170 myths · Page 6 of 6
Sixty armed men stood around the king's bed every night because he was afraid of the dark. He had once ruled from one end of the earth to the other.
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 sent word to the sages: send us one of your torches. The sages argued about what that meant, then 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.
David vowed not to enter his bed until the Lord had a place. Solomon raised the stones, but the song of dedication still carries David's name.
The angels nearly sang Holy to the first man. God dropped Adam into sleep so heaven could tell dust from the Throne.
At death the angels asked what creatures said of the man. Praise lifted his bier into the air. Slander, like serpent venom, spreads past the first bite.
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 down on the gold throne Solomon had sent as a marriage payment. He did not know the mechanism. A lion of gold tore into his leg.
David prepared Temple stone for forty years. Nebuchadnezzar burned that house in the same span. Solomon stood inside and begged God to remember his father.
David wants to build God's house while enemies still circle. First seat the throne, then cut off Amalek, then raise the Temple stones.
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.
Solomon read in the stars that his daughter would wed a pauper, so he sealed her in a tower at sea. Then an eagle dropped one onto her roof.
The sages counted the kings and commoners shut out of eternity, and almost wrote Solomon among them, until fire drove them from the benches.
Solomon's eagle carried him past the mountains of darkness and home by dark, but the cure for a dying Persian king waited in a lion's pit.
Shishak never broke the walls. He came to Jerusalem with scribes and a claim on paper. His widowed daughter was owed her marriage money from Solomon.
