1,019 myths · Page 4 of 34
Bread fell from heaven and Israel gorged like horses, but the manna left nothing behind. It vanished into their limbs and became them.
The crowd told Jeremiah they had fields to plow and hungry children, so Torah would have to wait. He came back holding a jar of old manna.
The word of God would not come to an angry prophet. Elisha called for a harpist, and when the strings played, heaven found a way in.
Deborah twisted flax into wicks for the sanctuary lamps. Then the Kishon rose and took Sisera's nine hundred iron chariots down into the mud, wheels first.
At Shiloh, Hannah pushed her portion away and wept before the altar. Her tears were her bread, and her grief became the meal that fed her.
On the plains of Moab, Moses turns geography into rebuke, hiding ten failures of the wilderness years inside a string of place names.
Bread fell, water ran from stone, and still the camp whispered against God. The answer came as fire at the wilderness edge.
At Sinai, every divine word drove Israel's soul from its body. Dew revived them, and angels carried them back to the mountain again.
Moses came down from heaven with Torah, and Ha-Satan, the Accuser, could not find it. Earth, sea, depth, and death all denied him.
Pharaoh broke the men with labor, but the women carried fish, oil, warmth, and courage into the fields until Israel lived.
On his last day, Moses sang a witness against Israel. Rain, dew, eagle wings, and Torah carried the warning past his death.
Onkelos changed dangerous images across the Torah. When he reached Hear O Israel, he left every sacred word standing in Aramaic.
Moses blessed Dan as a lion leaping from the Bashan. The Sifrei Devarim reveals this was a prophecy: the tribe would divide and claim two separate territories.
A genealogy hides the claim that Phinehas is Elijah. The priest who stopped a plague becomes the prophet who returns for Israel.
Only two men came back down the hill. The camp asked Moses where his brother was, listened to the answer, and then bent down for stones.
Pharaoh's daughter came to the Nile that morning to wash away her father's idolatry. She walked away with a Hebrew infant and a new name from God.
Moses was a hundred and twenty and his eyes were still sharp. What had gone was the Torah. On his last morning the gates of wisdom shut in front of him.
In the wilderness the cloud led Israel and sheltered them. In Lamentations God wraps himself in a cloud, and the prayers of the people cannot get through.
Six hundred thousand people, and none of them could take a step until one man opened his mouth. The pillar shrank down in front of Moses and held there.
A voice out of heaven gave him five hours. He spent them offering trades: wings, fins, a cloud, and finally his own body in pieces.
The Angel of Death came into the tent, and Moses spoke the Ineffable Name at him until he fled. On the third approach Moses met him with open hands.
Moses brings God's promise of freedom to the Israelites, but the broken people cannot lift their ears from the mud.
Pharaoh demanded signs, but Moses could not strike the Nile that saved him. Aaron had to carry the staff into judgment instead.
Rabbi Akiva imagined one frog multiplying through Egypt, while Moses stood back because the Nile had once saved his life.
On the road to Egypt, an angel tries to kill Moses before the Exodus can begin, while Joseph's bones wait in a sunken ark.
The Torah was black fire on white fire, and the angels called it theirs. Moses asked whether their fathers were in Egypt. Then they gave him gifts.
In the fifth heaven the angels were snow below and fire above, and the snow never melted. Higher up, Sandalfon was so vast that Moses lost his balance.
At the burning bush Moses was warned off two crowns that would never be his. The priesthood belonged to Aaron. The throne belonged to a boy not yet born.
The Israelites gave so generously for the Tabernacle that Moses had to stop them. Then they accused him of stealing what was left over.
At Sinai every other Israelite fled from the thunder and lightning. Moses walked toward the thick darkness. The rabbis asked why God chose shadow.
