121 myths · Page 2 of 5
A builder asked for a brick. His fellow heard only noise and drew a sword. Half the workforce died before anyone left the plain.
Og ran to Abraham with news of Lot. He hoped the old man would die in the fight and leave Sarai free. Abraham armed anyway.
Amalek came from the far south and covered sixteen hundred miles in a single night, driven by a grudge that ran back to Esau and Jacob in the womb.
The Angel of Death came with orders to be generous. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi borrowed the angel's blade, vaulted the wall of Eden, and made heaven honor his oath.
He spat toward the Temple and bared his right arm. The priests cried between the porch and the altar. Judah promised that arm a new place to hang.
They would not throw a stone or block the cave mouth. On Shabbat the soldiers walked in and killed the men, the women, the children, and the cattle.
Achior told the general the truth in front of the whole staff. Holofernes had him tied to a tree below the city he had just tried to save.
The tallest elephant on the field wore royal armor. Eleazar cut his way under it to kill the king. The king was somewhere else.
He asked the crowd what he could do to end the war. They shouted back that he should kill himself. He built a wooden wall around the altar instead.
They took his thumbs and his big toes. He did not curse Judah. He said God had paid him in the same coin he had used on seventy kings.
A general reviews 120,000 infantry while a widow prepares to walk alone into his tent. The Book of Judith stages the confrontation across two scenes.
She came through the gate in the dark with a food bag. At first light the town's men stood on the slope above the camp and did not go down.
A hen and a rooster stood for a new marriage. Roman soldiers ate them. The defender who leapt a mile said God had forgotten the town.
Jonathan was still alive in Tryphon's camp when the price arrived. Simon paid anyway. Snow, not swords, shut the last road to Jerusalem.
Israel marches to war and the Torah stops the column. Remember the desert, send home the man with an unfinished house, offer peace before drawing a sword.
He said the boy was going to study with Shem. She packed bread and water and told him not to walk in the sun. The knife was already in the pack.
Thirty-one kings fight over a strip of land none of them plan to live in, where two debt clocks run at once and one word hides God's grief.
His envoys came home with dust on their cloaks. The west had laughed them out of the gates. He swore on the throne that those lands would burn.
Holofernes marches with fire and orders to cut down sacred groves so every tongue will call Nebuchadnezzar by the name above all names.
Bethulia ran out of water and gave God five days. Judith told the elders they had no right to set a deadline for the plans of the Lord.
Before she lifts a sword, Judith feeds Holofernes the story he most wants to hear about himself, and he swallows it whole.
She called for the gate from the dark and lifted a general's head from a meat bag. At dawn the camp could not wake the man who had owned it.
Judas Maccabee takes his fighters to prayer and fasting before battle, then tells them victory belongs to heaven, not to numbers.
Letters arrived while other letters were still being read. Simon took Galilee with three thousand. Judas turned east and walked all night toward Bosora.
He routed an army of eight hundred thousand, then begged three travelers to stop for bread. The same man did both, and that is the whole point.
Amalek cut the sign of the covenant from the dead and flung it at the sky. The wars over that covenant began long before, with Jacob's sons.
Old and trapped beneath a giant's press in Philistia, David is saved when the earth softens, the road folds, and the Ineffable Name holds him in the air.
Seven Amorite kings crouch in the woods of Canaan plotting slaughter, until Judah leaps the battle line and the war the Torah left silent begins.
His own men flung Joab over the enemy wall, his sword snapped against their armor, and the blood of the slain glued the next blade to his hand.
Edom crowns Hadad, Africa wars over a stolen bride, and Chittim hoists infants on its walls, all while Israel groans unseen in Egypt's brickyards.
