228 myths · Page 3 of 8
Judah killed lions bare-handed. Wine and beauty brought him low twice. On his deathbed he named both failures so his children could see the terrain.
After Joshua died, Israel needed a leader. God's method was a purity test followed by lots, and the man selected was almost nobody's first guess.
Israel fasted seven days before heaven moved, and heaven did not move for their sake. Deborah won the war. Then the gift went out of her mid-verse.
The Ark was present. The Urim and Thummim had said to advance. Israel advanced and lost. Then Phinehas stood before God and asked what was actually happening.
At Mizpah, Samuel gave Israel special water to drink. Those who had worshipped idols could not speak afterward. Most confessed before they lifted the cup.
Samuel was the most incorruptible judge Israel ever had. His sons took bribes. The story does not end there: one of them became the prophet Joel.
Before attacking Amalek, Saul asked God what wrong the children had done. A voice answered: do not be overjust. He ignored the warning and it destroyed him.
David's sin with Bathsheba was real. The rabbis did not look away. But they also asked why God would allow the most righteous king to fall this far.
The Temple was complete, the Ark was ready, and the gates refused to open. Solomon prayed until he understood whose name had to be spoken.
Elisha's most gifted disciple inscribed the Divine Name on golden calves and made them utter the words of Sinai. Nothing after that could be undone.
Isaiah expected the sick king to come to him. Hezekiah expected the prophet to come to the palace. Neither moved, and God had to force the standoff to end.
Isaiah pushed him into the marriage. The king already knew what his sons would be, and he found out how right he was on a walk to the house of study.
King Amon hunted down every Torah scroll in Judah and burned them. One scroll survived in the Temple wall. His son Josiah wept when he read it.
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.
Jonah did not flee from fear. He fled because he knew God would forgive Nineveh. He refused to save the empire destroying Israel.
The Torah of Moses had been lost in the Temple so long no one searched for it. When it turned up in the walls, the king who heard it wept.
She was ten years old when the sea split and fifty when she asked to be let in. In between she ran a house on the wall of Jericho.
She went out the way a king goes out of a house he will not see again, stopping at the door, putting her mouth to the stone, saying goodbye to the pillars.
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.
Reuben planned to rescue Joseph from the pit. He left before the caravan arrived and came back to find the boy gone.
Resh Lakish was working as a robber when he saw Rabbi Yohanan in the river, leapt across, and never went back to the life he left on the bank.
The rabbis could not agree whether Pharaoh drowned at the Red Sea or walked out to rule Nineveh as a witness to God's power.
When Babylon burned Jerusalem, the rabbis said the real fire was aimed at Israel, not at the empire that lit the torch.
The Torah says Moses trespassed against God at Meribah. The rabbis read the Hebrew causative and found a heavier charge: he caused others to trespass.
Lot set unleavened cakes in front of two travelers and it only seemed to him that they ate. Before the night ended the whole city was at his door.
The Torah gave kings three specific prohibitions. Solomon knew all three and violated all three. His reasoning was brilliant. His reasoning was wrong.
Nimrod threw Abraham into the furnace and Abraham walked out alive. What followed the miracle was the part the tradition cared about most.
A skeptic demanded the whole Torah on one foot. Hillel gave him a single sentence, then added three words that turned the summary into an obligation.
