87 myths · Page 2 of 3
The fourth son had sold a brother, lost two sons to wickedness, and stumbled into scandal. Jacob still gave him the crown.
Before the stone left David's sling, something older and stranger had already struck Goliath. The giant felt it the moment David walked toward him.
Doeg watched David receive bread and a sword at Nob, then turned twenty-two letters of Torah into the accusation that destroyed a city of priests.
Rabbi Simon taught that singing after a miracle forgives the singer, and Deborah proved it when her voice rose over the battlefield.
David hid at Adullam and decided the anointing had been a cheat. Samuel had poured oil on his head for nothing, and Saul was still coming.
Psalm 19 says day pours speech to day, and the rabbis turned that into a chain: Joshua's miracles handed forward to Deborah, and Deborah's to Barak.
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.
Korah recruited followers with a story about a widow and her one field. Moses took the first fruits, then the tithe, then the wool off her two sheep.
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.
Psalm 45 opens with lilies, and the rabbis heard a rescue story: a woman spends herself to pull three condemned men out of the machinery of death.
The earth opened beneath their father and they were left suspended on a ledge inside Gehinnom (afterlife of judgment), and from there they composed the psalms.
Korah forced his way toward the altar and sank, while his sons were brought near the courts he tried to storm.
The Egyptian governor made small talk with the youngest brother. How many sons do you have? Ten. And what are they called?
He had killed eight hundred men in one engagement. The Torah promised a thousand to a man who kept it. David wanted to know about the gap.
Psalm 91 promised protection from the terror of night. The rabbis disagreed about what that terror was. Hezekiah lit every school in Jerusalem with Torah.
Psalm 106 holds a petition small enough to miss: remember me, O Lord. Midrash Tehillim gives God one answer. Your words are living with me, my child.
When Abraham defeated four kings to rescue Lot, the rabbis saw something beyond war. He was waking peoples who lived under divine shelter without knowing it.
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.
David's prayers were not petitions. The ancient rabbis said they physically altered the heavenly court and pulled angels into the world when he needed them.
An angel killed four of David's sons and the prophet Gad, then wiped the sword clean on David's clothes. His limbs shook for the rest of his life.
The stone Jacob used as a pillow at Bethel was the stone from which God had spread all creation outward. Jacob's dream showed him what would be built there.
Honi the Circle-Drawer wondered how exile could feel like a dream. Heaven answered by letting him sleep through a lifetime and wake up forgotten.
The hill had no flowers and no rocks, and the tree at its summit was made of horn. David sat down at its foot to see what would happen.
Moses recited Psalm 91 on Sinai to ward off demons, and when the Mishkan rose, the noon demon Ketev Meriri lost dominion over the world.
While digging the Temple foundations, David struck a shard that sealed the abyss, and when he lifted it, the waters of the deep began to rise toward the world.
David wanted his own name in the blessing beside Abraham's. God told him what Abraham had gone through to get it there. David said, test me too.
Solomon warned that a bird of heaven carries the voice. The midrash says that bird is an angel, and Saul's curse reached heaven as soon as he said it.
Saul's men watched the house all night and waited for morning. By then David was over the sill and gone, and there was goat's hair on the pillow.
Goliath fell forward. A man struck in the face falls backward. David spent the rest of his life on the question of who steered that stone.
To pray the Amidah is to bow all eighteen vertebrae into eighteen blessings, as weak prayers are lifted by strong ones and rivers raise their force.
