195 myths · Page 3 of 7
Three hundred white mules carried only the keys to his vaults. Korah came home shaved from the Levite rite, and his wife named it disgrace.
Noah had three sons. He also had twelve months of waking in the dark to feed every animal in the ark at its own hour, and he came out emaciated.
Sihon and Og took Moab's money for years to stand between Balak and the desert. Israel killed them both in one season. Now nothing stood there.
Cain's descendants settled the plain near Damascus, on the field where Abel died. The Sethites kept to the mountains until they came down and mixed.
When Nimrod put on Adam's garments, the animals stood still for him. Esau killed him for them and stripped them off the body in the field.
Noah's skin shone white as snow at birth and his eyes lit up the room. His father Lamech ran to Methuselah convinced the child was not human.
The ground was barely dry. Noah set a cutting from Eden into it. Satan walked up with a lamb, a lion, a pig, and a monkey.
Noah wept over the ruin he had survived. God rebuked him for not praying before it happened. Job suffered while still called God's servant.
Noah woke up sober and went looking for the son who had done it. God had blessed all three brothers at the ark, so the one man he wanted was untouchable.
If my Torah had been among the ten generations before this, God told Shem, I suppose I would not have drowned the world. Go and ask the nations.
A fox walked out of the Holy of Holies. Three sages wept. Rabbi Akiva laughed, because a plow in Zion meant old men would sit there again.
The Book of Jubilees records that Rebekah's role was inscribed in heaven before she drew water from the well. What was written there also included a curse.
Abraham told God directly that he could see the problem in Esau. The bowl of lentil soup decades later was not a surprise to anyone who had been watching.
She screamed before she spoke a word to Saul. The man in the cloak was standing. The dead she knew how to raise never stood like that.
The ark door opened onto mud. Noah stacked stones before he pitched a tent. He burned clean birds, and the smell went up with no rainbow yet.
After the flood Noah planted a vineyard, drank wine, and became drunk. Most traditions see failure in it. Philo of Alexandria read the same verse and disagreed.
Genesis calls Nimrod a mighty hunter before God and leaves it at that. Jewish sources spent centuries asking whether he stood before God in service or defiance.
Enoch was taken out of the world before the water came. Noah was left inside a sealed box floating on it, measuring the world by one bird.
The waters were gone, and the spirits were still loose. Noah's grandchildren sickened. He asked God to take the demons off the children.
After the Flood Noah prays against evil spirits, Mastema bargains to keep one tenth of them, and angels teach Noah remedies to fight back.
God named the boards before the rain. One hundred fifty cells. A glowing stone from Eden would hold the light for a year.
Somebody in Pharaoh's room said water, and the room went quiet. After the flood God had sworn the waters would not pass over the earth again.
On the second day the lower waters wept and would not split. The sky was three fingers thick. An angel sang about Sinai, and the waters went quiet.
Israel had walked three days without water. At Marah the pool was bitter. Moses stood over it with a tree in his hand and a people at his back.
Sin crouches at Cain's door before the flood begins. Noah's name promises comfort. God waits 120 years. Then the ark rises on mercy and descends into sacrifice.
She pinched off a piece of dough before the loaf went into the oven. In another house a thief set a stolen cup back on the shelf.
The animals walked off the ark and would not take an order. God gave Noah back their fear and held their obedience back for a king not yet born.
Noah blessed two of his sons and cursed a third. Moses blessed all twelve tribes. The rabbis measure the distance between the two blessings and find a world.
God dictated the words let us make man, and Moses stopped writing. Heretics will read that and claim there are two powers, he said.
Noah plants cedar trees and cuts them down for 120 years, warning a generation that watches, mocks, and drowns without surprise.
