170 myths · Page 2 of 6
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.
Solomon found a silver plate in a statue's throat, but its dead king's warning only made sense after his own crown was taken away.
Solomon enters Proverbs without pretending wisdom was born in him; he was young, simple, and given prudence before God rejoiced.
The scribes waited. Solomon reached for a verse he had known at dawn. By night the next word was gone, and the crown answered nothing.
Twenty-four psalms left the gates shut. Solomon brought his father's coffin to the door, named David, and fire filled the House.
Below deck the crew talked as if the hold were empty. Two kav of gold dinars still lay under the merchant's hand.
Ahaz carried the infant toward Molekh's furnace. The child's skin already held seven years of fire in a thin smear of blood.
Seventy flames waited in the new sanctuary, five candelabras on the south wall and five on the north. Solomon lit the lamp that had crossed the wilderness.
Ashmedai brought a Cainite up from under the earth to confuse the king. Years later the two-headed son wanted two shares. Both mouths screamed as one.
Two children swore they would never marry without each other's blessing. Years later, she came with gold to buy her release. He refused to take a coin.
The serpent still had the man's neck when it quoted scripture. Solomon told it to get down. Then he told the man to finish the verse.
Three brothers worked for Solomon thirteen years. Two took gold when he offered them a choice. The third took advice. Only the third came home.
The Queen of Sheba came to find where Solomon's wisdom failed. She brought a gender test, a flower test, and finally a door that would not open.
She set a wooden well with iron buckets on the king's table. Solomon named the rouge tube before her hand had left the wood.
A spirit tore through Arabia and no army could stop it. Solomon sent a servant with a leather bottle and a ring engraved with the divine name.
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.
The army filled the valley of the ants. One queen ordered her colony to run, and Solomon halted every horse under him to listen.
Solomon needed a worm that could split rock without a blade. The king of demons kept the secret under a sealed well on a far mountain.
Asmodeus wore Solomon's face and ruled his throne. Solomon wandered for three years telling people his name while they laughed.
Two men were lurking near the palace walls. Solomon put on servant's clothes, introduced himself, said he had a key, and proposed a robbery.
Hezekiah directed his scribes to copy Isaiah, Proverbs, and the Song of Songs. Then he buried a book of cures, and the rabbis praised both decisions.
A Levite named Shimur led a group east to Babylon and hid the Temple's greatest treasures in a tower. The menorah (the lampstand) had twenty-six pearls on.
They piled clothes on the old king and he stayed cold. He sent for Solomon and named the men his own sword had never reached.
Her skin was the color of myrtle. She ate vegetables in the palace and told her heart to seek God's face. A second body went in at night.
Ten fattened oxen, twenty more off the grass, a hundred sheep. That was one ordinary day, and a thousand women cooked all of it.
The Torah gave kings three specific prohibitions. Solomon knew all three and violated all three. His reasoning was brilliant. His reasoning was wrong.
Samuel mourned for Saul until the day Samuel himself died. He had made the king and he watched what the king became. The grief was his own making.
Solomon's legendary throne was not just a seat of power. It moved, tested every visitor, and punished rulers who lied before it.
One of his wives asked him to bow to her father's idols. He had already ruled that women do not count, she said, so what harm was it? He bowed.
One Temple candelabra came out of the mold heavier than the wilderness lamp by a single coin's weight. It went back into the furnace eighty times.
