COMMENTARY<\/p>\n
of the Divisions of Days This phrase (better: of the divisions of the times; Heb. mahlekot ha-ittim) in Jubilees means a chronological history, that is, a history in which important events are accompanied by the date of their occurrence in anno mundi (i.e., calculated from the time of the Creation).
\nof the Law and the Testimony That is, based on two sacred books, the Law (the Torah) and the (book of) Testimony (the te\u2018udah). The phrase \u201cthe Torah and the te\u2018udah\u201d refers here to two sacred texts whose contents form the basis of this chronological history; see introductory comments as well as below on verse 4.
\nfor Annual Observance Better: \u201cof the events of the years\u201d; that is, it relates events dated by the years in which they took place.
\ntheir Weeks [of years] and their Jubilees throughout all the Years of the World \u201cTheir weeks\u201d refers to the groupings of 7 years in which they took place and \u201ctheir Jubilees\u201d to groups of 49 years, significant units. \u201cThroughout all the years of the world\u201d is better rendered as \u201cthroughout all the days of yore.\u201d To reword the title thus far: \u201cThis book is a chronological history, based on the Torah and the Te\u2018udah, of certain events, dated by their years, as well as by their \u2018weeks\u2019 and their jubilees, throughout all the days of yore.\u201d The earliest reference to the title of this book is found in the Damascus Document (col. 16:3\u20134) of the Dead Sea Scrolls community, where it appears in shorter form: \u201cThe Book of the Divisions of Times according to their Jubilees and in their \u2018Weeks.\u2019 \u201c
\njust as the LORD told it to Moses on Mount Sinai when he went up to receive the tablets of the Law and the commandment \u201cLaw\u201d refers to \u201cTorah.\u201d The operating fiction of Jubilees is that God first gave Moses the Torah on Mount Sinai and then had the \u201cangel of the Presence,\u201d His chief angel, dictate the contents of Jubilees to Moses. For that reason, the phrase \u201cwhen he went up to receive the [stone] tablets [of] the Law and the commandment\u201d (taken from Exod. 24:1) is potentially significant; see below on 1:1.
\nby the word of the LORD This book was related to Moses on God\u2019s orders.
\n1:1. In the first year of the Exodus \u2026 in the third month on the sixteenth day The Ten Commandments had already been proclaimed on the preceding day, the 15th; now God calls to Moses alone to ascend the mountain to receive further instruction for 40 days and nights (Exod. 24:12\u201318).
\nCome up to Me on the mountain This is God\u2019s summons to Moses in Exod. 24:12; the rest of this verse is cited in Jubilees\u2019 next words: \u201cand I shall give you two stone tablets of the Law [i.e., the Torah] and the commandment[s], which I have written, so that you may teach them.\u201d As he did in the title sentence, the author again cites Exod. 24:12; but why this verse in particular? While other biblical verses speak of God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses (see Exod. 34:28; Deut. 4:13; and 10:4), the fact that Exod. 24:12 mentions \u201cthe stone tablets, the Torah, and the commandment\u201d seems to state clearly that Moses was given many more commandments than those 10. In fact, this verse might be interpreted as implying that Moses received a body of commandments even beyond those contained in the Torah\u2014such as the additional stipulations found in the book of Jubilees itself. Exod. 24:12 was used for a similar purpose, but still more expansively, in B. Ber. 5a:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe \u2018tablets\u2019 refers to the Ten Commandments, \u2018the Torah\u2019 to Scripture [i.e., to the Pentateuch as a whole], \u2018and the commandments\u2019 to the Mishnah, \u2018which I wrote\u2019 to the Prophets and the Writings, \u2018to teach them\u2019 to the gemara [i.e., oral teachings about the Mishnah, Torah, and other topics]\u2014this verse [thus] teaches that all of these were given to Moses on Mount Sinai.\u201d<\/p>\n
1:2. for six days See Exod. 24:16.
\n1:4. And the LORD revealed to him both what [was] in the beginning That is, at the time of the Creation (\u201cin the beginning\u201d here alludes to the first words of Gen. 1:1). God had to reveal these things because no humans could know them on their own.
\nand what will occur (in the future) Which humans also cannot know.
\nthe account of the division of all the days of the Law and the testimony In other words, the chronological history contained in this book, which includes the things narrated both in the Law (the Torah) and also in the testimony (the Te\u2018udah, the book of the Warning), with each incident being assigned its proper date in years, starting from the creation of the world.
\n1:5. Set your mind on every thing Deut. 32:46.
\nand write it in a book In Exod. 34:27 Moses is also commanded to \u201cwrite these commandments,\u201d but here Jubilees adds \u201cin a book,\u201d perhaps to stress that only books (like Jubilees itself) can be relied on (as opposed to the oral traditions espoused by his halakhic opponents).
\nso that their descendants might see that I have not abandoned them Lev. 26:44; this is the author\u2019s main purpose in writing Jubilees. He knew, of course, that long after the time of Moses the Babylonians had conquered Judah and that thereafter the Jews had remained a subject people until his own day. At the same time, he asserts, even in their sinfulness God has not abandoned them \u201con account of all of the evil which they have done\u201d (in the sense of: despite all the evil). The point of Jubilees is that none of this came about because God had abandoned Israel, but because the people had strayed from the covenant, that is, because of all that the Israelites \u201chave done to instigate transgression of the covenant.\u201d
\n1:6. I have been more righteous than they The Ethiopic text duplicates a Hebrew idiom (Gen. 38:26; Job 4:17; Ezek. 16:52) that means \u201cI have been proven right,\u201d sometimes in a courtroom setting, or more generally (as here), \u201cI am right and they are wrong.\u201d Such a divine courtroom may in fact be implied by the next words: \u201cin all their judgments [better: in all their punishments, those meted out to Israel in the court of divine justice] and [all their] deeds.\u201d Jubilees then goes on to explain: If Israel has suffered, this does not mean that I have abandoned them. Rather, \u201cI have truly been with them\u201d all the time\u2014the connection between God and Israel began at Creation; continued throughout the patriarchal period, long before God had given Israel any laws at Mount Sinai; and continues to this day.
\n1:7. for I know their rebelliousness Jubilees\u2019 author tried to write in as \u201cbiblical\u201d a Hebrew as possible, often peppering his discourse with phrases cited from the Pentateuch and elsewhere; this tendency is particularly pronounced in the opening chapter of the book, as the author tries to establish for readers that it is really Moses who is writing. This verse is thus a patchwork of different biblical phrases: \u201crebelliousness and \u2026 stubbornness\u201d appear together in Deut. 31:27; \u201cto your seed\u201d is used frequently in Genesis; and \u201cto your seed\u201d together with \u201ca land flowing with milk and honey\u201d are recurrent phrases in the Pentateuch; see especially Deut. 31:20.
\nWhen they will eat and be satisfied Deut. 31:20; the citation continues into the next verse (1:8) with the words: \u201cthey will turn to strange [better: foreign] gods,\u201d likewise from Deut. 31:20.
\n1:8. And this testimony will be heard as testimony against them This verse is a (somewhat garbled) echo of Deut. 31:21; its apparent meaning is that Jubilees will later serve as a witness, testifying that the Israelites were duly warned in advance of what will happen. This is not merely a play on the word te\u2018udah and its root he\u2019id (testify), but it also refers to a cardinal principle of post-exilic jurisprudence: no one is to be punished without prior warning. Therefore, the author specifies that the words of warning dictated to Moses here\u2014words that are apparently based on what is written in the Torah and the book of the Te\u2018udah\u2014will always be around to demonstrate that the People of Israel were indeed forewarned.
\n1:9. for they will forget all of My commandments Despite the warning of Deut. 8:11.
\nand they will walk after the Gentiles, and after their defilement and shame \u201cDefilement\u201d is better rendered as \u201ctheir idols,\u201d and \u201cshame\u201d as \u201ctheir abominations\u201d (Heb. to\u2019evot, which is synonymous with \u201cidols\u201d). The people\u2019s moral impurity is, according to Jubilees\u2019 author, the reason for the Jews\u2019 difficulties in his own time\u2014despite God\u2019s never having abandoned them. Moreover, they \u201cwill serve their gods\u201d\u2014the greatest of sins\u2014\u201cand [this] will [be \u2026] a snare,\u201d apparently mokesh, the same word used in Exod. 23:33 and Deut. 7:16.
\n1:10. many will be destroyed and seized and will fall into the hand of the enemy That is, the Babylonians. This is as specific as Jubilees\u2019 author ever gets with regard to later history; cf. chapter 23 below.
\nthe feasts of my covenant This nonbiblical phrase may be alluding to the covenants God established with Israel\u2019s ancestors and which\u2014according to Jubilees\u2014were the basis for such later festivals as Weeks and Booths.
\n1:11. high places and groves \u201cGroves\u201d refers to \u201csacred groves.\u201d These are stereotypical sins mentioned in Scripture (Deut. 16:21; 23:25); it seems unlikely that these were a real problem in Jubilees\u2019 day. The same is true of child sacrifice \u201cto the demons,\u201d a practice (mentioned in Deut. 32:7) which had likely ceased in Israel long before the time of Jubilees.
\n1:12. I shall send to them witnesses \u2026 so that I might witness to them Better: \u201cI shall send to them prophets \u2026 so that I might warn them\u201d; Heb. he\u2019id means both to testify at a trial and to warn. Deuteronomy and later biblical books, along with Jubilees, use this verb to describe the prophet\u2019s function of warning the people; \u201cbut they will not hear\u201d (cf. 2 Chron. 24:19); and \u201cthey will even kill\u201d the prophets (cf. Neh. 9:26).
\n1:13. I shall hide My face from them That is, ignore their pleas: Deut. 31:17, 18.
\n1:14. And they will forget all of My laws As a consequence they \u201cwill err concerning new moons, Sabbaths, festivals, jubilees, and ordinances.\u201d That is, they will not use the proper calendar endorsed by Jubilees, but will start the months at the appearance of the new moon; this will cause them to celebrate festivals on the wrong day, and miscalculate the start of the jubilee year and the larger unit of time it represents. Even the Sabbath will be desecrated because, although it is independent of the calendrical system, using the wrong calendar will ultimately cause festivals to fall on the Sabbath when they should not, leading to its desecration.
\n1:15. And afterward, they will turn to Me Better: \u201creturn to Me,\u201d from the Babylonian exile\u2014the punishment imposed because of the aforementioned violations.
\n1:16. righteous plant For this phrase, see 1 En. 10:16; 93:5, 10. Israel as a \u201cplant\u201d is a common enough image in the Bible.
\nthey will be a blessing and not a curse. And they will be the head and not the tail \u201cThey\u201d refers to \u201cIsrael.\u201d This is a conscious evocation of the Torah\u2019s curses that will befall Israel if it does not keep its part of the covenant: the enemy invader \u201cwill become the head and you will be the tail\u201d (Deut. 28:44). This will indeed happen, God tells Moses here, but once Israel returns, physically and spiritually, He will restore Israel to its rightful place, \u201cthe LORD will make you the head and not the tail\u201d (Deut. 28:13).
\n1:19. Moses fell upon his face Because he was distressed at this prediction of disaster. He is particularly disturbed at the thought that \u201cthe Gentiles\u201d will rule over Israel (in the author\u2019s own time, the Greeks and their Hellenized followers), since they will further lead Israel astray.
\n1:20. And do not let the spirit of Beliar A wicked angel, sometimes identified with Satan. Wicked angels were, for the author of Jubilees along with other Jews of this period, a constant source of danger; they could infiltrate people\u2019s minds, leading them astray or even driving them mad.
\n1:21\u201325. But they are Your people \u2026 by Your great might \u2026 Create a pure heart This is a further medley of biblical phrases: Deut. 9:29; Ps. 51:12; Hosea 5:5; and others.
\n1:22. I know their contrariness and their thoughts and their stubbornness In telling this to Moses, God is echoing Deut. 31:27; the middle term is Jubilees\u2019 own addition. Is it deliberately added to suggest divine knowledge of what is inside a human being, a biblical idea but one not present in the Deuteronomy verse; \u201cuntil they acknowledge [i.e., confess] their sin and the sins of their fathers,\u201d just as in Lev. 26:40.
\n1:23. foreskin of the heart Deut. 10:16; 30:6.
\n1:24. they will be sons to Me That is, they will become My children, who are Israel\u2019s true standing: Deut. 14:1.
\n1:26. what (was) in the beginning See above on 1:3\u20134.
\nand what (will be) at the end, what will happen A better translation is \u201cwhat was in the beginning\u201d\u2014that is, from Creation and the time of Israel\u2019s remote ancestors\u2014\u201cand what was later\u201d (a frequent sense of aharon in biblical Heb.), presumably up to the time of Moses himself; \u201cand what is yet to come\u201d in still later days, after the time of Moses, such as the catastrophe of the Babylonian exile, hinted at in Jub. 23. This is the chronological span of Jubilees.
\n1:27\u201328. And he said to the angel of the Presence The \u201cangels of the Presence\u201d [lit. \u201cof the Face\u201d] are, along with the \u201cangels of holiness,\u201d the highest class of angels, those who are privileged to see God\u2019s face and serve Him directly in the heavenly sanctuary, just as earthly kings allow only some of their servants to be \u201cthose who see the king\u2019s face\u201d (see 2 Kings 25:19; Esther 1:10, 14.; tob. 12:15). This particular angel of the Presence is apparently the angel, the one often chosen by God for special tasks, such as communicating the contents of Jubilees to Moses (see 2:1 below).
\nWrite for Moses \u2026 from the first creation until My sanctuary is built Better: \u201cDictate to\u201d Moses,\u201d from Gen. 1 through the end of Exodus. This may sound like a reference to the building of the eschatological temple, such as that mentioned in the Temple Scroll (11Q19) col. 29:3\u201310; the problem is that this is not, as a matter of fact, what the angel dictates to Moses (see above on 1:26). Jubilees runs only from Gen. 1 through part of the book of Exodus. Perhaps, then, the reference is simply to the completion of the Tabernacle, also called \u201cMy sanctuary\u201d in Exod. 25:8, where God promises to \u201cdwell in their midst.\u201d
\n1:29. And the angel of the Presence, who went before the camp of Israel Here Jubilees identifies the angel mentioned in Exod. 14:19 as none other than the angel of the Presence, later referred to by God at Mount Sinai in Exod. 33:14, \u201cAnd He said, \u2018My presence [lit. \u201cMy face\u201d] will go with you [from here to Canaan], and I will give you rest.\u2019 \u201d Jubilees interprets this as meaning that the angel of the Presence will accompany the Israelites into Canaan, but that God will remain at the \u201cmountain of God,\u201d namely, Mount Sinai, an offer that Moses rejects.
\nfrom the time of the creation of the law and testimony Apparently, this phrase was garbled in the Ethiopic translation: the very fragmentary Qumran papyrus of Jubilees 4Q217 frag. 2 sheds some light on the proper wording here. In view of this fragment, the original text of Jubilees likely said that the angel of the Presence \u201ctook the tablets [which told] of the divisions of the years\u2014according to the Torah and to the Testimony [i.e., the Book of Warning]\u2014from the time of the Creation, [with everything divided into] the weeks of their jubilees, until the time of the new creation.\u201d In other words, the author is claiming that God told the angel to take the Torah and that other heavenly book, \u201cthe [Book of] the Warning,\u201d and dictate their \u201cdivisions of the years\u201d and the accompanying account of things to Moses, who could then write it all down; thus was born the earthly receptacle of this precious information, our present book of Jubilees. But the tablets from which the angel of the Presence was here ordered to read to Moses apparently covered far more than the contents of our present book of Jubilees. In fact, they ran up \u201cuntil the day of the new creation,\u201d an apocalyptic future time such as that described in Isa. 65:17 and 66:22, when \u201cthe heaven and earth and all their creatures shall be renewed.\u201d The sun and moon and the planets all undergo cyclical renewal, so such a widescale renewal is actually in keeping with \u201cthe powers of heaven and according to the whole nature of earth.\u201d (This great period of renewal would accord well with the Temple Scroll col. 29:3\u201310, wherein God appears to say that on some future \u201cday of creation\u201d or \u201cday of blessing,\u201d He will \u201c[re]create My sanctuary to establish it for Myself forever.\u201d) Moses was thus given to record only part of what these tablets contained.
\n2:1. in six days the LORD God completed all His work Jubilees thus explicitly rules out the possibility that God\u2019s creation might have continued into the seventh day, as might seem to be implied by Gen. 2:2, \u201cOn the seventh day God finished the work.\u201d Other Jewish sources likewise sought to eliminate any ambiguity on this score. God \u201csanctified it [the Sabbath] for all ages,\u201d that is, it was not only the first Sabbath that was declared holy, but all others after that.
\nand He set it (as) a sign A reference to Exod. 31:13 and 17, where the \u201csign\u201d is a sign of the covenant between God and Israel mentioned in the previous verse.
