the treasure, and behind them all Egypt wailed one word.
When Moses died, heaven's bread fed Israel thirty-nine more days. His silver trumpets disappeared before Joshua could touch them.
Two thousand scorpions crossed the backs of the sinners, each sting matched to a different sin. Higher up, angels bathed in a river of fire and came out new.
A Roman emperor digs Mount Nebo for the bones of Moses, but the grave keeps leaping from summit to base until the mountain wins.
God walled three directions and left the north open, stacking fire and ice beside the pit, while one man climbed past the sky to argue.
Og measured the camp of Israel with one eye, tore a mountain loose, and balanced it on his head to bury a whole nation under a single stone.
At Isaac's weaning feast the giant Og sneers he could crush the laughing heir with one finger, and Heaven dooms him to fall by that child's seed.
Israel danced around the calf, and heaven sent five named angels to wipe out the nation. One man ran ahead of the executioners.
On the fortieth day Satana stirred the camp, the gold leapt into a calf, and the Accuser leaped and danced through the frenzy below Sinai.
Pharaoh's daughter reaches for the ark in the reeds, her maidens block her in the name of the decree, and Gabriel strikes them down.
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.
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.
On the last day of his life, atop Mount Nebo, Moses is shown not a map of the land but the centuries of war and rescue that will sweep across it.
The silver that betrayed Samson is melted into a household god, and the priest hired to serve it traces his blood straight back to Moses.
Pappias hears flattery in "like one of Us." Akiva hears a wound. Adam stood between two roads and let immortal water slip through his hand.
An angel carries each unborn soul through heaven by day, then lets it go down into labor, into affliction, into the long accounting.
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.
Nebuchadnezzar wanted the heights of the clouds. He got grass. His hair matted, his nails curled into claws, and the beasts bit him as one of their own.
On Sinai Moses begged to see the law behind the world, and God led him to a spring where one lost purse left a boy rich and an old man dead.
Jerusalem burns, the young leap into a hidden well rather than face the sword, and Moses is roused to see the ruined House and challenge heaven's silence.
On Sinai an angel gave Moses the heavenly count of days, then showed him the age when one stolen month would drown every festival in chaos.
While Moses learns the blueprint of a holy life on Sinai, Samael lows like an ox in the camp below and turns Israel's fear into gold.
Pharaoh turned the Nile into a grave for Hebrew sons, but the river spat the infants back onto the sand, where God fed them milk and oil from the rock.
The clan of Kehat bore the Ark on their shoulders, and one greedy glance at the uncovered gold struck them dead until Moses argued for a shield.
Firstborn sons stormed the palace with swords and pleas. Pharaoh beat them back. At exact midnight God walked Egypt without a guide.
Moses hid the body in the sand. The next day two Hebrews were quarreling, and one of them asked whether he meant to kill them too.
