Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sourcesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sources
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends
At one meal, Og ate a thousand oxen and as many wild roes, and his drink
was a thousand firkins; one drop of the sweat from his brow weighed
thirty-six pounds.[564] Of his size the following authentic details are
given. The Rabbi Johanan said, “I was once a grave-digger, and I ran
after a deer, and went in at one end of a shin-bone of a dead man, and I
ran for three miles and could not catch the deer or reach the end of the
bone. When I went back, I inquired, and was told that this was the
shin-bone of Og, king of Bashan.”[565] The sole of his foot was forty
miles long. Once, when he was quarrelling with Abraham, one of his teeth
fell out, and Abraham made a bed out of the tooth, and slept in it; but
some say he made a chair out of it.[566]
When the Israelites came to Edrei and fought against it, in the night Og
came and sat down on the wall, and his feet reached the ground. Next
morning Moses looked out and said, “I do not understand how the men of
Edrei can have built a second wall so high during the night.”
Then it was revealed to him that what he had taken for a wall was
Og.[567] Og had built sixty cities, and the smallest was sixty miles
high. These cities were in Argob.[568]
The Moabites also resisted Israel, and they were encouraged by Balaam
the son of Beor.
Balak, king of Moab, sent to Balaam to curse Israel. Then Balaam rose in
the morning and made ready his ass, and went with the princes of Moab.
The Mussulman account is that Balaam, having been told by God not to go,
resolved to obey, but the princes of Moab bribed his wife, and she gave
him no peace till he consented to go to Balak with his messengers.[569]
But the anger of the Lord was kindled, because he would go to curse
them, and the angel of the Lord stood in the way to be an adversary to
him. But he sat upon his ass, and his two sons, Jannes and Jambres, were
with him.
And the ass discerned the angel of the Lord standing in the way with a
drawn sword in his hand, and the ass turned aside out of the road to go
into the field; and Balaam smote the ass. And the angel of the Lord
stood in a narrow path that was in the midst between the vineyards, in
the place where Jacob and Laban raised the mound, the pillars on this
side and the observatory on that side,[570] that neither should pass the
limit to do evil to the other. And as the ass discerned the angel of the
Lord, and thrust herself against the hedge, and bruised Balaam’s foot by
the hedge, he smote her again. Ten things were created after the world
had been founded at the coming in of the Sabbath between sunset and
sunrise,—the manna, the well, the rod of Moses, the diamond, the
rainbow, the cloud of glory, the mouth of the earth, the writing on the
tables of the covenant, the demons, and the speaking ass.
Then the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said to Balaam, “What
have I done to thee, that thou hast smitten me twice?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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