228 myths · Page 2 of 8
Two exiled angels used Jacob's dream ladder to return to heaven, but four empires climbed after them, and Rome would not stop.
The officers of Israel came out of the palace beaten and found Moses at the gate. You have put a sword in their hand to kill us, they said.
Cain killed his brother and then, the rabbis say, invented repentance. Adam heard about it and struck his own face. He had not figured it out yet.
On Shavuot in Nineveh the harps were already going. Tobit stepped past a body in the street that the king had ordered left there.
The flood ended, but Noah would not open the ark until God swore. On dry ground, his grief turned into an accusation against heaven.
He woke among the sheep with empty hands. A brass shield lay in the grass on the walk home. He hid the rest of the gift for a hundred years.
The gold was powder and nobody in the camp would eat. God answered the fasting by calling them His children, then swore their tears would turn to rejoicing.
The beggar said he was king. They set a bowl of grits before him. In Jerusalem a man with hidden feet still sat on Solomon's throne.
Forty thousand men left the carpet when the king said there was none like him. The wind would not lift them until he used the word on himself.
Rain hit the roofs on the first of Nisan. The last grain was still in the sacks. Joel told the hungry to bury it in the fields.
Three days after the sea split, Israel met water it could not drink and learned that confession can sweeten a bitter world.
The quill stopped at Let us make. Below the mountain a calf had gone quiet. Moses shook, then asked whose people these were.
David fled Jerusalem weeping, but a psalm rose from him because punishment still carried signs of mercy, survival, and return.
Ahab hunted the prophet through dry ravines. Elijah would not return while the king still stood unbent. Heaven answered with soil.
Cain answered the verdict with a verse. You carry the whole world, he said, and you cannot carry me? God took half the sentence off.
Three men advised Pharaoh about the Hebrews. One was thrown out for defending them, one said nothing useful, and one of them thought of the river.
The prophet did not name the sin. He asked the king to judge a rich man who stole a poor neighbor's only lamb. David called for death.
A horse paced in the air above the crowd. Enoch said it had come for him. Eight hundred thousand men followed him out of the city anyway.
The firstborn was thirty years old when he committed the act. God struck him with a plague in his loins. Jacob's prayer saved his life.
When the king who defiled the Temple fell from his chariot and began to rot alive, he made a vow to God he had spent years destroying. God did not accept it.
Judah walked past her on the road to Timnah. She asked heaven not to send her away empty. An angel of passion turned him back.
On his deathbed Judah named every strength he had possessed, then told his sons what had undone him. The wine did what war never could.
He stacked the priest's tools in the square and said he was too old. Nobody believed the age. The city closed every door on him.
He stood on a stone until the water reached his neck. He told the fish not to beat their own breasts. The Jordan held still.
Seth's descendants lived near Paradise for generations, pious and untouched. Then they looked down at the Cainites and made a choice they could not take back.
Seven hundred thousand people begged at the ark door and Noah shouted them down. He had been standing outside it himself a moment earlier.
His brothers took the crown off him and put him out of the family. A Canaanite king threw him a feast, and the king's daughter kept his cup full.
Judah saved Joseph from murder but sold him into slavery. His years in Adullam, with dead sons and a dead wife, were the price of a half-done rescue.
Standing before Egypt's Viceroy, Judah invoked the law of companions taken together. Joseph answered that only the one who stole should remain.
Reuben told Jacob he had liver pain. The real sickness was guilt over Bilhah and Joseph. What followed was seven years of grueling, silent penance.