\n2:2. and all of the spirits which minister before him These are the angels, often referred to in Second Temple times as \u201cspirits\u201d (ruhot). The Genesis account of Creation never mentions when the angels were created, though their existence is implied in Gen. 2:1, \u201cAnd the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts,\u201d that is, the hosts (armies) of heaven. If so, the angels must have been created at some point during the preceding six days. Jubilees opts for the first day, perhaps seeing in the phrase \u201cthe spirit of God\u201d (Gen. 1:2) an allusion to an angel or the collectivity of angels. The angels are in charge of such things as \u201cfire \u2026 winds \u2026 clouds \u2026 darkness and snow and hail and frost\u201d (cf. 1 En. 60:12\u201322); \u201cthe angels of [the] resoundings\u201d apparently refers to thunder.
\nAnd (He created) the abysses and darkness \u2026 which He prepared in the knowledge of his heart Here Jubilees addresses a classic exegetical problem: how could God have created light on the first day (when He said, \u201cLet there be light,\u201d Gen. 1:3) if the sun, the moon, and the stars\u2014the heavenly bodies that transmit light\u2014were not created until the fourth day? One interpretive tradition suggested that the light created on the first day was a special light that allowed God to see all of His creation from end to end. By contrast, Jubilees suggests that light was created on the first day in the sense that God conceived of it then, \u201cHe prepared [it] in the knowledge of His heart,\u201d even though He would only create the light-bearing heavenly bodies later. That would also explain how the Torah could designate the end of each of the first three days of Creation with the words \u201cAnd it was evening and it was morning\u201d; there was no actual evening or morning since the sun did not yet exist, but God had prepared the length of time that evening and morning would take \u201cin the knowledge of His heart,\u201d and when that time had passed, He ended each day.
\n2:7. and the Garden of Eden in Eden\u2014in (the place of) luxury Better: \u201cin the place of luxuriating.\u201d Was \u201cEden\u201d (which can mean \u201cluxuriating\u201d in Hebrew) a description of the kind of garden it was, a garden of luxuriating, or was it the name of the place where the Garden was located? Scripture seems to imply both, sometimes calling it \u201cthe Garden of Eden\u201d (Gen. 2:15; 3:23; Ezek. 36:35; etc.) and yet elsewhere speaking of \u201cEden\u201d as the Garden\u2019s location. Jubilees thus explains that it was a Garden of Eden, that is, a place for enjoyment, but that it was also located \u201cin Eden.\u201d For Jubilees, the Garden of Eden is still an earthly garden, far to the east (see 8:19\u201321), though later sources located it in heaven.
\n2:9. And the LORD set the sun as a great sign upon the earth for days, Sabbaths, months, feast (days), years Genesis had said that God created the sun and the moon \u201cto serve as signs for the set times, the days and the years\u201d (Gen. 1:14). But this potentially implied that the moon had some role in establishing when festivals would occur, as well as in determining the length of the year. Both Jubilees\u2019 original author and the Interpolator endorsed a calendar in which the moon had no role (see introductory comments). So Jubilees\u2019 author is at pains here to stress that Gen. 1:14 actually intended to say that the sun alone would determine the \u201cmonths, feast (days), [and] years\u201d; the moon\u2019s sole function was to shine at night. The sun\u2019s utter supremacy, Jubilees implies, is also reflected in the fact that \u201ceverything which sprouts and grows upon the earth\u201d does so with the help of the sun; moonlight will grow nothing.
\n2:11. the great sea monsters in the midst of the depths These are the first earthly creatures mentioned in the account of the Creation in Ps. 148:7, where, however, the text reads \u201csea monsters and watery depths.\u201d
\n2:14. And after all of this, He made man\u2014male and female He made them As Jubilees will go on to explain, the phrase \u201cmale and female\u201d (Gen. 1:27) actually means \u201ca female inside a male,\u201d that is, a little female homunculus contained in Adam\u2019s body. Note that Jubilees makes no mention of humanity being made \u201cin His image\u201d\u2014this was apparently too anthropomorphic for the author.
\n2:15\u201317. the total was twenty-two kinds That is, the total number of things created in the first six days. This will be an important fact for his later claim that Israel was conceived by God already on the world\u2019s first Sabbath.
\n2:18. that we might keep the Sabbath with him in heaven Here Jubilees addresses another knot of exegetical questions: If God rested on the seventh day, did He rest only on that one Sabbath, or does He continue to rest on every Sabbath down to the present day? If the latter, then who takes care of the universe on the Sabbath\u2014who makes it rain or snow sometimes, causes the wind to blow, and so forth (all of these functions attributed directly to God elsewhere in Scripture)? Finally, if Sabbath rest is so important, why did not God command the entire world to rest, or at least all humans? The only people who seem to be ordered to rest are the people of Israel. As Jubilees explained in verse 17, \u201che gave us a great sign, the Sabbath day.\u201d The Sabbath was given to \u201cus,\u201d the angels of the Presence and the angels of sanctification, to celebrate in heaven along with God every week. It is thus the lower classes of angels, \u201cthe angels of the spirit of the winds \u2026 of the clouds and darkness and snow and hail\u201d (listed earlier, in Jub. 2:2) who keep the universe operating while God and the upper angels rest.
\n2:19. Behold, I shall separate for Myself a people Unique among human beings, Israel will also keep the Sabbath. It has been chosen for this privilege because, though technically human, Israel is also holy and thus altogether different from other peoples. God therefore says He will sanctify one people \u201cjust as I have sanctified \u2026 the Sabbath day.\u201d The connection of the two is important: see below on 2:23.
\n2:20. I have chosen the seed of Jacob from among all that I have seen. And I have recorded him as My firstborn son \u201cSeen\u201d is better translated as \u201cforeseen.\u201d In Exod. 4:22, God is quoted as saying, \u201cIsrael is My firstborn son.\u201d This assertion puzzled interpreters: in what sense could the People of Israel, descended from Jacob, the second son of Isaac and Rebecca, and before them from Abraham, Terah, Shem, Noah, and so forth, be called God\u2019s \u201cfirstborn\u201d? Jubilees\u2019 answer is unique\u2014and surprising. God planned the existence of Israel during the first week of Creation, long before Israel\u2019s progenitor, Jacob, even existed; in fact, it was then that He resolved to grant Jacob\u2019s descendants the privilege of keeping the Sabbath along with God and His top angels. In this sense, then, Israel\u2019s \u201ccreation\u201d goes back to the first week in history\u2014so of course they deserve to be called God\u2019s \u201cfirstborn\u201d!
\n2:21. to eat and drink and bless Jubilees bears witness to the tradition (not found in Scripture itself) that the Sabbath is to be a day of feasting and prayer.
\n2:23. There were twenty-two chief men Apart from addressing this specific problem of Israel\u2019s being called God\u2019s \u201cfirstborn,\u201d this section of Jubilees has an overriding purpose, and that is to assert that God\u2019s selection of Israel goes back not (as one might suppose) to the time of the Sinai covenant (see Exod. 19:4\u20136), but way back to the first week of Creation. The author\u2019s main argument for this claim has just been seen: since the first Sabbath occurred on the seventh day of the world\u2019s Creation, and since only one people, Israel, was commanded to keep the Sabbath, God must already have \u201cchosen\u201d Israel when He instituted the first Sabbath. But Jubilees had three other arguments to solidify the connection between the Creation and God\u2019s choice of Israel. We have already seen that God\u2019s announcement in Exod. 4:22 that \u201cIsrael is my firstborn son\u201d makes sense if Israel was indeed \u201cconceived\u201d in that first week. Moreover, there were 22 generations (\u201cchief men\u201d) from Adam until Jacob.\u201d Since, according to Jubilees\u2019 reckoning, 22 things were created in the Creation, it could be no coincidence that Jacob, the ancestor of the people of Israel, was born in the 22nd generation after Adam. Here was another stitch connecting Jacob\u2019s \u201cconception\u201d with the Creation. Finally, when God created the Sabbath, He \u201cblessed the seventh day and made it holy\u201d (Gen. 2:3). It just so happened that, according to Scripture, there was something else that God \u201cblessed\u201d and \u201cmade holy,\u201d and that was the people of Israel (Deut. 7:6 and 14). Here, too, the connection between the two could hardly be coincidental. Was not the Torah hinting by this as well that the choice of Israel went back to the very first Sabbath? For, just as \u201cthe former [the Sabbath] is blessed and sanctified, and [better: so] the latter [Jacob] is also blessed and sanctified. One was like the other with respect to sanctification and blessing.\u201d In fact, a careful examination of verses 19\u201324 reveals how insistently the author joins the words \u201cbless\u201d and \u201csanctify\u201d (i.e., \u201cmake holy\u201d). They appear together twice in verse 19, again in verse 21, three times more in verse 23, and twice more in verse 24.
\n2:24. it was granted to the former that they should always be the blessed and sanctified ones of the testimony and the first law \u201cThe former\u201d refers to Israel. This makes tolerably good sense; however, 4Q216 7:17 reads: \u201cIt was granted to these [Jacob\u2019s descendants] that they should be the blessed and holy for all times. And this is the first \u2018testimony\u2019 [te\u2018udah] and law [torah].\u201d This marks the beginning of the Interpolator\u2019s first insertion (see introductory comments). It is noteworthy that he uses the original author\u2019s title phrase, \u201cthe Torah and the Testimony\u201d (or here, in reverse order) to signify not the names of two sacred books (as the original author intended), but an individual law or other item written on the heavenly tablets; that is, he interprets the phrase ha-torah ve-ha-te\u2018udah (or its inversion, ha-te\u2018udah ve-ha-torah) as essentially a hendiadys (two words that are used idiomatically to designate a single thing or concept) to mean: \u201cdivinely given ruling or teaching.\u201d The fact of the unique connection between the Sabbath and Israel is indeed the very first torah-and-te\u2018udah, going back to the time of the world\u2019s creation.
\n2:25. Therefore He commanded concerning it Having asserted that Israel and the Sabbath are, as it were, joined at the hip, the Interpolator now makes the transition, via a paraphrase of Gen. 2:1\u20133, to the subject that really interests him (and that was not at all included in the original author\u2019s explanation of the Sabbath), namely, the rules for keeping the Sabbath and the punishment for their violation. Note that in paraphrasing Gen. 2:1\u20133, the Interpolator is careful to reassert that everything was created in six days, with no work being left over for the seventh (as one might suppose from the ambiguous wording of Gen. 2:2, \u201cOn the seventh day God finished the work\u201d\u2014see above on 2:1). This being the case, anyone who, unlike God, does not finish working on the sixth day, but does \u201cany work\u201d on the Sabbath or in some other way \u201cdefiles it\u201d is to be punished by death.
\n2:26. And you, command the children of Israel \u201cYou\u201d refers to Moses. This is one of the Interpolator\u2019s signature phrases. In this case he details the specific prohibitions of work on the Sabbath as he knew them. These stipulations, like the 39 categories of work prohibited in Rabbinic Judaism (M. Shab. 7:2), go well beyond what the Torah itself forbids. Thus, \u2026
\n2:29. they should not prepare thereon anything which will be eaten or drunk This is perhaps implied in the Pentateuch by the manna narrative of Exod. 16:21\u201330 but it is never stated as a general Sabbath prohibition; similarly, there is no Torah prohibition of drawing water. Jer. 17:21\u201322 prohibits \u201cbearing a burden\u201d on the Sabbath and \u201cbringing [it] into the gates of Jerusalem,\u201d as well as \u201ctaking any burden from your houses\u201d (see also Neh. 13:19\u201322). The Interpolator thus states that it is unlawful to \u201cbring in or \u2026 take out any work within their dwellings which is carried in their gates.\u201d
\n2:30. they shall not bring in or take out from house to house on that day This specification is reminiscent of the Rabbinic prohibition of removing items from one domain to another (M. Shab. 1:1).
\nwe kept the Sabbath in heaven before it was made known to any human \u2026 upon the earth \u201cWe\u201d refers to angels. The Interpolator is eager, in this case as in his other insertions, to assert that these laws and practices did not start with the great revelation of divine law at Mount Sinai or even (as the original author liked to claim) with the deeds of Israel\u2019s remote ancestors. Rather, they were inscribed on the heavenly tablets from the very beginning.
\n2:33. This law and testimony This is the Interpolator\u2019s way of referring to an individual statute; see above on 2:24. Note that these Sabbath laws are considerably different from the Sabbath laws that appear at the very end of Jubilees (50:6\u201313), suggesting that the latter are a still later addition to the book.
\n3:1\u20135. we brought to Adam all of the beasts In Gen. 2:18, God says, \u201cIt is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.\u201d God then created \u201call the wild beasts and the birds of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them \u2026 but for Adam, no fitting helper was found.\u201d This narrative scandalized the author of Jubilees, since it seemed to imply that God had first sought a mate for Adam from the animal kingdom and, only after seeing that Adam did not call any of the animals \u201cmy wife\u201d or \u201cwoman\u201d or something similar, decided to create a mate for Adam from his own \u201crib\u201d or \u201cside.\u201d How could such a narrative square with the Torah\u2019s own prohibition of bestiality (Exod. 22:18; Deut. 27:21), not to speak of Jubilees\u2019 repeated warnings against \u201call impurity and fornication\u201d? The author therefore changed the order of things: First, \u201cwe [the angels] brought to Adam all of the beasts, and all of the cattle, and all of the birds \u2026 And Adam named all of them.\u201d In the course of naming them, Adam noticed that all the beasts came in pairs, \u201cmale and female according to every kind [i.e., species] \u2026 but he was alone and there was none whom he found for himself, who was like himself, who would help him.\u201d Only then (v. 4) did God say, \u201cIt is not good that the man should be alone. Let us make for him a helper who is like him\u201d and Eve was shaped \u201cfrom the midst of his bones.\u201d
\n3:8. in the first week Adam was created and also the rib, his wife The biblical narrative states that the first humans were made on the sixth day of Creation (Gen. 1:27). After that came the first Sabbath, and only after that comes the narrative of Adam and Eve (Gen. 2\u20133). But who were those first humans created in Gen. 1:27? One possibility is to see Gen. 2\u20133 as a \u201cflashback,\u201d detailing how those first humans in Gen. 1:27 had been created. The author of Jubilees follows this course, but only in part. Adam and Eve were both created in the first week, he says, but Eve\u2019s creation actually occurred in two stages. At first, Eve was just \u201cthe rib,\u201d a kind of little humanoid inside of Adam. That is why Gen. 1:27 could say that \u201cmale and female He created them\u201d when referring to the creation of Adam\u2014the female was still inside the male. It was only \u201cin the second week,\u201d Jubilees asserts, that God took this female \u201crib\u201d out and shaped her into a fit mate for Adam; then \u201cHe showed her to him.\u201d Jubilees stresses that Eve\u2019s final emergence took place on the sixth day of the second week, fully seven days after Adam\u2019s emergence (v. 6). The reason is that the author had thought of a clever way to support his own particular scenario for Eve\u2019s creation. He cited a certain law in Lev. 12:1\u20135 concerning a woman who gives birth. That law is somewhat puzzling, since it states that if a woman gives birth to a son, \u201cshe shall be impure for seven days,\u201d but if she gives birth to daughter, her period of impurity is 14 days. Why this difference? Jubilees\u2019 answer is that this difference reflects the fact that Adam was created at the end of the first week, whereas Eve was not created (fully) until the end of the second week\u2014hence, one week of impurity for a boy, two weeks for a girl. This law, he sought to claim, backed up his own understanding of the different amounts of time it took for Adam and Eve to be created.
\n3:9\u201314. after forty days were completed Reading the foregoing section of Jubilees, the Interpolator felt that something was missing. After all, the same law in Lev. 12:2\u20135 has a further stipulation: although the mother\u2019s impurity lasts either 7 or 14 days, depending on the sex of the baby, she must wait an additional period\u201433 more days for a male, and 66 more for a female\u2014before being able to enter the Temple. He therefore added two new \u201cfacts\u201d not found in Genesis: (1) that the Garden of Eden was like a temple, indeed, it is \u201cmore holy than any land\u201d since \u201cevery tree which is planted in it is holy\u201d (v. 12) and (2) that Adam and Eve waited different periods of time before being able to enter the Garden (vv. 9 and 12). He then restated the Leviticus law, adding what he believed the original author had left out (starting in 3:10, \u201cAnd therefore [i.e., in keeping with this,] the command was written in the heavenly tablets).\u201d Of course the Genesis story says nothing about Adam or Eve waiting any period of time before entering Eden. But the Interpolator noticed that, according to the biblical account, neither Adam nor Eve was created within the Garden of Eden itself: God apparently created Adam somewhere else and then, only afterward, \u201cplaced\u201d him in the Garden (Gen. 2:8, 15). Likewise, only after Eve\u2019s creation did God \u201c[bring] her to the man\u201d (Gen. 2:22). If so, the Interpolator concluded, Adam and Eve must have waited their 40 and 80 days respectively somewhere outside the Garden. In so stating, however, the Interpolator seems to have lost the drift of the original author\u2019s argument: Adam was created in the first week, Eve in the second; this explains the otherwise irrational distinction between the periods of impurity for a boy and for a girl in Lev. 12:2\u20135. But this explanation in no way implies that Adam and Eve were themselves impure at the time of their creation\u2014how could they be? They were not born at all; God Himself created them as adult human beings. Surely He did not impart any impurity to them! But the Interpolator apparently missed the original author\u2019s meaning. If Jubilees said that Adam and Eve were somehow connected to the law of impurity after childbirth, then it must have been that they themselves were impure; that is why the Interpolator said that they had to wait 40 and 80 days respectively before entering Eden. (Eve did not have to wait those 80 days by analogy; she had to wait, the Interpolator explains, because the Garden of Eden was like God\u2019s temple, and an impure person could never be allowed in such a place.) But in so saying, he created an absurdity. Not only was it absurd to think that God had somehow imparted impurity to Adam and Eve, but the original law in Lev. 12:2\u20135 in any case says nothing about the impurity of the child, only about the impurity of the mother.
