170 myths · Page 4 of 6
Shemot Rabbah places Moses, David, and Solomon before a God who lifts and lowers like a wheel, then demands that Torah and mercy govern the throne.
When Moses's final day arrived, Devarim Rabbah says the sun refused to set and the day itself filed a complaint before God about being forced to end.
For forty days the young king ate nothing, and wisdom came down to him. At Sinai it went the other way. The letters lifted off the broken stone.
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.
Twelve princes each believed the priesthood should have been his. Moses cut all twelve staffs out of one beam so nobody could argue afterward.
The animals walked off the ark and would not take an order. God gave Noah back their fear and held their obedience back for a king not yet born.
Solomon's hidden name means gatherer. He carried a clay jar through Jerusalem collecting one Torah line per sage, one trait per visit, one warning per king.
Solomon chased every pleasure under the sun and called it vanity. Kohelet Rabbah says he was waiting for Isaiah to finish the sentence he could not.
Ashmedai had worked under Solomon's orders while the Temple went up. Then the king sinned, and the demon put him off his own throne.
David cursed a murderer and the curse ran down his bloodline for generations. A king's words do not expire. They wait.
Something drank from the boy's thumb every night until he could not lift a chisel. Solomon gave him a ring with God's name cut into it.
Solomon set Beelzeboul and the powers of darkness to dig his Temple while Benaiah met a queen on the road and shone like the morning star.
A donkey whispers a sly trick to the weary ox, never knowing their master understands the speech of beasts and will turn the scheme back on him.
On the night Solomon weds Pharaoh's daughter, an angel plants a reed in the sea, and the silt that gathers will one day burn Jerusalem.
Solomon mapped the sea and spoke with ants, but four roads left no marker he could follow, and he confessed he was once simple.
Solomon hands a builder a silver goblet that fuses his wife's mouth to her lover's, and a robber on the road exposes a second wife's heart.
Hezekiah carried his two small sons toward the study house. Above his head they argued whether his bald scalp suited frying fish or offerings to idols.
Thirty-three steps of gold, lions and eagles that moved, and six steps of justice that tested whether a king deserved to sit and judge at all.
A proud king tears the verse that names his fall from the holy book, and a demon in deerskin rides home to sit on his abandoned throne.
Solomon's golden throne was a machine of restrained beasts, and a herald cried a forbidden law at every step he climbed toward judgment.
A snake that strangled the man who saved it, a stolen cow, and an egg sued for its unborn chickens all come before the boy king.
The Queen of Sheba crossed a desert to expose Solomon as a fraud. He sat her on a floor of glass that looked like water, and the testing began.
Summoned before Solomon's seal, a restless demon confesses it is what became of the Nephilim, and the wise king binds it to labor on his Temple.
An Amalekite rode into Ziklag with Saul's crown, expecting a reward for finishing the wounded king. David had him cut down where he knelt.
He cut his hair when it grew heavy and weighed it in public. A terebinth in the forest caught those locks. Joab found him dangling and drove in three spears.
The Temple stood finished and its doors stayed shut for almost a year. The streets laughed at Bath-sheba's son. Then fire fell from heaven.
Asmodeus said his business was wrecking marriages. Solomon chained him and made him haul water jars, ten at a time, past fish liver burning on a reed.
Ahijah promised Jeroboam a throne equal to David's if he stayed worthy. Pride refused to stand while Rehoboam sat, so calves rose at Bethel and Dan.
A king called one laborer out of the field for a walk. The others stayed at work all day. At evening the man lined up for wages, having worked two hours.
Solomon made the shields of gold. Rehoboam replaced them with bronze. The kings kept shrinking until Zedekiah, whose eyes were put out.
