496 myths · Page 17 of 17
David wants heaven to fight his enemies at once. God answers with Torah, not a sword, and silence under insult makes the king partner to restraint.
David said Torah was as easy as song. Then he set the Ark on a wagon. When the oxen stumbled, Uzzah reached out, and the law David forgot struck home.
An Arabian king trusted a portrait and physiognomists. Moses said every ugly trait they read was his by nature, then showed what will had rewritten.
At Gerar the king told Abraham to settle anywhere he liked. Abraham heard the mockery in the offer and did not stay. At night his own body taught him Torah.
Sinai becomes a wine house of love. Israel stands between the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, and Torah while heaven argues life against death.
Rabbi Yanai invited fine clothes to his table, tested the guest, and said a dog had eaten his bread. The man seized him by the inheritance of Jacob.
The boy would not step past the gate. Robbers waited in the hills, pirates on the water. His father sealed an amulet in a stick and pressed it into his palm.
At Sinai the camp demanded to hear and see the King, not a messenger. God said yes. The voice then drove them the full length of their camp.
Ahab ruled two hundred and fifty-two kingdoms and denied God on his own gates, yet clutched the Torah. His son Joram kept only the ruin.
The formless One came as a warrior at the Sea and turned four faces at the mountain, and each Israelite heard one Word bent to his own strength.
His brothers got vineyards and grain while he got mountains and a raw shore. So Zebulun went up and told God he had been shortchanged.
A crowded ship mocks the lone scholar whose cargo cannot be found, until officers strip every merchant and only his hidden goods survive.
At the final reckoning the nations crowd in for Torah's wages, kick apart the one booth God grants them, and the whole account falls to a single line.
In the sealed dark of the womb God keeps the child from spilling, but an adulterer tells Him to step aside and the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, draws back.
God sent Gabriel, then Michael, then the sword-bearing Samael to take Moses, but none could touch the man worth six hundred thousand.
She danced before the Throne on the sixth day and was betrothed to the soul of Moses. Centuries later she stood in sackcloth while men picked at her.