\n3:14. This is the law and testimony That is, the Torah-and-te\u2018udah, used by the Interpolator to mean an individual ruling or teaching.
\n3:15\u201316. And during the first week of the first jubilee \u201cWeek\u201d here should really be translated as \u201cseventh,\u201d the seven-year unit that constitutes one-seventh of a jubilee (49 years). Jubilees then explains what was involved in God\u2019s placing Adam in the Garden \u201cto plow it and guard it\u201d (Gen. 2:15), namely, doing \u201ceverything which was appropriate for tilling\u201d as well as \u201cguarding the Garden from the birds and beasts and cattle.\u201d In addition, Jubilees says that Adam was \u201cgathering its fruit and eating [it]\u201d and \u201che used to set aside the rest for himself and his wife.\u201d In saying this, the author seeks to add another explanation of the somewhat surprising mention of \u201cguarding\u201d in Gen. 2:15: it refers to both guarding the Garden from birds and animals and storing (another sense of Heb. shamar, \u201cguard\u201d) the fruit already harvested.
\n3:17. in the second month on the seventeenth day An ill-starred date, the same day on which the floodwaters began to fall (Gen. 7:11).
\n3:20. the woman saw the tree that it was \u2026 pleasing to the eye and its fruit was good to eat in Gen. 3:6 Eve (\u201cthe woman\u201d) saw that the tree \u201cwas good for eating and a delight to the eyes.\u201d The order seemed illogical to the author of Jubilees\u2014the fruit ought to have appealed first to her eye, and only after that should she have guessed that it tasted good as well. So the author of Jubilees changed the order. He also had Eve cover herself with a fig leaf before approaching Adam (contra Gen. 3:6\u20137), apparently to avoid any implication of immodesty.
\n3:24. And to your husband is your return Jubilees, in common with other Second Temple period sources, renders MT\u2019s \u201cyour urge\u201d (teshukah) as \u201cyour return\u201d (teshuvah), which may reflect a textual variant or possibly a different understanding of the former word.
\n3:27. he offered a sweet-smelling sacrifice A crucial theme for the author of Jubilees is that there had been a functioning priesthood from earliest times; this was very important because it supported his overall claim that God\u2019s indissoluble connection to Israel went back to Israel\u2019s earliest ancestors (and not simply to the Sinai covenant); our ancestors had always had priests serving God. The author is therefore at pains to show that Noah, Abraham, Levi, and others were in fact part of a great chain of pre-Sinai priests (kohanim). Genesis actually inspired this claim, since at several points it presents Noah (8:20), Abraham (12:8 etc.), and others as building altars and offering sacrifices on them. How far back did this chain go? It would be nice to have it start from the very beginning, that is, from Adam. But in the book of Genesis Adam is never said to have built an altar or offered a sacrifice to God\u2014and with good reason! After all, most of the narrative of Adam and Eve is taken up with their stay in the Garden, where they are naked, while the Torah clearly states that a priest\u2019s \u201cnakedness may not be exposed\u201d when he makes an offering (Exod. 20:26). Where, then, could Jubilees\u2019 author claim to have found a hint in Genesis that Adam had functioned as a priest? The mention in Genesis that God made clothes for Adam and Eve provided this author with the necessary clue. Evidently, God must have done so not out of any love of haberdashery per se, but in order to allow Adam at last to take up his priesthood and worship Him properly. Indeed, the fact that the clothes in question were \u201ctunics of skin\u201d (Gen. 3:21) suggested that these were indeed priestly garments, since the Pentateuch later specifies that the priest\u2019s clothing include a certain kind of \u201ctunic\u201d (Exod. 28:4, 39; etc.).
\nfrankincense, galbanum, stacte, and spices Having thus established that Adam had been properly equipped by God to become a functioning priest, Jubilees\u2019 author put him to work. Of course, God had condemned Adam to vegetarianism (Gen. 3:18), so the sacrifice he offered could not be an animal but only incense. Here, Jubilees\u2019 author clearly evokes later priestly law, whereby it is commanded to \u201ctake the herbs stacte, onycha, and galbanum, these herbs together with pure frankincense\u201d (Exod. 30:34). Adam decides to use these spices on his own initiative; presumably, he later passes down these details to the next priest in the chain until the ingredients come to be commanded by God at Mount Sinai. The original author then concluded his account of these events by saying that they took place \u201cin the morning with the rising of the sun from the day [i.e., from the time] he covered his shame,\u201d thus explaining why it was only after God had given Adam his clothing that he could make this offering.
\n3:28. the mouth of all the beasts The beasts\u2019 mouths were shut; there was nothing unusual about the snake having been able to speak with Eve earlier in the Garden\u2014all animals could speak until the day of the expulsion. Cf. Creation 156; Ant. 1.41.
\n3:29\u201331. he sent from the Garden of Eden all of the flesh \u201cFlesh\u201d is better rendered as \u201canimals.\u201d For the Interpolator, the Bible\u2019s mention of God covering Adam\u2019s nakedness suggested another possibility entirely. Hellenistic society may have celebrated nudity, but this was anathema to many Jews. The Interpolator therefore asserts that God clothed Adam because nudity in itself is bad, at least for the people of Israel. He therefore asserts that it is commanded in the heavenly tablets that Jews, that is, \u201call who will know the judgment of the Law [better: all those who will know the law of the Torah], \u2026 cover their shame and \u2026 not be uncovered as the Gentiles are,\u201d that is, the Greeks. Thus, while both the original author and the Interpolator sought to derive some legal teaching from Gen. 3:21, it is only the original author who sought here to connect this verse to a law given later in the Pentateuch, namely, that of the \u201ctunics\u201d and incense associated with the priests (Exod. 28:4, 39; etc.; 30:34). By contrast, the Interpolator connects Gen. 3:21 to a law not written anywhere in the Pentateuch: that all Jews, not just priests, are required to \u201ccover their shame\u201d at all times.
\nTherefore it is commanded in the heavenly tablets The Interpolator frequently asserts that \u201cFor this reason [presumably al ken]\u201d some law was written in the heavenly tablets. He does not mean by this that the law was written in the tablets as a result of a particular historical incident (in this case: God did not first decide to permit \u201cAdam alone\u201d to cover his shame and then, as a consequence, turned the avoidance of public nudity into a commandment on the heavenly tablets). Rather, the laws written on the heavenly tablets are God\u2019s timeless and eternal ordinances. The Heb. phrase might thus be better understood as \u201cThat is why it was [or \u201cis\u201d] commanded,\u201d or perhaps \u201cin keeping with this it was [or \u201cis\u201d] commanded.\u201d
\n3:32. the land of Elda An otherwise unknown place.
\n4:1. she bore Awan, his daughter If in Genesis Adam and Eve had only sons (Cain, Abel, and Seth), how did the human race perpetuate itself? Jubilees, in common with other Second Temple sources, stipulates that at least one female was born to Adam, \u201cAwan, his daughter\u201d: later (Jub. 4:8), Azura is born.
\n4:2. Cain killed Abel The story of Cain was problematic for the author of Jubilees on several counts, and he might have skipped it entirely. If he did not, it was principally because of the biblical story\u2019s mention of Abel\u2019s \u201cblood\u201d crying out \u201cfrom the earth to heaven.\u201d Blood\u2014human and animal\u2014is a major theme in the book, so the author stressed that Cain was punished \u201cbecause of the blood of his brother.\u201d
\n4:4. And therefore it is written in the heavenly tablets See above on 3:31. Another of the Interpolator\u2019s insertions begins here. As he often did, he saw in this narrative a chance to assert that an incident in Genesis reflects something that had been written in the eternal laws of the heavenly tablets and that was later to be promulgated by Moses in the Pentateuch. As for which eternal law was foreshadowed in the narrative of Cain and Abel, the Interpolator could have fixed on the obvious choice, \u201cYou shall not murder\u201d (Exod. 20:13). But since Gen. 4:11 said that, as a result of this murder, Cain was \u201ccursed,\u201d this suggested to the Interpolator a connection to a verse that appears in Deuteronomy, \u201cCursed is one who strikes down his fellow with malice\u201d (Deut. 27:24). Cain\u2019s being cursed by God could thus be seen as a reflection in Genesis of this divine pronouncement. Although this verse in Deuteronomy concludes, \u201cAnd all the people shall say Amen,\u201d the Interpolator rephrased this as \u201cAnd all who have seen and heard shall say \u2018so be it\u2019 [i.e., Amen].\u201d This allowed him to slide into another topic. A certain law in Leviticus prohibits someone who \u201chas heard a public adjuration [literally, a public \u201ccurse\u201d]\u201d\u2014presumably as in Deut. 27:24\u2014from refusing to testify in a case covered by that adjuration, since he is \u201cone who has seen or heard or [otherwise] knows\u201d about the case and therefore ought to testify (Lev. 5:1). On the basis of this law, the Interpolator then adds: \u201cAnd the man who saw and did not report (it) shall be cursed like him [Cain].\u201d In this way, the Interpolator managed to connect Cain\u2019s murder of Abel with two later laws, Deut. 27:24 and Lev. 5:1.
\n4:6. Therefore \u2026 we will make known all of the sins This verse reflects the Hebrew text of Deut. 27:24, \u201cCursed is one who strikes down his fellow in secret.\u201d If it was done in secret, how can the offender be known? Indeed, how does God find out about all the misdeeds of humans taking place simultaneously in different parts of the world? It was the job of the angels, His servants (along with the heavenly Enoch), to report on what they had observed in the course of their daily rounds.
\n4:9. buildings were constructed in the land Jubilees apparently infers from the fact that Cain\u2019s son Enoch \u201cbecame a city-builder\u201d (Gen. 4:17) that until that time, there were no fixed dwellings\u2014after all, Cain had been a nomad (Gen. 4:12).
\n4:10. she bore nine more children \u201cShe\u201d refers to Eve. Although this is not mentioned in Genesis, Adam and Eve\u2019s additional children do figure elsewhere in writings of the Second Temple period: according to L.A.B. 1:2, they had \u201ctwelve sons and eight daughters\u201d after the birth of Seth.
\n4:11. She bore for him Enosh in the generations following Seth, Enosh and Kenan were born. Their unnamed wives are given names in Jubilees, Noam and Mu\u2019aleleth; the author often supplies names for people (especially women) who are anonymous in Genesis. Marrying one\u2019s sister, as Enosh did, was apparently deemed an unavoidable practice in the first generations of humanity.
\n4:15. he called him Jared because in his days the angels of the LORD, who were called Watchers, came down to the earth The author connects Jared\u2019s name with the common verb for \u201cdescend\u201d (yarad); cf. 1 En. 6:6 and many later sources. The angels who descended are the \u201csons of God\u201d who \u201csaw how beautiful the daughters of men were\u201d in Gen. 6:1\u20132. In the Second Temple period, they were called irin in Aram. (1 En. 1:5; cf. Dan. 4:14). The origin and meaning of the term is unclear; interpreters apparently associated the name with the Aram. and Heb. root \u2018-i-r, \u201cawake,\u201d perhaps because angels tirelessly perform their tasks without sleeping.
\nto teach the sons of man, and perform judgment and uprightness upon the earth \u201cTo \u2026 perform judgment and uprightness\u201d is better rendered as \u201cto do what is just and upright.\u201d According to the author of Jubilees, the Watchers\u2019 original motives were good; it was only later that things went amiss.
\n4:17. This one was the first who learned writing and knowledge and wisdom \u201cThis one\u201d refers to Enoch. Mentioned in passing in Gen. 5:18\u201324, he became the subject of much speculation in Second Temple times. Because of the phrase \u201cfor God had taken him,\u201d this biblical passage suggested to some that Enoch had ascended to heaven while yet alive, where he continued to live eternally next to God\u2019s heavenly throne. As a result of this tradition, a number of books containing Mesopotamian science and lore were attributed to Enoch\u2019s authorship (as a resident of heaven, he must have been privy to many secrets hidden from ordinary humans\u2019 eyes), including the various parts of our current 1 Enoch. Enoch is thus said here to have written \u201cin a book the signs of the heavens according to the order [i.e., the patterns] of their months,\u201d and the \u201cbook\u201d in question would seem to be some version of what is now 1 En. 72\u201382; the author of Jubilees clearly knew some of the literature attributed to Enoch and viewed it as authoritative. Writing this book, according to the author of Jubilees, enabled Enoch to tell human beings \u201cthe (appointed) times of the years according to their order\u201d\u2014that is, equipped with this knowledge, people would know the proper time to celebrate festivals and the like.
\n4:18. This one was the first (who) wrote a testimony and testified to the children of men throughout the generations That is, \u201cEnoch was the first to write a te\u2018udah [warning] in which he warned the children of men.\u201d This may be a reference to the moral adjurations and visions of the future in the literature attributed to Enoch. Furthermore, he made known \u201ctheir weeks according to jubilees,\u201d that is, presumably, how the passage of time is reckoned through these 49-year periods and their 7-year subunits; and he also made known \u201cthe days of the years,\u201d that is, how many days there are in a solar and a lunar year (see 1 En. 72\u201374). He also arranged \u201cthe months\u201d and related \u201cthe Sabbaths of the years,\u201d that is, the sabbatical years.
\n4:19. he saw what was and what will be Enoch had a vision of the future and subsequently \u201cwrote his testimony [apparently a te\u2018udah, a warning] and deposited the testimony upon the earth\u201d to testify \u201cagainst all the children of men,\u201d bearing witness to the fact that they had been properly warned. This seems to be a reference to material now contained in 1 Enoch (i.e., an earlier form of 1 En. 85\u201390 and\/or the Apocalypse of Weeks 93:1\u201310; 91:11\u201317), which also divides time into \u201cweeks of years.\u201d The former section is an allegorical vision of all human history, from Adam and Eve to the great time of judgment and the dawn of a new age, while the Apocalypse of Weeks section divides history into 10 periods of \u201csevens,\u201d culminating in the arrival of a \u201cnew heaven\u201d and \u201cmany weeks [i.e., \u201csevens\u201d] without number forever.\u201d It is possible that this writing of Enoch might be none other than the book of the Te\u2018udah referred to by Jubilees\u2019 author (see the introductory comments and above on Jub. 1:4, 27, 29). If so, the fact that Enoch deposited this warning on earth would explain how it got down here and circulated until Isaiah was ordered to bind it up (Isa. 8:16).
\n4:21. they showed him everything which is on earth and in the heavens, the dominion of the sun Since Enoch was in heaven, the angels could teach him directly about heavenly things, including the sun\u2019s exclusive role in determining the length of \u201cdays, Sabbaths, months, festivals, years\u201d and so forth (2:9).
\n4:25. he offered the incense Since Eden was itself like the Temple (see above on 3:9\u201314), it was thus only fitting that Enoch\u2014who, like Adam, was a priest\u2014should offer sacrifices to God. He offered incense \u201cof the holy place\u201d (better: of the sanctuary, i.e., the incense later to be offered in the Jerusalem Temple) with the correct mixture of spices that can only be offered in a proper sanctuary (Exod. 30:32, 34\u201337)\u2014at its appropriate time, the evening (Exod. 30:8).
