494 myths · Page 14 of 17
Entering God's throne room required the right songs and knowing which angels would try to destroy you. Rabbi Ishmael asked how it could be done safely.
Ezekiel wades into a river that grows past crossing - ankle, knee, waist, then beyond reach. A vision of healing waters the future Temple will release.
Ezekiel was lifted to Jerusalem in vision and found twenty-five men in the Temple courtyard with their backs to the altar, facing east, bowing to the sun.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob each encountered the divine, but Ezekiel by the Chebar Canal saw something none of them could describe. The rabbis traced why.
Moses sang about divine arrows drunk with blood on the edge of Canaan. Six centuries later, Ezekiel announced that the day Moses described had finally arrived.
Moses saw God most clearly of all the prophets. Ezekiel saw through nine clouded panes. So why is Ezekiel's vision so much stranger and more detailed?
God addressed Ezekiel as ben adam, son of man, beside the Chebar River in exile. Vayikra Rabbah says the word was not a warning but an act of affection.
Ezekiel stands inside storm wind and fire where a word holds two opposites at once, silence and speech, stillness and flame.
Inside the fish, two lamps lit the dark and a pearl hung from the ceiling so Jonah could see every wonder in the deep.
The shortest prophetic book is one chapter long. The rabbis said its author was chosen because he had lived the exact inverse of Esau's life.
Swallowed whole, Jonah found a diamond burning in the fish's belly, then learned the fish was about to be fed to Leviathan, with him still inside.
A prophet pays for passage in the wrong direction, planning to drown rather than let Nineveh's repentance shame Israel before God.
When Jonah boarded at Joppa to flee toward Tarshish, a targeted storm descended on his vessel alone while every other ship on that sea sailed on undisturbed.
The lot fell on Jonah three times. He confessed. The sea was still rising. Still the sailors rowed for shore before they would throw him in.
Inside the fish, Jonah had light, space, and no urgency. He sat there for three days without praying once, until God sent a pregnant fish to change his mind.
Nineveh's king ordered children separated from nursing mothers and animals from their young. The sound of the city crying out together could not be dismissed.
Habakkuk was delivering stew to field workers when an angel appeared, seized him by the hair, and transported him hundreds of miles to Daniel in the lion den.
Jonah did not flee from fear. He fled because he knew God would forgive Nineveh. He refused to save the empire destroying Israel.
God's name never appears in Esther, but the rabbis found the Temple hidden in its numbers. A phrase from Amos and a phrase from Esther share the same gematria.
Nimrod lit a furnace in Casdim and nine hundred thousand came to watch Abram burn. The grasshopper climbed the trellis. Then it fell.
Esau waits for his father to die. Pharaoh counts a swarming people. Haman seals a letter to kill every Jew in one day. Each plot is smarter. Each fails.
When God told Jacob his children would be like the dust of the earth, it sounded like an insult. The rabbis of Midrash Tehillim knew it was the opposite.
The Midrash Tehillim imagines a World to Come so transformed that trees and stones become guardians of the law. Moses and Daniel both glimpsed it firsthand.
When four rabbis saw foxes on the Temple Mount, three wept. Akiva laughed. His laughter was the only logically consistent response to prophecy.
David's vow of silence opens into a teaching that the tongue ranks above idolatry in danger, and al tashchet names who kept the hunted king alive.
A child is drowning in a river while the current rises. The soul sees its Creator filling every direction and cannot find a way to leave.
God wraps Himself in light and rides clouds into history. Then David watches hostile mouths open, and understands what Torah does when they do.
David's flesh rests in hope after death. A messianic king descends like rain on mown grass, judging the poor before he turns to anything else.
Goliath blaspheming in the valley. David watching. The giant is armed and enormous, but David has just seen the one weakness armor cannot hide.
Coarse flax snaps when you beat it. Fine flax grows stronger. God knows the difference, and tests only the kind that can survive the pressure.
