310 myths · Page 5 of 11
Josiah's inspectors toured every home in Judah and found no idols. The people had sawed each idol in half and mounted one half on each side of the front door.
Nebuchadnezzar built a golden idol that could speak the divine Name, using the High Priest's stolen diadem. Daniel dismantled the illusion by asking to kiss it.
Daniel had outlived Babylon, but Jerusalem was still rubble. Persian officials could find nothing to charge him with, so they made his prayers illegal.
The field hands never got their lunch. An angel took the pot and the prophet holding it, by a fistful of hair, from Judea to a sealed pit in Babylon.
Mordecai fasted a week over the Temple cups sitting on a Persian banquet table. The answer came back as seven angels with names like Annihilation.
Mordecai's speech before the fast named every protection that was gone. No king, no prophet, no escape route. Then he asked the people to pray anyway.
When Mordecai called the fast, he skipped every Jewish precedent and quoted Jonah's Nineveh word for word. His people were stunned.
When the decree went out, Mordecai did not weep quietly. He pressed the covenant like a creditor, demanding God answer for the oath sworn to the patriarchs.
Haman had Hathach killed to cut off Mordecai and Esther. God replaced their go-between with Michael and Gabriel.
Three days face down in ash, then silk and gold shoes. She told God plainly that she was not asking because she thought herself without blemish.
Esther made it through three chambers, then stopped. Haman's sons were already dividing her jewels. Then she cried out from Psalm 22.
Esther had the king's ear and said nothing. She invited Haman to dinner instead. Then she invited him again. The sages debated her strategy for centuries.
Three days before, Susa had wept in sackcloth. Now Mordecai rode on the royal horse in royal robes and burst into Psalm 30.
Watching from a window as Haman led the honored man through the street, his daughter grabbed a chamber pot to throw on Mordecai. She had the wrong man.
After Purim, Esther asked the sages to inscribe her story in the Hebrew Bible. They refused twice. Then she quoted Moses to them.
Wind split the mountains. Earthquake shook the ground. Fire swept through. In none of these was God present. Then came fine silence.
While the earthly Temple burned, Michael never left the heavenly altar, offering Israel's prayers as the high priest who never rested.
Rabbi Tarfon finds a single embedded word in the manna passage and concludes that God delivered the bread on His own palm.
Ahaz meant to give his son to Moloch. The boy's mother rubbed him with the blood of a salamander first, and the fire could not have him.
She was not a beauty. Her skin was sallow, her height ordinary, and she was seventy-five years old the day they walked her into the palace.
Saul's soldiers were outside. Inside, David had rock, breath, and a voice. He cried out twice, once for rescue and once against killing his own people.
In the first moments after creation, every animal prostrated itself before Adam as if he were their god. What Adam did next set the pattern for all worship.
God told Samuel he had placed himself between two good byways, and named that position as the reason for three gifts: life, righteousness, and glory.
Isaac was blind and near death. He took Esau's head in his hands and asked God for mercy. The answer came back without softening.
Balaam could not curse Israel from above. So he drew up a plan to have Israel destroy itself from within, and it worked.
Samuel prays through the night, and the prayer strikes before the sword does. Agag lives one day too long and fathers the line that will become Haman.
The two eunuchs picked a language nobody in that courtyard was supposed to know. The man sitting at the gate knew seventy of them.
Moses prays 515 times at the Jordan's edge, draws a circle in the dust, and prays until heaven trembles. God finally says: enough, do not continue.
Answer the prayer leader out loud in synagogue and you are keeping a rule from Moses' last poem. He calls the name. The people praise it.
Tamar was about to be burned alive when her evidence vanished. She prayed, and God sent Michael to recover what had been lost before the sentence could fall.