\non Mount Qater The text is not altogether clear here, and the place of Enoch\u2019s offering may have been called \u201cthe mountain of incense\u201d (har ha-ketoret). This same mountain\u2019s geographic location seems to be glossed in the next verse as \u201cthe mountain of the East,\u201d in apposition to the Garden of Eden, which precedes it, that is, \u201cthe Garden of Eden which is the mountain of the East.\u201d This would accord well with the tradition that located Eden on earth, but atop some high mountain somewhere to the east. But in the course of Jubilees\u2019 transmission, the apposition \u201cthe Garden of Eden, the mountain of the East\u201d apparently came to be misunderstood as referring to two earthly sanctuaries instead of one. This would explain the contradiction between the assertion here that there are \u201cfour sacred places on earth,\u201d that is, four proper sanctuaries, and Jub. 8:19, where it is said that there are only three: Eden, Sinai, and Zion. In truth, there always were only these three, each located on a mountaintop, with Eden\u2019s mountain being \u201cthe mountain of the East.\u201d Jubilees specifically mentions that Mount Zion will be sanctified in the new creation for the sanctification of the earth. This may be the same \u201cnew creation\u201d referred to in Jub. 1:29 or may simply refer to the creation of this third and \u201cnew\u201d sanctuary in the time of King Solomon.
\n4:28. Lamech took for himself a wife, and her name was Betenos Betenos(h), who is mentioned as well in the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen 2:2), a text apparently dependent on Jubilees.
\nThis one will console me Gen. 5:29.
\n4:30. he lacked seventy years from one thousand years God had warned Adam about the Tree of Knowing Good and Evil that \u201con the day that you eat of it, you will die\u201d (Gen. 2:17). Yet Adam went on to live to the age of 930 (Gen. 5:5). Was God lying? Jubilees explains that \u201ca thousand years are like one day in the testimony [better: fixed time] of heaven\u201d (an assertion based on Ps. 90:4, \u201cFor in Your sight a thousand years are like yesterday\u201d). If so, God was referring to the unit of time that He calls a \u201cday,\u201d namely, 1,000 years. If Adam lived to the age of 930, then he must have passed away sometime in the late afternoon of one of God\u2019s days.
\n4:31\u201332. Cain was killed one year after him The book of Genesis does not report how Cain died; the original author of Jubilees similarly skipped the subject. As far as he was concerned, Cain\u2019s story ended with his being cursed and exiled (above, on 4:1\u20134), since that was, after all, the punishment decreed by God in Gen. 4:12. But the absence of any account of Cain\u2019s death in the Bible gave rise to a number of exegetical creations. The Interpolator saw here another fine opportunity to connect something from Genesis with a law that appears later on in the Torah (and thus to assert that the law had always existed on the heavenly tablets). Lev. 24:19\u201320 reads: \u201cIf anyone maims his fellow, as he has done so shall it be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has inflicted harm on a person, so shall it be inflicted on him.\u201d The Interpolator apparently understood the two (somewhat repetitive) halves of this verse in two different senses: \u201cas he has done\u201d refers to the kind of harm inflicted (fracture, loss of an eye or a tooth, etc.), whereas \u201cAs he has inflicted harm\u201d refers to the means by which the harm was inflicted. Cain\u2019s invented death through the collapse of his house upholds both halves of the verse: \u201cCain was killed\u201d as punishment for Abel\u2019s murder, and he was killed specifically by his house\u2019s stones because \u201che [had] killed Abel with a stone.\u201d
\n4:33. she bore for him Shem The birth order of Noah\u2019s sons is not clear from Genesis. Genesis 6:9 and 9:18 imply that Shem was the oldest. However, Gen. 10:21 is ambiguous; it could be understood as saying that Shem was either \u201cthe older brother of Japhet\u201d or \u201cthe brother of Japhet, the oldest.\u201d The latter reading would be strengthened by Gen. 10, in which Noah\u2019s descendants are listed in the order: Japhet, Ham, and Shem. Nonetheless, Jubilees here asserts that Shem was the oldest brother; cf. Gen. Ap 12:10, \u201c[to Shem,] my eldest son\u201d; also Vulg.; B. Sanh. 69b.
\n5:1. daughters were born to them In common with other Second Temple period sources, Jubilees assumes that the proximate cause of the Flood was the mating of the \u201csons of God\u201d with the daughters of men in Gen. 6:1\u20134. These \u201csons of God\u201d are, for Jubilees and other interpreters, the angels of the LORD. The offspring born of their union with humans were held to be giants.
\n5:2\u20133. injustice increased upon the earth Jubilees inherited a mass of traditions about the causes of the Flood, some of them apparently from 1 Enoch. Among those mentioned here is injustice (Heb. hamas in Gen. 6:11, translated as \u201cinjustice\u201d in the LXX); this form of corruption then spread from humans to \u201ccattle and beasts and birds and everything which walks on the earth.\u201d Jubilees says this to explain why it was not merely the Nephilim and human beings who were wiped out by the Flood, but other living things as well; cf. 7:24. Indeed according to the biblical account God saw that the earth itself was \u201ccorrupted\u201d (Gen. 6:11); interpreters concluded that a purifying bath\u2014the Flood\u2014was necessary to return the earth to its prior state (see 1 En. 7:5\u20136; 9:1\u20132; 106:17).
\n5:6. And against his angels \u2026 he was very angry These are the \u201csons of God\u201d mentioned in Gen. 6:1. God instructs \u201cus\u201d (presumably the \u201cangels of the presence,\u201d including the narrator of the book of Jubilees) to tie them up (cf. 1 En. 10:4\u20138) so that they may be held indefinitely under the earth. (Being angels, they apparently could not themselves be killed.) Though not often recognized as such, this theme of binding the wicked angels actually originated as an exegetical motif, that is, a way of explaining an apparent problem in the biblical narrative: God\u2019s promise in Gen. 9:11 never to bring another flood to destroy humankind. Why should He have promised such a thing? Surely it was not because He had decided to lower His standards and show a greater tolerance for human wickedness! Instead, it must have been because God did something\u2014restrained the wicked angels\u2014that would prevent humanity as a whole from going astray again.
\n5:7\u20138. And against their children That is, the Nephilim; \u201ca word went forth from before His presence [i.e., millifnei, a less anthropomorphic way of saying \u201cGod sent forth a word\u201d] so that He might smite them [an impersonal verb, better translated as \u201cso that they might be smitten\u201d]\u201d: being only half-angels, the Nephilim could be killed, in contrast to their angelic fathers. God then explained: \u201cMy spirit will not dwell upon [i.e., in] man forever; for they are flesh.\u201d This biblical verse (Gen. 6:3), long a mystery to interpreters, receives a novel interpretation in Jubilees. The author has removed it from its original context, where it seems to be a divine pronouncement about all human beings, and redefined it as a statement about the Nephilim. Such hybrid beings are, Jubilees understands, a monstrosity; therefore God says He will not allow \u201cMy spirit\u201d (the angelic part of these hybrids) to \u201cdwell\u201d in the human part \u201cforever,\u201d but will destroy the Nephilim in \u201cone hundred and ten [a mistake; it should be 120] years.\u201d In common with other Second Temple period texts, Jubilees understands the 120 years of Gen. 6:3 not as a new limit to the human life span (for how would that square with the 400+ years in the lives of Noah\u2019s sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, and so forth?), but as a sentence pronounced against the Nephilim and the other members of their generation.
\n5:10. until the day of great judgment This appears to be a reflection of another interpretive tradition of Gen. 6:3, which associates the Heb. yadon (\u201cdwell\u201d in the previously cited translation) with the Heb. din, \u201cjudge.\u201d If so, then God was announcing that He would not judge the angels right away; instead they would be bound, awaiting their full punishment on the great judgment day. A somewhat similar understanding is reflected in M. Sanh. 10:3, which apparently understands the verse as meaning \u201cMy spirit will not judge the generation of the Flood for the world to come [i.e., understanding le\u2019olam, \u2018forever,\u2019 as if it were le\u2019olam ha-ba, \u2018for the world to come\u2019].\u201d That is why Jubilees says that \u201cnot one of them remained whom He did not judge\u201d\u2014even though their sentence was not carried out right away but remained suspended while they were bound under the earth.
\n5:12. a new and righteous nature In addition to the motif of the wicked angels (the Watchers) being bound under the earth, 1 En. 10 had included another motif, repeated here, to the effect that God \u201cmade for all His works [better: for all human beings, i.e., His ma\u2019asim] a new and righteous nature so that they might not sin in all their nature forever,\u201d that is, so that they would not keep sinning as they had been doing until now. \u201c[Henceforth] all will be righteous, each in his kind, always.\u201d This motif, it seems, originated as another way of explaining God\u2019s promise never to bring another flood: He retooled human nature\u2014previously judged by God to be \u201cnothing but evil all the time\u201d (Gen. 6:5)\u2014so that all of humanity would never again sin as it had before the Flood and so require the same punishment.
\n5:13\u201316. The judgment of all of them \u201cJudgment\u201d is better rendered as \u201cpunishment.\u201d The idea of a newly righteous human nature apparently troubled the Interpolator. After all, if all humans became\u2014as Jubilees\u2019 author had just said\u2014\u201crighteous\u201d after the Flood, then why are some people still sinning? Struggling with this problem, the Interpolator came up with a novel solution. In the post-Flood world, even though the new, improved version of human beings was far better than its predecessor, this hardly meant that sinfulness itself had ceased to exist. Indeed, to make sure that any further sinfulness would be kept under strict control, God had accompanied His retooling of human nature with a tightening of enforcement procedures. Before the Flood, people were apparently not fully punished for their sins: that is how things had gotten out of hand, until God had no alternative but to destroy most of humanity and start over again. But now, each and every sin committed would automatically be punished with the full force of the law: the penalty for every kind of sin \u201chas been ordained and written in the heavenly tablets\u201d and will be carried out \u201cwithout injustice.\u201d This passage also suggests that, while humans are free to go about their lives making choices, judgment\u2014mishpat, meaning the penalty imposed for all possible infractions\u2014\u201cfor every (sort of) nature [i.e., for every kind of creature] \u201cand every kind [of sin] has been written.\u201d God\u2019s judgment is thus to be absolutely fair and unbending: \u201cHe is not one who accepts persons\u201d (i.e., shows favoritism; the expression appears in Deut. 10:17; cf. 16:19) nor one \u201cwho accepts gifts,\u201d that is, takes a bribe (ibid.). However, the people of Israel, God\u2019s chosen ones, have a unique advantage in this process of divine judgment, the Day of Atonement:
\n5:17\u201318. He will have mercy on all who return from all their error, once each year This happens on the Day of Atonement, which is described in Lev. 16; the Interpolator, however, adds a specification not found there: only if \u201cthey return to Him in righteousness\u201d (i.e., sincerely) will they be forgiven. (Lev. 16:30, by contrast, actually makes it sound as if atonement was automatic, requiring nothing more than the release of the scapegoat and the ceremony in the Temple.) For the Interpolator, however, in common with other Second Temple period sources (see also M. Yoma 8:9), atonement required the worshiper to turn aside from past sins and not repeat them; moreover, this refers to people returning \u201cfrom all their error\u201d; apparently intentional sins are not worked off by the Day of Atonement.
\n5:21\u201323. He commanded Noah to make an ark The author skipped the measurements of the ark as well as the numbers of clean and unclean animals to be brought aboard the ark (perhaps because of the apparent contradiction between Gen. 6:19 and 7:2).
\n5:27. five months, one hundred and fifty days Along with other Jews, Jubilees\u2019 author endorsed a calendar in which every month has exactly 30 days; these months are quite independent of the phases of the moon (see the introductory comments). He had a powerful argument in favor of this calendar: the Flood story, where it says that the rains began to fall \u201cin the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month\u201d (Gen. 7:11); then the waters continued to swell on the earth until \u201cthe end of one hundred and fifty days \u2026 in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month\u201d (Gen. 8:3\u20134). In other words, from the 17th of the second month to the 17th of the seventh month is 150 days. That works fine for Jubilees\u2019 calendar: five 30-day months equal 150 days. But it will not work for any lunar calendar, since five consecutive lunar months can never come out to 150 days; at best they can equal 148. That is why Jubilees gleefully stresses what Genesis does not: \u201cAnd all of the water stayed upon the surface of the earth five months, one hundred and fifty days.\u201d
\n5:28. on the top of Lubar, one of the mountains of Ararat The mountain is not named in the Bible (see Gen. 8:4), but this same name appears below (7:1), as well as in Gen. Ap 12:13 and in Epiphanius, Syncellus, Cedrenus, and other sources.
\n5:31. the seventeenth day in the second month This is one full year after the rains began; the same date is reported in 4Q252 Commentary on Genesis 2:1. Both stand in contradiction to Gen. 8:14, which reads \u201ctwenty-seventh day\u201d in all versions. Note that in the LXX version the Flood begins on the 27th of the second month (Gen. 7:11), so that in its chronology the Flood also lasted exactly one year.
\n6:1. the first of the third month Noah\u2019s sacrifice and covenant\u2014which Jubilees\u2019 author is about to describe\u2014took place in the third month. It certainly could have happened sooner (the earth was dry nearly two weeks earlier). But for Jubilees\u2019 author, a careful reader of Scripture, the third month seems to be the month in which covenants are concluded. It was not only the month in which God here made a covenant with Noah, but also the month of the great covenant between God and Israel at Mount Sinai (apparently in the third month on the basis of Exod. 19:1, explicitly so in Jub. 1:1). The author of Jubilees connected two additional covenants with the third month, God\u2019s covenant with Abraham (Jub. 14:20) and Jacob\u2019s covenant with Laban (Jub. 29:5\u20137); these have no date in the Bible, but both occur in Jubilees in the third month. Moreover, Isaac was \u201cthe first one circumcised according to the covenant\u201d (Jub. 16:14); this too took place in the third month. It was indeed the author\u2019s \u201cCovenant Month\u201d par excellence. (See further on 14:19\u201320.)
\n6:2\u20133. And he made atonement for the land Jubilees\u2019 author skips over some of the details of what happened after the Flood\u2014Noah sending out a raven and a dove, for example\u2014while elaborating on others. Thus, as might be expected, he specifies that Noah \u201ctook the kid of a goat\u201d to atone, in keeping with the later practice for the first of the month (Num. 28:15). The other items, \u201ca calf, a goat, a lamb, [kids], salt, a turtledove, and a young dove\u201d\u2014all figure in various sacrificial laws, although this particular combination corresponds to no prescribed offering in the Torah, nor does it conform to the more general statement about Noah\u2019s sacrifice in Gen. 8:20.
\n6:4\u20138. the LORD smelled the sweet aroma, and he made a covenant with him The author introduces a slight, but significant, change in the order of events here, asserting that God made a covenant with Noah immediately upon smelling the sweet odor of Noah\u2019s sacrifice. In Genesis this covenant is not mentioned until 11 verses after God smells the sweet savor (Gen. 9:9). Apparently it was important for the original author to imply that Noah\u2019s sacrifice was actually part of a covenant ceremony, and that further, this covenant involved an obligation on the part of Noah and his descendants. In Genesis, of course, God\u2019s promise never to bring another flood required nothing of Noah and said nothing about not eating blood. But by introducing the word \u201ccovenant\u201d before God\u2019s undertaking never to bring another flood, Jubilees\u2019 author implies that God\u2019s promise was made in the context of a mutual agreement that called on Noah\u2019s descendants never to eat blood: \u201cBut flesh which is (filled) with life, (that is) with blood, you shall not eat\u2014because the life of all flesh is in the blood\u2014lest your blood be sought for your lives. From the hand of every man, from the hand of every (creature), I will seek the blood of a man.\u201d Thus, the whole biblical narrative from Gen. 8:20 to 9:17 became, for Jubilees\u2019 author, one great covenant ceremony, the first in a series of covenants and promises that bound Israel and God long before the Sinai revelation.
\n6:9. And as for you, increase and become many in the land A paraphrase of Gen. 9:7.
\n6:10\u201314. Noah and his sons swore Here the Interpolator inserted another passage. He began by asserting that, in response to the covenant ceremony described just before, Noah and his sons swore that they \u201cwould not eat any blood which was in any flesh.\u201d This oath is the Interpolator\u2019s invention\u2014there is no such oath in Genesis. Its purpose was to lay the foundation for a verbal tie between the word for \u201coaths\u201d (shevuot) and the holiday that the Interpolator wished to associate with it, the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot), otherwise known as the Festival of Firstfruits.
\n6:11. And you will sprinkle blood upon them Before the Interpolator could get to the Feast of Weeks, however, he sought to associate the oath sworn by Noah and his sons with two quite unrelated issues. The first was the Sinai covenant. The Interpolator reminded Moses that God \u201cspoke to you so that you also might make a covenant with the children of Israel with an oath in this month,\u201d a covenant to be marked by Moses sprinkling blood on the people at its conclusion (Exod. 24:8). He did so, according to the Interpolator, as a reminder of the oath that Noah and his sons had sworn centuries before, not to eat blood. In saying this, the Interpolator sought to add credibility to his invention\u2014the oath sworn by Noah and his sons\u2014by suggesting that Moses sprinkled the blood at Mount Sinai to remind the Israelites of that oath.
