85 myths · Page 2 of 3
Rabbi Yishmael put the mark on the inside of the doorframe. No neighbor could count the painted houses, and no Egyptian ever saw one.
Hands shook over the lintel in Goshen. Lamb blood was not enough. They added the blood of the covenant, and God said live twice.
Miriam stood a short while by the river to see what would become of the basket. Years later all Israel waited seven days in the desert for her.
Ezekiel opens with a stutter, hayoh hayah, the word of the Lord was, was. The first marks prophecy in Israel, the second in Babylonia among the exiles.
The Nile ran red first. Pharaoh did not bend. By midnight even the calves in the stalls were dead, and no idol could boast.
She came up from the river with her hair still wet. On the bank a clerk wrote that the women had dirtied the water on purpose.
A runner reached the oaks of Mamre with the news that Lot was gone. Abraham armed three hundred and eighteen house servants and went after four kings.
The other wives had no papers. For one daughter of good family he dated the month, the week, and which years would carry a second Adar.
After the locusts he still wanted the herds left as chains. By midnight every firstborn was dead, and he sent for Moses in the dark.
A wind from the first garden reached Moses' roasting lamb. Mouths watered all the way across Egypt. He would not let an uncut man taste it.
On the night Egypt broke, no dog sharpened its tongue. Israel walked out under a silence Heaven later paid back in full.
The plate held matzah and maror. A son asked what the work was to them. The father answered with a night that no longer named him.
At the hairsbreadth of midnight, no angel takes the blow. God walks Egypt alone while firstborn fall and blood marks the doors.
On the night of the tenth plague, Israel carves blood into the threshold while neighbors keep twelve months of silence and trust.
On the tenth plague night, clay images of dead sons crumbled to powder and house-dogs dragged old bones into the courtyards of Egypt.
On the fourteenth, between the evenings, Israel slaughters the lamb in the Temple courts or is cut off for missing the fixed season.
The cattle walked empty. Households swung wet dough onto their own backs. Egypt's gods left with them as lumps of metal.
On the fourteenth of Nisan, when the day falls on Shabbat, Israel holds the knife while two laws collide and only one may rule the hour.
With wet flour stranded on a mountain road before Passover, the Baal Shem Tov weeps until Elijah answers, and fire later crowns his dancers.
God cut the covenant with Abraham one spring night. On that same date angels told him Sarah would bear Isaac, and later Israel walked out of Egypt.
Moses made the elders pull their hands off Egypt's idols before anyone touched a lamb. Four hundred years leave residue. Blood went on the lintels that night.
A woman in Goshen dug one hard crumb out of the mortar with her fingernail. Lamb's blood was drying on the door, and her firstborn son watched.
On Nisan night Israel ate whole lamb from open flame with horehound and lettuce before midnight, loins girded, staff ready.
Israel stayed behind blood-marked lintels while Egypt screamed, because once the destroyer received leave he would not sort righteous from wicked in the street.
Toward evening they slaughtered. At sunset they began to eat. At midnight, the hour Israel left Egypt, leftover flesh met fire and not the morning.
A child asked if the Destroyer could read Hebrew. No one laughed. The father dipped hyssop and told them to keep the door shut.
On Passover night Isaac sent Esau to hunt while storehouses of dew opened. Jacob went forced and weeping in royal clothes, and ten blessings crowned him.
Before the first Passover, Israel must circumcise to eat the lamb. Eden winds carry the roast scent, two bloods mingle, and God kisses each doorway.
A jar of old dough sat in the corner of the house. The lamb hung ready, but no one could cut its throat until the last crumbs were burned.
A kneading bowl only goes into an oven that is already hot. The frogs went in anyway, and centuries later three men in Babylon did the arithmetic.
