310 myths · Page 1 of 11
Samuel heard his name in the sanctuary night and ran to Eli three times before the old priest taught him how to answer God.
No one ever saw a handsbreadth of palm or heel uncovered on a king of Saul's line, Michal told him. David answered with the word she had chosen.
A prophet in the court of the guard weighed out silver for farmland he would never plow. Outside the wall, Babylon was building its ramps.
When the Temple burned the Presence wept at the last wall and walked out with Israel, as she had walked into Egypt, Babylon, Eilam, and Edom.
The Romans tore Rabbi Akiva's flesh with iron combs while he smiled. He had been waiting his whole life to love God with everything he had.
The emperor asked what the Torah does to a man who sells his brother. The scholars named death. Then he asked which generation still owed that death.
Sennacherib's letter named the gods of every city he had burned. Hezekiah spread the scroll on the Temple floor and asked God to look at it.
A shepherd waits at a gate one body wide and lifts each head with his crook to count it. Two of the books are sealed at once. The thick one stays open.
God decides to tell Abraham what he is about to do to Sodom. Abraham recognizes an opening and presses it, bargaining God down from fifty righteous to ten.
Moses, Aaron, and Hur climb a hill above the battle with Amalek, and the names they carry up are not the living but the dead.
The brothers cut a young goat's throat and dipped the coat in its blood. Their father believed it for more than twenty years.
Joab said the count would add no man. David ordered it anyway. Seventy thousand fell before the angel stopped over a threshing floor.
Mordechai told his students to run. They stayed. Haman came not with a rope, but with the king's clothes and a horse.
Israel had already done the sums. Fifty shekels for a seducer, thirty for a goring ox, a hundred for slander. Not one of those, God said, is the price here.
Solomon built the Temple and knew its prayer would one day be needed. Daniel stood in exile and tested whether that prayer still worked. Both were right.
Ezekiel saw four creatures whose wings sounded like rushing water. Then the wings went slack. They were not resting: their legs are straight and do not bend.
Moses's blessing for Judah seemed addressed to a future danger. The rabbis traced it to one terrifying moment at the Red Sea when Judah jumped in first.
Mordechai named the festival sitting inside her three days. Esther did not blink. If the people died, the holiday would have no one left to keep it.
When Ahab mocked the prophets and the decree against Israel was sealed, Elijah did not pray alone. He ran to the fathers of the world for help.
Jacob ran until the sun was gone. He struck the ground at Bethel. Stones went under his head because the place had stopped him.
Eve stands outside the gate of paradise begging heaven for relief while Adam lies dying inside and two angels keep watch at the door.
Sarah's tent had gone dark and empty. Then Isaac led Rebekah inside, and the cloud returned, the candle relit, the bread rose.
Three days without food. The decree was already on the road. On the palace floor Esther named herself an orphan and began with Abraham.
On his last night, Moses would not bless Reuben and Judah quietly. He argued for two sons who had no grounds to stand on, and refused to stop.
Twenty-two years of barrenness. Isaac took Rebecca to the mountain where he had once been bound and laid on the altar. He knew what the place could do.
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.
After the Kishon swallowed Sisera's iron, two travelers sat down at the same inn. One ordered the whole table. His teeth did not survive the bill.
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.
Israel watched another nation's lamps burn and told God it was jealous. God answered with one memory: a knife, shaking hands, blood on the doorposts.
A king with armies and a throne knelt alone at night. David told God his soul was leaking, confessed he knew nothing, and begged Him to teach him.