\n6:14. at the hour of daybreak and evening The second thing to which the Interpolator sought to connect the blood prohibition was a law that appears later in the Pentateuch, the requirement that the priests offer the two daily tamid sacrifices \u201cin the morning and in the evening\u201d (see Exod. 29:38\u201342 and Num. 28:3\u20138). This was part of his overall effort to connect whatever he could in Jubilees to some law written on the heavenly tablets and later promulgated by Moses at Mount Sinai. Unfortunately for the Interpolator, the Torah\u2019s account of the tamid sacrifices mentions nothing about blood, and it certainly says nothing about not consuming blood\u2014but that did not stop him. He therefore said that the Israelites are to \u201ckeep it [the prohibition of blood consumption] for [better: throughout] their generations so that they might make supplication on your [better: their] behalf with blood before the altar on every day\u201d\u2014as if to say that the tamid sacrifices are only made possible by Israel\u2019s renunciation of consuming blood. (Note that this passage, although brief, is studded with the Interpolator\u2019s \u201csignature\u201d phrases: \u201cThis testimony [meaning: an individual law] is written [that is, on the heavenly tablets] \u2026 all of the days of the earth \u2026 And you, [Moses,] command the children of Israel \u2026 there is no limit of days for this law \u2026 for [i.e., throughout] their generations \u2026 on every day.\u201d
\n6:15\u201316. he gave a sign to Noah and his children These verses had originally followed verse 9, finishing off the original author\u2019s account of Noah\u2019s covenant with God.
\n6:17\u201318. They should observe the feast of Shevuot Having laid the groundwork for his association of Noah\u2019s covenant with the Feast of Weeks (see above, on 6:10), the Interpolator proceeds to make that connection explicit here: it is not meant to be pronounced the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) but the Festival of Oaths (Shevuot). This change conformed to the Interpolator\u2019s overall ideology. As someone who disliked the very idea of humans having a role in deciding holy matters (see the introductory comments), he was certainly disturbed by how the date of the festival of Shavuot (\u201cWeeks\u201d) was to be determined according to the Torah. It was called \u201cWeeks\u201d because, year after year, its date was to be arrived at by counting off seven weeks from the day on which the first offering of the new barley crop (called the omer) was brought before God (Lev. 23:15\u201321; Deut. 16:9\u201311).
\nBut to the Interpolator, the whole idea of human beings having some part in determining the date of one of God\u2019s holy days\u2014counting off seven weeks\u2014seemed horrible. Elsewhere, he inveighs against those who \u201ccarefully observe the moon\u201d and thereby make \u201ca profane day a festival\u201d (Jub. 6:36\u201337)\u2014an allusion to the practice (normative in Rabbinic Judaism) of determining the start of each month, and hence of any festival that falls within that month, on the basis of human sightings of the fleeting sliver of the new moon. Surely, for someone who believed that all of God\u2019s laws had been decided and inscribed in the heavenly tablets before the start of human history, the whole idea of this procedure must have seemed altogether wrong. To have human beings determine the date of the Feast of Weeks by counting off weeks could hardly have looked any better to the Interpolator. What is more, different groups within Judaism differed as to when this counting of weeks was to start: the Pentateuch specified it was to begin \u201cthe day after the Sabbath\u201d (Lev. 23:15)\u2014but which Sabbath was that? The whole subject was mired in controversy. It was to undo all this, and to stress the blood prohibition in the process, that the Interpolator undertook his ambitious project of turning Shavuot into Shevuot. He said that this festival, like all of Israel\u2019s holy days, had been written on the heavenly tablets long before the time of Noah and his sons: \u201call of this feast was celebrated in heaven from the day of creation until the days of Noah.\u201d But God had apparently manipulated events so as to have Noah and his sons swear an oath in the third month never to consume blood\u2014hence this third-month festival\u2019s name, the Festival of Oaths. If its real name was \u201cOaths\u201d and not \u201cWeeks,\u201d then humans counting off weeks need have nothing to do with it. The Interpolator therefore makes no mention of anyone counting off seven weeks\u2014on the contrary, if this festival was celebrated in heaven \u201cfrom the day of creation,\u201d there were certainly no human beings around to determine its date. Noah\u2019s celebrating it simply marked its first arrival on earth.
\n6:18\u201319. Abraham alone kept it The Interpolator asserts that \u201cNoah and his children kept it,\u201d but what had originally been designed as a universal festival (Noah and his descendants constituted all of humanity) thus became a strictly Israelite festival after Noah\u2019s sons abandoned it and it was celebrated by \u201cAbraham alone,\u201d who subsequently passed it on to Isaac and Jacob and his sons, that is, the people of Israel. Abraham\u2019s descendants then continued observing the day until Moses\u2019s own time.
\n6:19. in your days, the children of Israel forgot it Better: \u201cin your [own] days, [Moses,] the children of Israel forgot it.\u201d This second act of forgetting was crucial to the Interpolator, because he still had to account for a major difficulty in his attempt to identify his newfangled creation, \u201cThe Festival of Oaths,\u201d with the biblical Feast of Weeks\/Festival of Firstfruits. The plain fact is that the festival called Shavuot in the Torah has absolutely nothing to do with oaths\u2014or with Noah, for that matter. It is an agricultural festival, the beginning of the wheat harvest\u2014that is what the Torah consistently says, and that is how Jubilees\u2019 original author viewed it as well. What is more, Jubilees\u2019 author had, not surprisingly, been careful to create a precedent for this festival in his narration of the life of Abraham (Jub. 15:1\u20132), just as he did with the Festival of Booths (see below on 16:20\u201327). Why should the same festival have had two different precedents, one in the time of Noah and the other in the time of Abraham? To such problems the Interpolator devised a bold solution. He asserted that his creation, the Festival of Oaths, had originally been an entirely separate festival from Firstfruits\u2014they have two names in the Bible because, at first, they were quite unrelated. Firstfruits was indeed an agricultural festival inaugurated by Abraham, but Oaths, the Interpolator claimed, was a commemoration of Noah\u2019s covenant with God. If they were two different festivals, then of course they had two quite different origins\u2014Oaths in Noah\u2019s time and Firstfruits in the time of Abraham. Moreover, if the original author had represented Abraham as inaugurating Firstfruits, the Interpolator was careful to insert into the narrative that Abraham had also \u201crenewed the feast [of Oaths] and the ordinance for himself forever\u201d (Jub. 14:20b), quite apart from this celebration of Firstfruits. But if they were originally two separate festivals, why does the Torah act as if they are one and the same, apparently using the names Firstfruits and Weeks\/Oaths interchangeably? The Interpolator\u2019s answer is that the two originally separate festivals were fused into one on Mount Sinai:
\n6:20. One day per year in this month they shall celebrate the feast After Oaths was forgotten for the second time, in the days of Moses, it was reformulated in the Torah so as to be combined with Firstfruits, as Moses explains here: from now on, the two festivals are to be celebrated on the same day, \u201cfor it is [both] the feast of Shevuot and it is the feast of the firstfruits.\u201d This act of combination posed no problem to the Interpolator\u2019s sense of the eternity of God\u2019s laws: the heavenly tablets, like the Torah after it, specified only that Oaths\/Weeks was to be celebrated sometime in the third month, and that practice would certainly continue. It was only as an act of pragmatism (because the festival had been forgotten) that Oaths and Firstfruits were now to be fused. But this would still leave Oaths in the third month, as it always had been.
\n6:21\u201322. This feast is twofold and of two natures That is, it combines two originally separate holy days. That is why, the angel of the Presence adds, \u201cI have written [this] \u2026 in the book of the first law\u201d (better: the first book of law), that is, the Torah, which speaks of a single festival, \u201cWeeks\u201d\/\u201cFirstfruits,\u201d so that you might observe both on a single day and not as two separate festivals. As for the date of this festival, the Interpolator knew full well that the Torah never specified a precise date for Shavuot; the festival merely had to be celebrated sometime in the third month. However, now combined with Firstfruits, its precise date would henceforth be the 15th of the third month. As to the purpose of the Sinai Revelation, the case of Shavuot\/Shevuot highlights, in miniature, what Jubilees\u2019 original author and the Interpolator had in common, as well as how they differed. According to Jubilees\u2019 original author, God chose the People of Israel as His own at the time of the Creation, and Israel\u2019s earliest ancestors\u2014Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and the others\u2014inaugurated at least some practices that later became the laws of the Torah (such as the laws governing the observance of various holy days, the laws of priestly sacrifices, the prohibition of eating blood, and miscellaneous other laws such as that governing fruit trees; see below on 7:1\u20133). If so, at least some of the laws promulgated by Moses at Mount Sinai (starting in Exod. 20) were rooted in the doings of Israel\u2019s ancestors long before: at Sinai these little family practices of Israel\u2019s patriarchs were turned into the divinely authorized laws of a nation (though they were also supplemented by other, new laws). For that reason, the covenant concluded with Israel at Mount Sinai was not, in Jubilees\u2019 view, something altogether new that tied Israel to its God. That tie had existed from the time of the patriarchs, and it was therefore not subsequently abrogated by Israel\u2019s failure to keep the Sinai laws, as some might think. Israel was duly punished for violating the Sinai laws\u2014in the Babylonian exile and in other ways (see below on chap. 23)\u2014but it had never ceased, and never would cease, to be God\u2019s chosen people. The Interpolator seems to have agreed with Jubilees\u2019 author in other ways, but his various legal interpolations were designed to deny any implication that the Torah\u2019s laws were a continuation of practices inaugurated by the patriarchs. He wished to assert on the contrary that those matters had in fact been written down on the heavenly tablets from the beginning of time. Noah, Abraham, and the others were thus, whether they knew it or not, acting in accord with what God had legislated long before. To strengthen this claim, the Interpolator sought out further possible connections between incidents in Genesis and the laws promulgated at Sinai or afterward, asserting each time that whatever was being done did not anticipate a law at Sinai but rather recapitulated a law that had existed for eternity on the heavenly tablets. Both writers thus undercut the newness of the Sinai covenant, but in opposite ways. For one, that covenant was merely an extension of earlier practices and an earlier connection between God and Israel, while for the other the laws of Sinai were mere copies of a great heavenly document that had existed eternally.
\n6:23\u201329. on the first of the first month The fact that five consecutive months in the Torah\u2019s Flood narrative equal 150 days was the original author\u2019s proof that lunar months had no part in the Torah\u2019s true calendar (see above on 5:27): its months must be arbitrary units of 30 days apiece. But 12 such months would still leave it 5\u00bc days short of the solar year. Some system of incorporating the missing days must have been envisaged. Possibly they were just added on at the end, like the five extramensual days added at the end of the year in the Ptolemaic \u201ccivil calendar\u201d (plus a sixth day once every four years). Jubilees\u2019 author did not say. In any case, the Interpolator advocated a somewhat more detailed form of this same calendar, according to which the \u201cofficial year\u201d was to consist of 364 days. This would yield exactly 52 weeks\u2014and 52 Sabbaths\u2014year after year. But for such a system to work, the \u201cextra\u201d four days had to exist outside the 12 months; they were to be free-floating days distributed at equal intervals through the year, \u201con the first of the first month and on the first of the fourth month\u201d and so forth, in commemoration of the four stages of the Flood narrative. Thus, every three-month period would always be followed by a free-floating extramensual day. This would allow \u201ceach one of them\u201d (the days of remembrance) to be \u201cthirteen weeks\u201d (91 days, i.e., three months plus the extra floating day) \u201cfrom one to another.\u201d Unfortunately, the Interpolator could not maintain that these extra days had been in the sacred calendar from the beginning of time\u2014as he no doubt would have liked\u2014because then there would have been one day too many in the Torah\u2019s Flood chronology. So, although he loved the idea of calendrical immutability and certainly bristled at the idea of any human meddling with the sacred order, he had no choice but to say that, as soon as the Flood was over, Noah introduced these four \u201cdays of remembrance.\u201d
\n6:32. And no one shall corrupt its (appointed) time from its days or from its feasts That is, the holy days will be observed in their proper time only if Israel follows this calendar. But the Interpolator knew that this was not the case; he therefore has the angel of the Presence \u201cpredict\u201d that all the sons of Israel will forget the proper calendar.
\n6:35. For I know and henceforth I shall make you know\u2014but not from my own heart This verse provides a rare bit of emphasis: I\u2019m not telling you this on my own authority, the angel of the Presence tells Moses, but because the book is written before me, the chronological history from which I am dictating; it (the Book of the Division of Days) tells me what has been \u201cordained on the heavenly tablets.\u201d
\n6:36\u201337. there will be those who will examine the moon diligently Looking into this chronological history, the angel knows that people will switch to lunar months, and it is this willful act that will cause the festivals to be observed on the wrong days. \u201cTherefore, the years [i.e., a time] will come\u201d when the people of Israel will corrupt the proper calendar \u201cand make a day of testimony [i.e., a festival]\u201d the cause of divine reproach because it will not have been properly celebrated, \u201cand a profane day a festival.\u201d
\n6:38. Therefore, I shall command you and \u2026 bear witness to you Better: \u201cwarn you.\u201d That is, I am commanding and solemnly warning; see above on 1:8. Since punishment for any sin requires prior warning, once people start down this path of wrongly observing God\u2019s holy days and \u201cset awry the [starting point of the] months and Sabbaths and feasts and jubilees,\u201d they will end up with one of the worst of cultic violations: \u201cthey will eat all of the blood with all flesh [i.e., kinds of meat].\u201d
\n7:1\u20132. Noah planted a vine the mountain \u2026 (one) of the mountains of Ararat \u201cThe mountain\u201d referred to here is Mount Lubar. After the long interpolation, the original author\u2019s account resumes. In keeping with Gen. 9:20, he recounts that Noah planted a grapevine on Mount Lubar (on this name, see above on 5:28). The planting of this vine inevitably raised a legal question in the mind of Jubilees\u2019 author. The Genesis narrative said nothing about Noah waiting a certain period of time before being able to consume the vine\u2019s fruits, but such a waiting period is specified by the law of Lev. 19:23\u201325. Jubilees\u2019 author, in keeping with his desire to have Israel\u2019s ancestors initiate such legal practices on their own, goes out of his way to assert that the vine produced fruit in the fourth year, which Noah then harvested and turned into wine, but that Noah then \u201cput it in a vessel, and he guarded it until the fifth year.\u201d These details are clearly an interpretation of Lev. 19:23\u201325, although they do not appear to conform to the halakhic practices of any other known group. (On other interpretations of Lev. 19:23\u201325, see below on Jub. 7:36.)
\nThe sacrificial animals listed here also appear in Num. 29:2\u20135, but there the offering is made on the first day of the seventh month, that is, the \u201cDay of Trumpet Blasts\u201d (Lev. 23:23\u201325; Num. 29:1\u20136), the Rabbinic Rosh Hashanah. However, in the Temple Scroll column 14, a sacrifice is possibly prescribed, as here, for \u201cthe first day \u2026 of the first month.\u201d Note also that the first day of the first month (1 Nisan) is, in Rabbinic reckoning, also a special day, the starting point for the regnal years of kings and for the Torah\u2019s lists of festivals (M. RH 1:1). It is also noteworthy that here, once again, Noah functions as a full-fledged priest, part of the \u201cchain of priests\u201d theme dear to Jubilees\u2019 author.
\n7:7. And when evening came Noah\u2019s drunkenness thus arose in pious circumstances, as part of his sacrificing and celebrating before God; he also \u201clay down drunk,\u201d a somewhat extenuating circumstance lacking in the biblical account.
\n7:8. Ham saw Noah, his father, naked As a result, Noah curses Canaan, Ham\u2019s son. Jubilees does not give any reason here for Noah\u2019s cursing Canaan instead of the guilty party, Ham himself. Other ancient sources point out that Ham had already been blessed by God (Gen. 9:1), so his curse had to be transferred to the next generation. Later, Jubilees notes that \u201cthrough the sin of Ham, Canaan sinned,\u201d which seems to be an alternative solution; see below on 22:21.
\n7:12. May the LORD enlarge Japheth, and may the LORD dwell in the dwelling place of Shem Here Jubilees resolves the ambiguity of Gen. 9:27, \u201cAnd may He [or he, i.e., Japhet] dwell in the tents of Shem.\u201d Rabbinic Judaism recognized both interpretations: see Gen. Rab. 36:8.
\n7:13\u201314. he separated from his father Ham and his sons leave Noah, but they do not go too far (see 7:17). Ham then built a city for himself and \u201cnamed it after his wife, Na\u2019elatama\u2019uk\u201d: the name of Ham\u2019s wife is not mentioned elsewhere; it may well be that \u201cNa\u2019elat\u201d represents nahalat, \u201cthe hereditary land of\u201d and \u201cama\u2019uk\u201d the actual name of Ham\u2019s wife.
\n7:14\u201317. Na\u2019eltama\u2019uk \u2026 Adataneses \u2026 Sedeqetelebab Jubilees is at pains to give names to unnamed biblical persons, especially wives.
