34 myths · Page 1 of 2
Each story names the sources it was written from.
They kept their voices low outside the tents. Nothing happened while the cloud stood there. Then it lifted, and Aaron saw white spreading on his sister's skin.
When a brick shattered, the work stopped and the men wept. When a man fell the same distance, they stepped over him and called for the next course.
Gad pulled a lamb out of a bear's mouth and had to put it down. Joseph went home and told their father the handmaids' sons were eating the herd.
They buried themselves in sand up to the neck so the cloaks would last. When they walked out, a plowed field caught fire under one look.
His wife sat inside combing her hair. A neighbor knocked. He said she was not at home, and both of his sons were dead before the week ended.
She went up to complain about sharing the sky and came back down smaller. Every month since, Israel burns a goat for a sin God says is His.
Six hundred thousand people backed away from Sinai saying the voice would kill them if it spoke again. Moses was told to come closer.
Saul confessed in the same words David used. Then he asked to be honored before the elders, and tore Samuel's robe grabbing after him.
Doeg the Edomite told King Saul nothing but true things about the priest at Nob. Eighty five priests died for it, and so did Saul, and so did Doeg.
Miriam led the women with timbrels after the sea closed. Then she spoke against Moses and spent seven days shut outside the camp with a skin disease.
Hands, feet, and eyes split the glory of a king's cure. Then the tongue named the milk for a dog, and a rope waited in the hall.
The tower was still climbing when speech broke. A man called for tar and was handed a tool he did not know how to use.
The neighbor's children ate with color in the wine. She asked what was wrong with that night work. He walked roads he did not know.
At Sinai every word leaves God's mouth at once. Death and life, wound and healing, sea and staff reverse in the same undivided speech.
Tzipporah walked the camp with a bare neck. Miriam asked why the prophet's wife looked like a widow while he still breathed.
The donkey turned her head and spoke. On the heights Balaam pushed a curse and felt metal stop it. Balak's silver sat unused.
A man lied to the High Priest to hide a deliberate sin, and the false word turned back to strike his own children with leprosy.
Solomon read the ban on many wives the way a man reads a door he will not lock. The smallest letter of the verse sued him anyway.
Dreams came thick after too much talk. Anger sat in the chest like a kettle. Two sages argued heaven's seats while the living spilled careless speech.
A man in the market shouted that he was selling purple wool. The king had him brought in and asked what he was selling, and the man said nothing.
Across a table without wood, the Soul folded its patience shut. The Intellect had to speak in order, or the room stayed empty of understanding.
Every time the sages pushed open the door of the study house, the two men pushed in behind them. Heads nodded with the argument. Lips moved. No sound came.
A man went through the towns shouting that he had the drug of life for sale. Rabbi Yannai's daughter heard him from the house and ran to her father.
Who is the Lord, Pharaoh said in the palace. Hail later forced the same mouth to call Him righteous. At the sea it only wanted to flee.
A raven landed on the gunwale and croaked. Only the son understood. His father heard mockery and called for the sea.
David's children could parse forty-nine faces of purity. They marched out and fell because a mouth in their own camp had already opened.
Messengers told David that all his sons were dead. He tore his clothes and fell to the floor. Jonadab said only Amnon, before any rider confirmed it.
He hid in the inner room because his daughter told him to watch. The kiss on her forehead was the same greeting as every other day.
He unrolled his cloth in a third town that week, smiling the smile he kept for women who liked bright stones. At dusk he rolled it up, stones unsold.
There are ears on the road and ears in the wall, Rabbi Levi said. David wrote Psalm 7 afterward, pleading that his prayer be counted an unwitting sin.
