Hebrew Folk Tales and Legends

Judah decided to leave his father and brothers and head off on his own.  He settled some distance away near the home of a man named Hirah and made a home for himself there.  He married a young Canaanite woman and shortly after they slept together in the marriage bed she conceived and bore three sons in quick succession.   The eldest son was named Er.   Judah chose a young woman named Tamar to be husband to Er, but Judah did some things that Lord Yahweh thought were terribly evil so the Lord Yahweh killed Er.   Judah then went to his second son, Onan, and said to him, “Onan, your brotherly duty is to sleep with Tamar, so that she will produce children for your brother.” Onan was not happy with what tribal custom required him to do, and since Onan knew that the children that he fathered with Tamar would not be his, whenever he went to bed with his brother's wife he pulled out from her before he ejaculated and he spilled his semen on the ground so that he wou...

The Lord Yahweh did as he had promised—Sarah soon conceived and gave birth to a son that Abraham named Isaac.  Abraham circumcised Isaac when he was eight days old, as Yahweh had told him to do with all males in his household.  Abraham was now a hundred years old and Sarah, who was almost as old as Abraham, proclaimed, "I am happy. Yahweh has brought me happiness in my old age.   Now everyone who hears about me giving birth at my age will laugh with me instead of laughing at me. Who would have ever thought that Sarah would nurse children in her old age—but I have borne Abraham a son.” The child grew and was weaned and no longer suckled at his mother's breast.   Abraham made a great feast for his household on the day that Isaac was weaned.   Sarah saw Ishmael, Abraham's son born to the slave Hagar the Egyptian, playing with her son Isaac, so she said to Abraham, "You must throw this slave woman and her son out of our house, because I do not want the son of th...