\n7:16. Shem dwelt with his father He did this because he was the ideal son, the ancestor of the Israelites, unlike Ham, who left his father, and Japhet, who was jealous of Ham.
\n7:18. these are the sons of Shem As in Gen. 10:22. Unlike the Torah, Jubilees has Shem\u2019s descendants precede those of Japhet; see above, on 4:33.
\n7:20. And he bore witness to his sons Better: \u201che warned his sons,\u201d by ordering them to (1) do justice (probably Heb. la\u2019asot mishpat, \u201cpractice justice\u201d); (2) avoid nudity (\u201ccover the shame of their flesh\u201d); (3) bless the One who had created them; (4) honor their parents; (5) love their neighbor; and (6) avoid all fornication, (7) pollution, (8) and injustice\u2014a total of eight. He then goes on to admonish them about shedding human blood or consuming the blood of animals. All this derives from Gen. 9:4\u20136. But it is certainly striking to see how the author has deviated from this passage. In Gen. 9:4\u20136, it is God who tells Noah and his sons not to eat meat with the blood in it and adds that shedding a man\u2019s blood is a crime that requires the death of the murderer. But Jubilees\u2019 author puts these words, as well as the Torah\u2019s later regulations about blood into the mouth of Noah\u2014a particularly striking instance of his desire to attribute divine laws to human initiatives.
\n7:21\u201325. For on account of these three Here Jubilees repeats the reasons for the Flood. This account matches earlier traditions, but is strikingly at odds with what Jubilees had recounted in Jub. 5. Here, the mating of the angels with the daughters of men is \u201cthe beginning of impurity\u201d (i.e., the first incidence of impure behavior), but Jub. 5:1 says nothing of the kind. Jubilees 5 contains no mention of the names given here, the Nephilim and the Elyo. On the other hand, this catalogue in chap. 7 never mentions the tying up of the wicked angels beneath the earth, nor the divine decree \u201cMy spirit shall not dwell\u201d (Gen. 6:3), cleverly interpreted in Jub. 5:7\u20138, nor the destruction of, specifically, the half-breed offspring of the angels and the daughters of men that came in its wake. In short, this passage seems to have been cited from another source. But the common source of both sections seems to be 1 Enoch; see specifically 7:1\u20135; 10:4\u20138, 11\u201315; and 10:9\u201310, where all the above-named items are present.
\n7:23. do injustice and pour out much blood Jubilees\u2019 author returns to one of his favorite themes: how the fact that \u201cmuch blood\u201d was shed ultimately led God to bring the Flood. See also below verses 24, 25, 27, 31\u201332. This leads him (vv. 28\u201329) to put in Noah\u2019s mouth the biblical prohibition \u201c[eating] the blood of any flesh\u201d as well as the related requirement (v. 30) of \u201ccovering that which will be poured out upon the surface of the earth\u201d (cf. Lev. 17:13). \u201cCover the blood, because thus I was commanded to testify to [better: warn] you [vv. 30\u201331].\u201d See also above on 6:10\u201311.
\n7:26. And we were left, I and you, my children Meanwhile, at some point the text has slid into a direct address by Noah to his sons, evident in these words. This direct quote may have begun even earlier, in verse 21.
\n7:27. the demons have begun to mislead you and your children For Jubilees\u2019 author (but not the Interpolator), demons and wicked angels are a constant danger, since they can enter the mind and mislead people. These \u201cdemons\u201d are apparently the offspring of the wicked angels (the \u201cWatchers\u201d) who came down to earth before the Flood (Jub. 5:1), but they are different from the half-angel, half-human creatures engendered by the wicked angels with human females, since those creatures all perished (Jub. 5:9). See below on 10:1\u201313; cf. Jub. 12:20.
\n7:27\u201333. you will pour out the blood of men See above, on 6:10\u201311.
\n7:36. For three years its fruit The author had already given his understanding of the commandment about fruit trees found in Lev. 19:23\u201324 (Jub. 7:1\u20133). He presents Noah as picking the fruit in the fourth year, making it into wine, but then waiting until the first day of the fifth year to drink it. This interpretation of Lev. 19:23\u201324 is basically paralleled in the Gen. Ap 12:13\u201315, but not in any other text known from this period. Two other lines of interpretation are, however, well known. One side held that, in keeping with a long-standing practice (see Judg. 9:27 and Isa. 62:8\u20139), the fruit borne by a tree could not be eaten during the first three years, but in its fourth year it was to be consumed by its owners in God\u2019s sanctuary. This is basically the practice in Rabbinic Judaism, with some minor modifications (J. Pe\u2019ah 7:6 [20 b-c]). The other side held that the fruit in the fourth year was to be given to the priests, who would offer the firstfruits on the altar and then keep whatever was left over of the fourth year produce for themselves. Someone\u2014probably not the Interpolator since this verse makes no mention of the heavenly tablets or the other, usual indicators of his presence\u2014inserted this brief \u201ccorrection\u201d to the author\u2019s words in Jub. 7:1\u20133. Perhaps the person responsible for this insertion is the same late editor who inserted the Sabbath laws of Jub. 50:6\u201313.
\n7:37\u201339. And in the seventh make its release A somewhat difficult verse. The Ethiopic manuscripts read: \u201cin the fifth year.\u201d If this is intended as a restatement of Lev. 19:25, then \u201cmake its release\u201d must be a somewhat garbled version of the rest of the verse, \u201cyou shall eat its fruit, adding its produce for yourselves,\u201d that is, the fifth year frees the fruit for consumption by its owners, now that the priests have had their share. But others have suggested that instead of \u201cfifth year\u201d the text originally read (as in this translation) \u201cseventh year\u201d and that the text had now turned to the matter of the sabbatical year: if you \u201cmake its release\u201d\u2014that is, carry out the provisions of the sabbatical year\u2014then \u201call your plants will be upright [better: all your planting will be successful].\u201d Jubilees 7:37\u201339 would thus return us to the writing of the original author, and this seems all the more likely because these verses are altogether characteristic of his thinking: \u201cObserve the seventh-year agricultural rest,\u201d he also has Noah tell his descendants, because \u201cthus, Enoch, the father of your father, commanded Methuselah, his son, and Methuselah\u201d commanded \u201cLamech, his son. And Lamech commanded me everything which his fathers [had] commanded him.\u201d In other words, once again a human being initiates a practice that was later to become a divine law, the law of the seventh fallow year (Exod. 23:11; Lev. 25:2\u20137) and then passes the practice on to his descendants. Noah thus instructs his sons \u201cjust as Enoch commanded his son [Methuselah] \u2026 until the day of his death\u201d: presumably Methuselah\u2019s death, since Enoch never died, according to the common interpretation of Gen. 5:24 (cf. Jub. 4:23).
\n8:1. Rasu\u2019eya, daughter of Susan See above, 4:13\u201315. This name seems to represent retsuyyah, \u201cdesirable.\u201d \u201cShe bore a son for him \u2026 Cainan\u201d: he is not mentioned in Gen. 11:12 MT, but he does appear in the LXX version (cf. Luke 3:36); there Cainan is the father of Shelah, making Arpachshad Shelah\u2019s grandfather instead of his father, as in the MT.
\n8:3. And he read what was in it. And he transcribed it. And he sinned \u2026 since there was in it the teaching of the Watchers This writing thus contained part of the illicit knowledge transmitted by the sinful angels (the \u201cWatchers,\u201d above on 4:15) to the daughters of men. The Watchers had observed \u201cthe omens of the sun and moon and stars,\u201d and Cainan apparently began worshiping these heavenly bodies in the mistaken belief that they controlled life below.
\n8:8. the sons of Noah began dividing up the earth for themselves Better: \u201cfor in his days the earth was divided.\u201d Heb. niflegah (\u201cdivided\u201d) is a play on Peleg, as in Gen. 10:25. This passive verb does not say who did the dividing, but to some interpreters it seemed reasonable that it was Noah\u2019s sons who had consciously set out to divide the known world among themselves\u2014and this notion fit well with the names of their children, many of which coincided with the Hebrew names of well-known places: Cush (Ethiopia), Mizraim (Egypt), Canaan, and so forth. Moreover, Gen. 10:32 concludes that same chapter by saying: \u201cThese are the groupings of Noah\u2019s descendants \u2026 and from these the nations branched out over the earth after the Flood,\u201d that is, they branched out according to the way Noah\u2019s descendants had divided things up.
\n8:9. they divided it in an evil (manner) among themselves That is, \u201cthey divided [the earth].\u201d There was a problem, however, with the above scenario: the next chapter of Genesis begins with the story of the tower of Babel, which depicts all humanity as still being one large family, with everyone having \u201cthe same language and the same words\u201d and everyone settling together \u201cin a valley in the land of Shinar\u201d (Gen. 11:1\u20132). So did Noah\u2019s sons split up or didn\u2019t they? Jubilees\u2019 author seeks to resolve this difficulty by saying that their faulty division of the earth necessitated a second division by Noah himself. But why was that first division \u201cevil\u201d? It seems that Jubilees\u2019 author viewed the genealogy of Gen. 10 as reflecting this first division, and it was \u201cevil\u201d because the descendants of Ham are identified in Gen. 10 with all sorts of sites that, in the author\u2019s view, ought to have been allotted to Shem: places near Israel\u2019s homeland like Babylon and Nineveh (10:9), or still closer locales such as Sidon (10:15), or\u2014worst of all!\u2014the land of Canaan itself (10:16\u201320). In Jubilees\u2019 recounting (8:12\u201321), these and a great many other territories are said ultimately to have been allotted to Shem in the redivision; Ham\u2019s son Canaan then illegally seized some of them despite what had been decreed (Jub. 8:27\u201334).
\nAs for the textual justification for this redivision, perhaps Jubilees saw in the biblical passive \u201cwas divided\u201d (Gen. 10:25) a hint that the logical person to allocate the land to Noah\u2019s sons\u2014Noah himself\u2014did not do so. It simply \u201cwas divided,\u201d that is, Noah\u2019s sons did so on their own, perhaps quarreling in the process. They finally \u201ctold it to Noah,\u201d and he redivided the land in the presence of \u201cone of us [angels] who \u2026 was dwelling with them,\u201d thus ensuring divine approval.
\n8:11. And he divided by lot the land That is, \u201cthe earth.\u201d This was a further demonstration that the ultimate division of the earth was divinely determined. Moreover, \u201cthey \u2026 took the document\u201d that was apparently executed by Noah to formalize this redivision in legal fashion. The land was redivided into parts, corresponding to the three continents distinguished by Greek geographers, namely, Europe (the inheritance of Japhet), Asia (the inheritance of Shem), and Africa (the inheritance of Ham). It may seem odd that such a fierce opponent of Hellenism as Jubilees\u2019 author should adopt this Greek scheme (along with many of its details), but this was simply part of the educated discourse of his day; in fact, the \u201cIonian world map\u201d had been in circulation since the late 6th century BCE. As will be clear below, however, the author of Jubilees introduced a number of modifications, both to accommodate the table of nations in Gen. 10:1\u201332 as well as to reflect his own ideology of Israel\u2019s supremacy. (For example, Jubilees wanted to have Shem, Israel\u2019s ancestor, get as much territory as possible\u2014that is, all of Asia\u2014in contrast to the implications of Gen. 10.)
\n8:12. the lot of Shem, the good son, was \u201cthe middle of the earth\u201d in the redivision: this matches Ezekiel\u2019s notion of the Land of Israel as the earth\u2019s \u201cnavel\u201d (Ezek. 38:12).
\nRafa Mountains Rafa reflects the Rhipaean mountains of Greek geographers, the Urals of today; \u201cfrom the mouth of the water of the river Tina,\u201d that is, the river Don; the same name appears in Gen. Ap 16:15\u201316 and subsequently. Note that in the Genesis Apocryphon the first lot belongs to Japhet, while Shem\u2019s is the second; for if Shem\u2019s lot was determined by lot, why should the assignment have begun with \u201cthe center of the earth\u201d rather than with the northernmost or southernmost portion? But for Jubilees, Shem is clearly superior, so things must start with him. The Tina River flows into \u201cthe Me\u2019at Sea\u201d\u2014Lake Maeotis, the modern Sea of Azov, the northern arm of the Black Sea, between southwest Russia and southeast Ukraine. \u201cThe Great Sea\u201d here is thus apparently not the Mediterranean (which this name usually designates in Hebrew), but the Black Sea.
\n8:13. Karaso This is perhaps Cheronese, in the region of Thrace, or perhaps the Aegean island of Icarus, or its mainland counterpart, Karia. The \u201cSea of Egypt\u201d seems to designate the eastern Mediterranean.
\n8:15. the mouth of the Great Sea Since the Great Sea is presumably the Mediterranean, this may designate the Nile Delta; \u201ctoward the west of Afra\u201d has been identified with Africa, but a more attractive possibility is the isle of Pharos, off Alexandria; \u201cthe river Gihon,\u201d mentioned in Gen. 2:13, is perhaps identified here with the Nile, though the two seem to be separate rivers in Sir. 24:27. (in Jer. 2:18 LXX, the \u201cwaters of Shihor,\u201d apparently in or near Egypt, is translated \u201cwaters of Gihon.\u201d)
\n8:16. all the land of Eden For Jubilees, as for many other ancient sources, Eden was an actual spot on earth; only gradually did it make its way into the sky.
\n8:18\u201320. and may the LORD dwell This restates Gen. 9:27, but this time without mention of Japhet, and with the same interpretation as above 7:12. God dwells in Shem\u2019s portion because it includes \u201cEden \u2026 Mount Sinai \u2026 and Mount Zion,\u201d the three sanctuaries on earth where God was present.
\n8:20. he blessed the God of gods \u2026 and also the Eternal God Hebrew for \u201cEternal God\u201d is El Olam. Jubilees is careful to have his heroes and heroines bless God as an act of thanksgiving after any successful outcome. The \u201calso\u201d is somewhat puzzling here, but see Gen. 21:33.
\n8:21. beyond the sea Probably the Caspian Sea.
\n8:22. the mountains of fire These are unknown, perhaps a mythological site.
\n8:23. Atel Sea The Atlantic; the Ma\u2019uk Sea is not clearly identified, but the apparent name etymology that follows, along with the probable reading of the Gen. Ap 16:9 as mhk, may indicate \u201cSea of Destruction\u201d as a name of the northern body of water whose southern part is the Atel.
\nGadir Probably to be identified with Gibraltar, or possibly Cadiz.
\n8:25. Gog Has been identified as a region somewhere in the northern parts of Asia, perhaps in Lydian Asia Minor or else Scythia; the name may reflect Gog in Ezek. 38, although there Gog is a person whose homeland is called Magog.
\n8:26. mountains of Qelt That is, \u201cof the Celts,\u201d probably referring to the Alps or the Pyrenees, which were inhabited by Celtic populations who at that time were in what is now northern Spain or eastern France and Switzerland.
\n8:29. the five great islands These have been identified as Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica (or perhaps Malta).
\n9:1. the first portion was assigned to Cush toward the east Having thus assigned the three continents to Noah\u2019s three sons, Jubilees then proceeds to identify individual lands on each continent with various offspring, starting with Ham (see Gen. 10:6). Ham\u2019s son Cush received the territory of Nubia and Ethiopia; to the west of Cush was the share of Ham\u2019s second son, Mizraim, the same name as the Hebrew word for Egypt; to \u201cthe west of him\u201d (i.e., Mizraim), was the share of Ham\u2019s third son, Put, namely, the territory of modern Libya. Canaan, Ham\u2019s youngest son, received his share to the west of Put\u2019s share (Libya), that is, in the region of today\u2019s Algeria. Jubilees\u2019 author is eager to say that Ham\u2019s son Canaan was originally assigned territory that was nowhere near the land that later bore his name; it was only by thievery that Canaan later seized territory that was originally assigned to Shem\u2019s descendants (Jub. 10:27\u201334).
\n9:2\u20133. the first portion was assigned to Elam Part of Shem\u2019s territory was assigned to his son Elam and included part of modern Iran, \u201ceast of the Tigris River until it approaches \u2026 all of the land of India.\u201d \u201cDedan\u201d is the name of a people in Arabia. This place ill suits the geographical context, and it has therefore been suggested that the \u201cwaters of Dedan\u201d may refer to Dodone\/Sidodone, along the southern Persian coast in ancient Carmania.
\nmountains of Mebri and Elam These seem to be the Zagros Mountains and the interior mountain ranges of Iran.
\nall of the land of Susa The ancient capital of the Persian empire (\u201cShushan\u201d in the book of Esther), Susa is about 150 miles east of the Tigris (the modern city of Shush).
\nPharnak Has been identified with the region of the Pharnacotis River in ancient Marginae, east of the Caspian Sea in modern southeast Turkmenistan.
\n9:3. Asshur \u2026 Nineveh \u2026 Shinar \u2026 All biblical sites in Mesopotamia.
