170 myths · Page 6 of 6
Sixty men stood around the king's bed with swords on their thighs. The books had already spilled into the street. He was not king of the bed.
Kohelet sounds like heresy until judgment returns in the last clause. The sages almost suppress the book, then keep it.
A king may keep two horses and eighteen wives, the Targum warns, because excess cavalry and desire open the road back to Egypt.
Solomon named the adulterer a man without a heart, and the sages watched wisdom leave his face the way light leaves a room.
Solomon swore he could gather wives and stay true. Moses swore hard cases were his. Heaven answered both with a case that would not bend.
Rome had rooms of lamps and chests of pearls. The letter still asked for a torch. They sent Rabbi Meir into the room alone.
Both men were called prophets. Moses looked at that shared name and wondered whether Torah had bought him anything death would not erase.
Solomon raised the last cedar. The dedication song still said of David. The king who would not go to bed had already paid for the fruit.
The angels nearly sang Holy to the first man. God dropped Adam into sleep so heaven could tell dust from the Throne.
The poles lightened halfway down the lane. Four men lost the wood for a breath, and the body rose while the street was still talking.
A runner passed the old man at the fork and waved without stopping. By dusk he was back in the dust with a thorn in his heel and no water left.
Pharaoh sat on the gold throne Solomon had sent as a marriage gift. He did not know the hidden steps. A metal lion found his leg.
The beams still smelled of cut cedar. He did not ask first for a long life. He asked God to keep a dead father's name warm.
David sat under cedar and hated the curtains over the Ark. Nathan said yes at dusk. By morning the House was not his to build.
Solomon put a vampire spirit to work cutting stone at the Temple. Then he handed it his seal ring and sent it to fetch the king of the demons.
Solomon leaves his palace half-built for thirteen years while God's House rises in seven, stones lifting themselves onto the courses without a rope.
A bird dropped a torn ox on the tower roof. Solomon's daughter climbed up at dawn, and a young man stood up out of the carcass.
The sages counted the kings and commoners shut out of eternity, and almost wrote Solomon among them, until fire drove them from the benches.
Benaiah crouched at the lioness's flank with a clay bowl against his chest. She was still eating the kid. The male above them did not rise.
He did not bring engines against the walls. He brought scribes and a paper. Solomon was dead, and a widow in Egypt was owed her marriage money.
