1,693 texts · Page 13 of 36
David and his son Solomon agreed on most things — but not on this one. David, in the Psalms, cried out: "The dead do not praise the Lord, nor any who go down into silence" (Psalms ...
A rich man once sent his only son abroad to trade in distant markets. During the son's long absence the old father died, and he had left his will in the safekeeping of a trusted sl...
Ashmedai, king of the demons, wanted to humiliate Solomon, whose wisdom was famous in every kingdom. So Ashmedai brought up from the netherworld a man with two heads, a living curi...
In the time of King David (who reigned c. 1010 to 970 BCE) there were three years of famine across the land of Israel. A poor man with nine sons and daughters went without food for...
The Talmud preserves a strange tradition about how Rome came to be. When Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh — a politically brilliant match that would one day haunt the house ...
When Solomon set out to build the Temple, he faced a strange obstacle hidden in plain sight in the Torah. Scripture says that "the house, when it was in building, was built of ston...
Someone once asked King Solomon about a famously bitter line he had written in (Ecclesiastes 7:28) — "One man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not ...
King Solomon — master of seventy languages, including the speech of birds and insects (1 Kings 4:33) — was boasting. He had spent an afternoon detailing to his court the strength o...
When Solomon needed the king of the demons to help build the Temple without iron, he sent his captain Benaiah son of Jehoiada into the wilderness. Benaiah carried two weapons that ...
King Solomon had two trusted secretaries, Eliharaf and Ahijah, the sons of Shisha. One morning, as they entered the throne room to begin their duties, they noticed something that c...
The servants of King David were sitting together eating eggs. One of them finished his egg while the others were still eating theirs, and he felt embarrassed to be sitting empty-ha...
The Talmud preserves a strange journey. Benaiah son of Jehoiada has captured Ashmedai, the king of the demons, and leads him bound toward Solomon's court. Along the road, the demon...
The story picks up after Ashmedai, king of the demons, has seized Solomon's magical ring and flung it into the sea. Power stripped, Solomon is no longer Solomon. The demon king hur...
A visitor arrived at the royal court of Solomon, hoping for an audience with the wisest of kings. He was not admitted. Three days passed, and each day he was told to wait. On the f...
The sages of the Talmud taught that the yetzer hara, the evil inclination within every human being, goes by seven different names in Scripture. Each prophet saw a different face of...
On the day Solomon sought to bring the Aron, the Ark of the Covenant, into the newly finished Temple, the gates refused to open. Solomon stood before them and began to recite psalm...
Rabbi Levi taught that on the day Solomon carried the Ark into the Temple, something unusual happened to the wood. The beams of cedar that lined the walls and the ceilings, long si...
King Solomon needed the Shamir, a creature no larger than a barley grain but strong enough to split any stone, because the Torah forbade iron tools on the Temple's stones. To find ...
The verse in (1 Kings 4:30) tells us that Solomon's wisdom exceeded the wisdom of all the east and all of Egypt. The midrash on Kings, preserved in Yalkut Eliezer, offers a story t...
Gaster's exemplum No. 381 preserves a cascading folktale from the Midrash Aseret HaDibrot, the Midrash on the Ten Commandments, all arranged around the commandment to honor one's f...
Once Solomon had chained the demon king Ashmedai, he held him captive until the Temple was completed. When the work was done, the king grew curious. "What is your superiority over ...
There was a season when Solomon was not Solomon. The demon king Ashmedai had stolen his signet ring — the one engraved with the Ineffable Name — and taken his place on the throne o...
When Solomon completed the First Temple and prepared to carry the Ark of the Covenant through the main gates, he opened his mouth to sing the words of Psalm 24: Lift up your heads,...
A young man rode from Tiberias to Betar and met a young woman who fell in love with him on sight. They married within days. A year later she asked him to bring her to visit her par...
A man walked a hot road carrying a jug of milk. He heard a thin, desperate noise near the verge. A snake, dying of thirst. The man knelt, tilted the jug, and gave the snake enough ...
When the Torah laid out the rules for Israel's king, it gave three specific warnings. In Deuteronomy 17, Moses wrote that the king shall not acquire for himself many horses. He sha...
King Solomon wanted to build the Temple from unhewn stone. The Torah forbade iron tools on the altar, and Solomon, meticulous as always, extended the prohibition to the whole sanct...
When King Solomon was stripped of his throne — cast out by Ashmedai, the king of the demons, and forced to wander his own kingdom as a beggar — he discovered that hospitality has t...
King Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre once marched their armies to opposite banks of a river. Tension rose. Solomon, worried his soldiers would collapse in the sun, summoned birds to...
King Solomon warned a skilled builder — the man who had constructed his palace — that the builder's wife was unfaithful. The builder refused to believe it. Solomon did not argue. H...
Three young men apprenticed themselves to King Solomon for three years. When the term ended they approached the king, disappointed. They had seen wonders at court but believed they...
A man walking across a frozen field saw a snake lying stiff in the snow. Touched by pity, he picked up the creature, placed it inside his shirt against his chest, and continued on....
The throne of King Solomon, the legend-weavers said, was a marvel of engineering and meaning. It was made entirely of gold, with thirty-three steps ascending to the seat. On every ...
King Solomon once wrote in Ecclesiastes, “One man out of a thousand I have found, but a woman among all those I have not found” (Ecclesiastes 7:28). It was a line his m...
The Talmud in Gittin tells one of the strangest stories about King Solomon. The king, in his pride, once compelled Ashmedai, the chief of demons, to serve him. Through a chain of t...
Before he was king, Solomon was a young boy with a gift for untangling impossible lawsuits. The tradition collected in the Parables of Solomon preserves one such case. A wealthy an...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 17:16) takes the blessing the Lord pronounces over Sarah and stretches it forward across centuries. I will bless in her body, and will also give ...
(Genesis 19:38), in the Targum's rendering: "And the younger also brought forth a son, and she called his name Bar-Ammi, because he was the son of her father. He is the father of t...
Instead of doing it all Himself, He delegates a portion of the task. To whom? To Chokhmah (Wisdom), Wisdom. "Let us make man," He says, as it's written in (Genesis 1:26). A seeming...
It's not just random geography. It's a lesson in humility and the power of inner space. The Book of Numbers, Bamidbar in Hebrew, opens with the famous line: "The Lord spoke to Mose...
Bamidbar Rabbah, the rabbinic commentary on the Book of Numbers, dives right into this question with a surprisingly poetic starting point. The verse we're looking at is "The Lord s...
It might seem like a minor detail, but according to Jewish tradition, it reveals something profound about God's love for His people. The text we're diving into today comes from Bam...
In the desert, the Israelites found that strength, not just in their faith, but also in their organization, in their very banners. "Each at his banner, with the insignias," says th...
Sounds simple enough. But there’s so much more packed into that little phrase than meets the eye. It’s all about beauty, acceptance, and, ultimately, our relationship with the Divi...
The book of Numbers, in the Torah, gives us a fascinating glimpse when it describes how the Israelites camped in the wilderness. But it's not just a dry description; it’s a symboli...
These aren't mistakes. They're invitations to delve deeper, to wrestle with the text and uncover hidden layers of meaning. Consider this: In (Hosea 2:1), we read about the children...
In Bamidbar Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic teachings on the Book of Numbers, we find a fascinating discussion sparked by the verse "it will be that instead…" from (Hosea 2:1). Th...
Bamidbar Rabbah 2 dives into this very idea, opening with a quote from Hosea (2:1): "The number of the children of Israel will be..." It then launches into a fascinating exploratio...