\nand as far as the vicinity of India. And then it goes up and skirts the river VanderKam\u2019s translation reads: \u201cand Sak as far as the vicinity of India [where] the Wadafa River rises\u201d; this appears to be the better reading. Sak is Scythia, but the identity of the Wadafa River is less sure. Perhaps it is the Hydaspes River, known from a battle fought by Alexander the Great, located in northwestern India.
\n9:4. Arpachshad He received the region east of Chaldea, in southern Mesopotamia.
\nthe east of the Euphrates, which is near the Red Sea A name used by Greek geographers to describe various bodies of water, here it is probably the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea (part of the Indian Ocean).
\nand all of the waters of the desert \u201cThe waters\u201d presumably refers to oases. The \u201cdesert\u201d is probably the Syrian desert, between Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean, and in addition the entire Arabian Peninsula to the south, bordered by \u201cthe tongue of the sea which faces toward Egypt,\u201d the modern Red Sea, as well as \u201call of the land of Lebanon\u201d (which here may designate all the Land of Israel; cf. Jub. 10:29; also Deut. 3:25 and Tg. Onk. ad loc. \u201cthe [Jerusalem] Temple\u201d) as well as Senir (Deut. 3:9) mentioned in tandem with Amana (Song of Sol. 4:8); this is perhaps Mount Amanos in northern Syria, or perhaps a site farther south (and closer to Senir and the Lebanon), that is, in the anti-Lebanon.
\n9:5. Aram He received the somewhat vague biblical territory that bore his name, here apparently those parts of Mesopotamia not assigned to Arpachshad: Chaldea in the south and Asshur (Asshur, Nineveh, and Shinar) farther north, \u201cup to the vicinity of Mount Asshur,\u201d perhaps the eastern Taurus and northwestern Zagros mountains, near the area of Lake Van in modern Turkey, and \u201cthe land of Arara,\u201d apparently biblical Ararat, ancient Urartu.
\n9:6. Lud He receives the general area of Lydia, in Asia Minor, and some of the northern regions of Asia to the east of it, stretching to the Caspian Sea.
\n9:7. Japhet also divided the land His son Gomer (see Gen. 10:2) received the land \u201ceast from the north side up to the river Tina\u201d (the Dan), that is, some of the territory of modern Russia. The next son, Magog (again, Gen. 10:2), received the territory approaching the Me\u2019at Sea (i.e., the Black Sea), that is, his territory included some parts of modern Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Madai (Medea), oddly enough, did not receive the land associated with his name, but rather the land \u201cwest of his two brothers,\u201d in other words, Western Europe, including \u201cthe islands,\u201d probably the British Isles.
\n9:10. Javan Ionia, Gen. 10:4. He receives every island in the Aegean Sea (except for those hugging the eastern coast, which belong to Lud), but apparently nothing on the mainland\u2014a jab at Alexander\u2019s conquests?
\n9:11. Tubal Gen. 10:2. He apparently received the mainland peninsulas of Greece and Italy; Meshech (Gen. 10:2) received southern France, Spain, and Portugal, Gadir apparently being Gibraltar or Cadiz (see above). Tiras received \u201cthe four great islands,\u201d of which three, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, were among the \u201cfive\u201d mentioned earlier (see above on 8:25\u201330); the fourth might conceivably be Malta, Cyprus, or Crete. The islands of Kamaturi may refer to Caphtor (Crete), and perhaps Cyprus as well, in which case this would be a parenthetical note clarifying that these were not part of Tiras\u2019s lot.
\n9:14\u201315. he made them all swear an oath Canaan, Ham\u2019s son, will violate this oath in Jub. 10:29\u201334, encroaching on the territory assigned to his uncle Shem. As a result, the Canaanites will be expelled (as narrated in the book of Joshua), even though the land had been known after Canaan\u2019s encroachment as the \u201cland of Canaan.\u201d In the coming \u201cday of judgment,\u201d God will punish those who have violated these boundaries and invaded the territory of others. In the process they also will have \u201cfilled the earth with sin and pollution and fornication and transgression\u201d: see Lev. 18:3, 28. These violators included not only the ancient Egyptians and Canaanites mentioned in Leviticus, but also the Ptolemaic rulers of Judah in Jubilees\u2019 own time. (For Jubilees no less than for Rabbinic Judaism, the Egyptians were \u201cplunged in wantonness.\u201d) In view of the divinely ordained and legally binding act of redivision described in Jub. 8:10\u201311, the Ptolemaic occupation of Judah was a clear violation.
\n10:1\u20134. the polluted demons began to lead astray Jubilees had already recounted that, even before the Flood, God had ordered the half-breed children of the \u201cWatchers\u201d (the wicked angels) to slaughter each other and thus be removed \u201cfrom under heaven\u201d (Jub. 5:7). Jubilees then adds that they were tied up \u201cin the depths of the earth forever, until the day of great judgment\u201d (5:10). (The Watchers, being angels, could not be killed as their sons were, but merely imprisoned until the Day of Judgment.) That might seem to have settled matters, but apparently the Watchers had other offspring, \u201cthe polluted demons.\u201d Noah therefore prays here for their elimination.
\n10:5. these spirits These are apparently the \u201cspirit\u201d part of the divine-human hybrids, liberated once their physical bodies had been killed. These demons, mentioned above in 7:27, are a constant threat, and Noah therefore prays for protection. He rightly addresses his prayer to \u201cGod of the spirits which are in all flesh,\u201d cleverly adopting this phrase from Num. 16:22 and 27:16 and giving it a new twist: God, you are also the God of those demons\/spirits who, though they are spirits, nevertheless are in flesh, that is, they can get inside human beings and make them misbehave. So please, do not let them rule over my descendants. \u201cShut them up and take them to the place of judgment.\u201d (The phrase \u201cGreat was your grace upon me\u201d is borrowed from Ps. 86:13.)
\n10:7\u20139. the LORD our God spoke to us At first, God complied with Noah\u2019s request. But here the wicked angel Mastema, a central figure in the book, intervenes. He asks God to leave him a minimal number of followers, and God agrees: a 10th of the evil spirits who had previously been his are to remain unbound. The theme of the evil spirits being bound up after the Flood was apparently inherited from 1 En. 10:11\u201314; 13:1\u20132, where the evil Shemihazah and his associates are sentenced to be bound up for 70 generations (cf. 4Q203 frag. 7; Jude 6). Later Enoch sees them (1 En. 21:6, 10; and above Jub. 5:6.) But if all the evil spirits are bound up, who is left to keep leading humans astray? It is apparently for that reason that Satan\/Mastema is given at least some troops here; cf. 1 En. 19:1.
\n10:10\u201314. teach Noah all of their healing Having allowed a 10th of the wicked angels to roam free, God told \u201cone of us\u201d good angels (presumably Raphael, whose name is associated with healing) to teach Noah all the healing (medicines), since it was obvious that the wicked angels would not \u201cstrive righteously\u201d (better: fight fairly) but would attack humanity with all manner of diseases and ills. Noah subsequently \u201cwrote everything in a book\u201d to preserve the secrets of these medicines.
\n10:15. Noah slept with his fathers He died, having lived 950 years. Noah\u2019s lifetime on earth, Jubilees adds, was \u201cmore excellent [i.e., longer] than (any of) the sons of men except Enoch\u201d: somewhat puzzling, since both the LXX and MT agree that Methuselah lived to age 969, though the Samaritan Pentateuch puts his death at age 720. Enoch had gone to Eden (Jub. 4:23), where he continues to exist because he was given a special role: to warn \u201cthe generations of the world\u201d that their deeds were being recorded and would be reported on the Day of Judgment.
\n10:18. And he called him Reu, because, he said, \u201cBehold! the sons of man have become evil Perhaps a double etymology in Heb., reflecting re\u2019u (written with an alef, meaning \u201cbehold\u201d) and re\u2019u (written with an ayin) suggesting ra, \u201cevil.\u201d
\n10:19. let us go up in it into heaven The biblical narrative never says what was wrong with the plan to build a \u201ccity and tower with its top in the sky\u201d (Gen. 11:4). Here, Jubilees\u2019 author supplies an answer: the builders actually intended to invade heaven.
\n10:23. And the LORD went down and we went down with him \u201cWe\u201d refers to \u201cangels.\u201d This detail is intended to explain the plural in Gen. 11:7, \u201cLet us go down.\u201d
\n10:26. the LORD sent a great wind upon the tower The Bible says nothing of the tower\u2019s fate, and Jubilees fills the gap, in common with Sib. Or. 3:101\u20137; 11:10\u201313; and Ant. 10:26; Midr. Tanh. Noah 18; etc.
\nand He called it \u201cthe Overthrow\u201d This is apparently a play on the name \u201cShinar\u201d (from n-\u2019-r, \u201cshake\u201d).
\n10:29. But Canaan saw that the land of Lebanon \u2026 was very good Noah\u2019s grandson Canaan had, along with the others, sworn an oath not to encroach on anyone else\u2019s territory; his own homeland was in North Africa, west of Put (above, on 9:1, 14\u201315). Nevertheless, seeing the green and pleasant land that was part of Arpachshad\u2019s portion (above, on 9:4), he opted instead to dwell in Lebanon (here, as in Jub. 9:4, meaning the future homeland of Israel), \u201cfrom the bank of the Jordan and from the shore of the sea [i.e., the Mediterranean].\u201d
\n10:32. You are cursed Better: \u201c[already] cursed.\u201d An allusion to Gen. 9:25, but they add that Canaan \u201cwill be cursed [even] more\u201d for violating the oath of Jub. 9:14\u201315 and the curse that went along with it.
\n10:33\u201334. But he would not listen to them Canaan did not heed this warning and stayed where he was; this explains both why \u201cthat land is called Canaan\u201d and also why the Canaanites were ultimately, and justly, expelled. In so saying, Jubilees was responding to an inconsistency between the widely accepted Ionian world map (see above on 8:8\u201311) and the genealogy of Gen. 10 (the so-called \u201ctable of nations\u201d). According to the latter, Canaan was a descendant of Ham (Gen. 10:6) and so should have had his home in the territory assigned to Ham, that is, somewhere in Africa. But if so, why is the \u201cland of Canaan\u201d located in the area assigned to Shem? Jubilees\u2019 explanation is that Canaan was indeed assigned a place in North Africa, but dissatisfied, he illegally seized part of Shem\u2019s territory instead.
\n10:35. Madai saw the land of the sea He had previously been assigned the territory of Western Europe (Jub. 9:9), but that remote and cold territory apparently did not appeal to him. Unlike Canaan, he begged his family\u2019s permission to move far to the east, and they granted it: hence the name of the land of Madai (Media). The reason for Jubilees\u2019 mention of this change is similar to his reason for inventing Canaan\u2019s switch of territory (above on 10:27\u201334). Jubilees\u2019 author knew perfectly well that Madai was located to the east and thus was part of the Asian continent that he claimed had been assigned to Shem. Yet according to the genealogy of Gen. 10:2, Madai was one of the sons of Japhet\u2014hence his territory ought to have been in the northern continent that Japhet received. Jubilees therefore claims that Madai\u2019s territory was switched\u2014unlike Canaan\u2019s switch, this one was done by common consent.
\n11:2. the sons of Noah began \u2026 to pour the blood of man upon the earth They did this despite their oath (Jub. 6:10\u201311), and even \u201cto eat blood,\u201d the arch-crime of Jubilees\u2019 author; this is also the beginning of warfare, slavery, and idol worship.
\n11:3\u20134. Ur, the son of Kesed, built the city of Ur of the Chaldees Since Abraham was to be born in that city and, according to an old tradition, rebel against its worship of idols, Jubilees is careful to say \u201cthat they made for themselves molten images, and everyone worshiped the icon which they made for themselves.\u201d Mastema\u2019s troops, the \u201ccruel spirits,\u201d helped the people in this idolatrous worship \u201cand led them astray\u201d (see above on 10:1\u20136).
\n11:5. And the prince, Mastema, \u2026 sent other spirits \u201cPrince\u201d is better rendered as \u201cangel.\u201d He sent other spirits to the humans whom he had already subdued to his powers.
\n11:6. Therefore he called the name of Seroh, \u201cSerug\u201d Cf. Gen. 11:20. In the MT, the \u201cg\u201d in this name lacks a dagesh and thus is not rendered as a plosive (like our \u201cg\u201d) but a velar fricative, Serugh. For this reason it is rendered in the LXX as Seroukh. In Jubilees this name apparently suggests the root s-r-h, a root frequently used in Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew to mean \u201cto go astray,\u201d \u201ccommit an offense.\u201d It thus seems that the proper word order here has been confused in the process of translation: the text intended to say that Serug\u2019s name was called Seroh \u201cbecause everyone had turned back to commit all sin and transgression.\u201d In L.A.B. 4:16, Serug is, on the contrary, one who refused to follow alien practices such as astronomy or child sacrifice.
\n11:7\u20138. used to worship idols Serug had worshiped idols and passed the practice on to his son Nahor, Abraham\u2019s grandfather. In Jubilees\u2019 time, Chaldea was famous for its astronomers, the best in the world; this pursuit was connected with astrology and the worship of heavenly bodies. Serug thus taught his son Nahor \u201cto practice divination and astrology according to the signs of heaven,\u201d a science he would in turn pass on to Terah, Abraham\u2019s father.
\n11:11. And Prince Mastema sent crows and birds Again, \u201cprince\u201d is better rendered as \u201cangel.\u201d This is apparently an old legend.
\n11:12. therefore he called him Terah The connection between this name and impoverishment remains unclear, and apparently this was so even in ancient times. Jerome says the root means to \u201cchase away,\u201d perhaps thinking of the Aramaic t-r-k. Another Aramaic root, t-r-\u2019, means \u201cbreak, shatter,\u201d but this hardly fits Jubilees\u2019 claim that Terah was so named \u201cbecause the crows and birds were impoverishing them.\u201d Perhaps the intended etymology is to be found in the next verse, \u201cIf ever they were able to save a little from all of the fruit of the earth \u2026 it was with great effort.\u201d This last phrase was presumably the Heb. tirhah, phonologically close (though not identical) to Terah.
\n11:15. after the name of his mother\u2019s father because he had died before his daughter conceived a son Jubilees implies that it is unlawful to name a newborn after a living relative, or even one who died after the child was conceived. The former practice is observed in some Jewish communities, but the latter interdiction is otherwise unattested.
\n11:16. And the lad began understanding In keeping with other sources, Jubilees has Abram recognize the folly of idol worship at an early age.
\n11:18\u201324. And the seed time arrived The rest of an old legend (above, 11:11); Abram is thus presented as a \u201ccultural hero,\u201d credited with the invention of the plow.
\n12:1\u20138. Abram spoke to Terah This section derives from an old midrashic motif, ultimately based on Josh. 24:2\u20133. It recounts that Terah was an idolator, indeed a maker of idols and\/or a priest of idolatry. Though raised in this creed, the young Abram soon came to reject it and worship \u201cthe God of heaven.\u201d Apparently, Abram has not yet had any direct contact with this God; his urgings are based solely on the folly of worshiping statues, since \u201cthere is not any spirit in them.\u201d Jubilees\u2019 account is paralleled by Jdt. 5:6\u20139; Apoc. Ab. 1; 3; Ant. 1.154\u201357; Gen. Rab. 39:1; etc. Here, however, even Terah is not a true idol worshiper, since Jubilees holds that Abram\u2019s father must have been a righteous man; it is the people of Ur who have \u201cmade me minister before them [i.e., before the idols].\u201d He adds: \u201cAnd if I speak to them in righteousness [better: if I tell them the truth], they will kill me.\u201d
\n12:12\u201315. Abram arose in the night This is the author\u2019s explanation of Gen. 11:28, \u201cAnd Haran died in the presence of Terah his father, in the land of his kinfolk, in Ur of the Chaldeans.\u201d The last clause seemed odd and perhaps unnecessary after the previous one; but since the Heb. ur can mean \u201cfire,\u201d the author prefers to understand this sentence as referring to \u201ca fire of the Chaldeans,\u201d specifically a fire of their idols, in which Haran perished as he tried to save them. The family then departs for Canaan but stops on the way in Haran (Gen. 11:31). Abram stays with his father there for 14 years. The same understanding of ur underlies the well-known motif of God\u2019s having \u201ctaken [rescued] you out of the fire of the Chaldeans\u201d (Gen. 15:6), that is, saved Abram from a fiery furnace.
\n12:16\u201320. Abram sat up during the night on the first of the seventh month, so that he might observe the stars Although he had rejected idol worship, Abram still believed that the stars could be used to predict the character of the year with respect to the rains. But now he realized that the God of heaven, the only deity who exists in reality, can determine the rainfall on His own: \u201ceverything is in his hand.\u201d Abram therefore prays directly to this God (apparently for the first time in his life), asking to be saved from the evil spirits who roam the earth (for evil spirits, see above on 10:1\u20136).
\n12:21\u201322. Shall I return unto Ur Where was Abram when he thus prayed? When God first speaks to Abram in Gen. 12:1, He says, \u201cDepart from your land and your kindred and your father\u2019s house.\u201d Presumably these words must have been uttered when Abram was still in Ur, since this was his \u201chomeland\u201d and the place of his kindred (moledet)\u2014his family in the largest sense. But Gen. 11:31 had already reported that Abram had left Ur and settled in Haran. Gen. 12:1 might thus be a kind of flashback, explaining how it happened that Abram had left Ur.
\nIn context it would seem that Abram was indeed already in Haran, since Gen. 12:4 describes Abram\u2019s departure from Haran with these words: \u201cAnd Abram went forth as the LORD had commanded him [apparently, in Gen. 12:1] \u2026 Abram was seventy-five when he left Haran.\u201d So where was he really? Interpreters were divided. The ingenious solution of Jubilees\u2019 author: Abram was indeed in Haran, but in the meantime the people of Ur \u201cseek my face [i.e., beseech me] so that I should return to them.\u201d Abram thus asks God whether he should stay in Haran or return to Ur. God\u2019s answer is essentially Gen. 12:1, but now with a different meaning: \u201cCome forth from your land and from your kin [i.e., do not go back to Ur],\u201d \u201cand from your father\u2019s house\u201d here in Haran, and go \u201cinto the land [of Canaan,] which I shall show you.\u201d
\n12:24. And I shall be God for you Better: \u201cI will become your God.\u201d
\nI am your God This is the author\u2019s theological addition to Gen. 12:2\u20133.
\n12:25. And the LORD God said to me \u201cMe\u201d is the angel of the Presence, who is to teach Abram Hebrew, \u201cthe language which is revealed\u201d (presumably so called because it is the language of heaven, though this is nowhere stated outright in Jubilees); cf. Jub. 3:2, which implies that Adam is the creator of the names of the animals. But Hebrew was the \u201ctongue of creation,\u201d that is, the language God used to create the world in Gen. 1; it had been forgotten by humans \u201cfrom the day of the Fall\u201d: not \u201cthe fall of man\u201d in the Garden of Eden\u2014Jubilees knows of no such concept\u2014but the fall, that is, the collapse, of the tower of Babel. A knowledge of Hebrew was necessary for Abram to read his father\u2019s books, the writings of Enoch and Noah (see below on 21:10).
\n12:27. And he began studying That is, \u201cstudying [his father\u2019s books],\u201d which contained the teachings that had been passed down from the time of Enoch and Noah, including matters of priestly procedure. Abram studied Hebrew throughout \u201cthe six months of rain\u201d since there is little agricultural work to do after planting. This might also explain why Abram was later referred to as \u201cAbram the Hebrew\u201d (Gen. 14:13); he was the one who revived the Hebrew language.
\n12:28\u201329. he spoke with his father Abram told his father that he was going to Canaan merely to see it and return. Ancient commentators were troubled by the fact Abram is said to have left Haran at the age of 75 (Gen. 12:4), apparently alone, thus abandoning his aged father (who would then have been 145 according to Gen. 11:26). Genesis never speaks of Terah later joining his son in Canaan or of Abram ever returning to his father; by implication, Terah must have died alone in Haran at the age of 205 (Gen. 11:32) without ever having seen Abram again. Various alternatives were proposed by commentators; see 4Q252 Commentary on Genesis; Migration 177; Acts 7:4. Here, Jubilees makes clear that Abram only left his father temporarily; cf. Seder Olam and later Rabbinic texts.
\n13:1. And he dwelt by a tall oak This corresponds to Gen. 12:6: \u201cAnd he passed through the land \u2026 to Elon Moreh.\u201d This apparent place-name in the MT is understood here as the common noun allon (\u201coak\u201d) with ram or muram, \u201clofty,\u201d corresponding to the MT moreh. (Since this reading is also attested in the LXX, it seems to have been a textual variant of Gen. 12:6 rather than an independent interpretation by Jubilees\u2019 author; cf. \u201chigh land\u201d for eretz ha-moriyyah in Jub. 18:2 and Gen. 22:2 LXX.)
\n13:2\u20134. And he saw, and behold the land was very pleasant Jubilees supplies Abram\u2019s reaction to his new homeland to explain his subsequent action, \u201cand he built an altar there.\u201d Genesis implies, but does not specify what happened next: Abram \u201coffered up upon it a burnt offering to the LORD.\u201d (This is one of many indications to Jubilees\u2019 author that Abraham was a functioning priest, having inherited that function from his forebear Shem.)
\n13:5\u20137. And he removed from there into the mountain.\u2026 And \u2026 saw \u2026 the land was wide and very good Better: \u201che removed \u2026 [toward] the mountain [country] \u2026 and saw [that] the land \u2026\u201d The subsequent description of the land\u2019s lushness contrasts sharply with the events in Genesis; there, the first thing we hear about the land was that there was a famine (Gen. 12:10). Here, Abram expresses his thanks for the gift of the land: \u201cAnd he blessed the LORD.\u201d
\n13:8. You (are) my God, the eternal God See Gen. 21:33 and below, verse 16; also Gen. Ap 19:7\u20138.
\n13:10\u201312. he went toward the South and reached Hebron Gen. 12:9 says that Abram went \u201csouthward,\u201d but Jubilees specifies that he arrived at Hebron because, in a parenthetical aside, Num. 13:22 says, \u201cHebron was built seven years before Zoan [Tanis] in Egypt.\u201d Jubilees\u2019 author interprets this as a statement of the great age of the two cities (in fact, he cites the verse explicitly; Jub. 13:12). Since Abram is about to journey to some unnamed locale in Egypt, a place where Pharaoh and his ministers were located (Gen. 12:15), it seemed logical that that place was the ancient city of Zoan. (See also Gen. Ap 19:22, 24.) If so, Hebron was also already in existence, and Abram would likely have passed through it on his southward journey \u201cas far as Bealoth\u201d (either the place named in Josh. 19:44 etc. or the similar-sounding one in Josh. 15:24).
\n13:13\u201315. Pharaoh took Sarai, the wife of Abram Jubilees passes quickly over the incident in Gen. 12:10\u201320, skipping entirely Abram\u2019s instruction to Sarai to say that he is her brother; apparently this cowardly stance troubled Jubilees\u2019 author. He also inverted the order of things, mentioning Pharaoh\u2019s gifts of \u201csheep and oxen and asses and horses,\u201d etc., after Pharaoh had been stricken for taking Sarai, rather than before, as in Genesis\u2014apparently to avoid giving the impression that these gifts were a bride-price paid by Pharaoh to the cooperative Abram.
\n13:17\u201321. Lot separated from him Lot leaves Abram, apparently for no reason (contrast Gen. 13:6\u201311), and chooses to settle in Sodom, whose inhabitants \u201cwere great sinners.\u201d Perhaps as a result of divine disfavor at this choice, Lot is taken captive later that year. God then instructs Abram to explore the land as in Gen. 13:14\u201317.
\n13:22. And in that year The beginning of an account of the war described in Gen. 14:1\u201316 in which Lot is taken captive. Jubilees\u2019 author shortened the beginning of the biblical account; the text then breaks off in all manuscripts\u2014apparently the result of a copyist\u2019s error early in the chain of transmission.
\n13:25\u201327. a tenth of the firstfruits The text resumes with a discussion of the law of the tithe (see Lev. 27:30\u201333; Deut. 14:22\u201323), occasioned by the mention of the gift of a tithe (one-tenth) in Gen. 14:20. Although it does not mention the heavenly tablets, verses 26 and 27 have the other hallmarks of the Interpolator: \u201cthere is no limit of days for this law because He [God] ordained it for eternal generations.\u201d While these are thus clearly the Interpolator\u2019s words, it is not unlikely that the preceding words were part of the original author\u2019s account of the primordial, first tithe in history (Gen. 14:20). Abraham would have initiated it on his own\u2014following the pattern established by the original author\u2014and then passed the practice on to his descendants, that is, it became a regular practice \u201cupon Abram and his seed [to give] a tenth of the firstfruits to the LORD.\u201d At this point the Interpolator hastened to add that this law too was written on the heavenly tablets: \u201cthe LORD ordained it (as) an ordinance forever.\u201d Who gave the tithe to whom was a difficult question for interpreters; Gen. 14:20 simply says \u201che gave him a tenth of everything.\u201d The recipient here seems to have been Melchizedek, described as \u201ca priest of God Most High\u201d (Gen. 14:19); some ancient interpreters identified Melchizedek as another name for Shem.
\n13:28\u201329. And the king of Sodom approached him The narrative of the original author resumes here. These verses retell Gen. 14:21\u201324, whereby the king of Sodom proposes to keep the human captives for himself and leave the rest to Abram; Abram demurs, \u201cI lift up my hand\u201d (the common gesture of oath taking) that \u201cI will (not) take anything.\u201d See also Gen. Ap 22:18\u201326, which adds that Abram did indeed carry out his promise to give spoils away.
\n14:1\u20136. the word of the LORD came to Abram in a dream This section retells Gen. 15:1\u201321, where God shows Abram a glimpse of the future. Despite God\u2019s initial assurance, \u201cI am your defender,\u201d Abram is troubled that he does not yet have children. The somewhat confusing wording at the end of Gen. 15:2 in the MT is rendered here in a way similar to that of the LXX (\u201cthe son of Masek, my home-born female slave, is Damascene Eliezer\u201d). Abram believes God\u2019s promise that he will have numerous offspring, \u201cand it was counted for him as righteousness.\u201d
\n14:7. who brought you from Ur of the Chaldees Jubilees repeats God\u2019s promise in Gen. 15:7, to the effect that Abram would receive \u201cthe land of the Canaanites to possess forever,\u201d but adds that He will be \u201cGod for you and your seed after you,\u201d which, to Jubilees\u2019 author, was apparently as important as the grant of the land.
\n14:8\u201312. how shall I know that I shall inherit? That is, \u201cinherit [it].\u201d As in Genesis, Abram asks for some ceremonial enactment of this promise and is told to take some sacrificial animals; \u201che took all of these in the middle of the month,\u201d that is, the 15th day of the third month, the Month of Covenants (above on 6:10\u201311). Abram \u201cpoured out their blood upon the altar\u201d (not mentioned in Genesis, but in keeping with later priestly practice).
\n14:13. a terror fell upon Abram According to Gen. 15:12, \u201cAs the sun was about to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram.\u201d Jubilees\u2019 author forgoes mention of this, citing only what is said at the end of that verse, apparently in anticipation of what God tells Abram next, that his descendants will be enslaved in Egypt.
\n14:17. And he woke up from his sleep and stood up This is Jubilees\u2019 emphatic way of asserting that God\u2019s covenantal promise to give Abram the whole of the land from the Euphrates to Egypt was no dream.
\n14:19. Abram offered up the pieces and the birds \u2026 And the fire consumed them That is, their slaughter was ultimately for the purpose of offering a regular, priestly sacrifice and not some spooky ceremony, as might appear from Gen. 15:10\u201317.
\n14:20. we made a covenant with Abram just as we had made a covenant in that month with Noah See Jub. 6:10. \u201cWe\u201d refers to \u201cthe angels of the Presence.\u201d This last clause makes it clear that Jubilees\u2019 author thought of the third month as \u201cCovenant Month.\u201d
\nAnd Abram renewed the feast This apparently refers to the Festival of Oaths, \u201cand the ordinance\u201d to keep it each year; see above on 6:20\u201322. This brief sentence was inserted by the Interpolator. Abram renewed it \u201cfor himself\u201d but not for Noah\u2019s other descendants.
\n14:21\u201324. he told all of these things to Sarai This brief section introduces the story of Sarai\u2019s handmaid, Hagar, and her son, Ishmael. Note, however, that there is not a word about Sarai\u2019s mistreatment of Hagar and her subsequent flight (Gen. 16:6\u201314).
\n15:1\u20132. Abram made a feast of the firstfruits Abram initiates this feast \u201cin the third month, in the middle of the month,\u201d that is to say, on the 15th. (Jubilees\u2019 author, who wrote this passage, clearly knew nothing of the Interpolator\u2019s words in 6:17\u201322.) As with the other festivals, Abram\u2019s offering of the firstfruits here will serve as a precedent for a festival whose existence will only officially be announced later in the Pentateuch. Abram presents these as a new sacrifice (specifically, a burnt offering, an olah) just as is later prescribed in the Torah (Lev. 23:18; Num. 28:27), though the details differ. Of course, the Torah says nothing of Abram offering the firstfruits, at this time or any time. But Jubilees\u2019 author goes on to \u201cprove\u201d that Abram did indeed initiate such a festival in the third month\u2014by means of the birth of Isaac. For when God announces the future birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarai, He says that it will take place la-mo\u2019ed ha-zeh (Gen. 17:21). This expression basically means \u201cat this season\u201d (NJPS), though the Bible gives no indication of what that \u201cseason\u201d might be. Jubilees\u2019 author, however, cleverly reinterprets this phrase as meaning \u201cat this festival\u201d (another meaning of mo\u2019ed).
\nSince Jubilees has just announced the existence of a festival in the middle of the third month, this would mean that Isaac was to be born during this same festival one year later. And so it comes to pass: \u201cin the third month, in the middle of the month, in the time when the LORD told Abraham. Isaac was born on the feast of the firstfruits of the harvest\u201d (Jub. 16:13). And what more appropriate time for Isaac, the \u201cfirst fruit\u201d of Sarah\u2019s womb, to be born! Thus, in saying la-mo\u2019ed ha-zeh, God was made out to be referring to the third-month festival of firstfruits that Abram had just celebrated for the first time.
\n15:3\u20137. Be pleasing before Me and be perfect God appears to Abram and addresses him directly. The wording here follows Gen 17:1 LXX (as well as its translation of the same expression in Gen 5:22); for apparent theological reasons, the Hebrew \u201cwalk about before Me and be perfect\u201d seemed a strange commandment in late Second Temple times. Do not all creatures walk about before the God of all? Then, in keeping with Gen. 17:5, God changes Abram\u2019s name to Abraham and promises him numerous descendants, who will inhabit \u201cthe land where you sojourn\u201d (i.e., where you have been until now merely a resident alien).
\n15:11. keep My covenant Since Jubilees\u2019 author has placed these events in the third month, \u201cCovenant Month,\u201d Jubilees saw this as the appropriate time for God to have commanded Abraham concerning the covenant of circumcision (Gen. 17:10).
\n15:14. And whatever male is not circumcised \u2026 on the eighth day, that soul \u2026 has broken My covenant Here the author asserts, as Genesis does not, that failure to circumcise a male newborn on the eighth day will be deemed a violation of the covenant, even if the circumcision is performed later. His greater stringency is perhaps to be interpreted as a response to delays or outright neglect in keeping this commandment in Second Temple times, perhaps as a result of Greek influence. In keeping with Gen. 17:10\u201313, Jubilees says that circumcision is not to be practiced exclusively by Israelites, but by \u201cyou [Abraham] and your seed after you \u2026 [as well as by] the servant of the house \u2026 [and even anyone whom] you purchase with money from all of the sons of the foreigner, whom you have acquired, who was not from your seed.\u201d This was not the opinion of the Interpolator: see below on 15:28.
\n15:15\u201322. Sarai, your wife Jubilees relates Sarai\u2019s name change to Sarah and announces that she will give birth (Gen. 17:15\u201316). Instead of laughing as in Genesis, Abraham rejoiced at this surprising announcement; the same tactic appears in Ant. 1:198 and in Targum Onkelos on Gen. 17:17; Targum Neofiti and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan in the same verse render \u201cwas astonished.\u201d
\n15:19\u201322. you will call him Isaac God then speaks as in 17:19\u201321, asserting that this baby \u201cSarah will bear for you in another year during these days\u201d (better: in keeping with this festival in the coming year).
\n15:23\u201324. Abraham did as the LORD said Abraham then circumcises himself and his household, in keeping with Gen. 17:23\u201327. Logically, this should end the pericope: circumcision has been commanded and carried out.
\n15:25\u201334. This law is for all the eternal generations Here the Interpolator begins another insertion, using with one of his characteristic phrases, \u201cfor all the eternal generations\u201d (better: for the generations forever). He then asserts that \u201cthere is no circumcising of days.\u201d This is a curious phrase; in combination with the next phrase, \u201cand there is no passing a single day,\u201d it seems intended to stress that circumcision must be carried out on the eighth day specifically, no sooner or later. \u201cCircumcising of days\u201d thus seems to be a pun, \u201ccutting short the days.\u201d The Interpolator adds that all this is, as usual, \u201cwritten in the heavenly tablets.\u201d Then he explains that this is because it is \u201cthe nature of all of the angels of the presence and all of the angels of sanctification,\u201d the two top categories of angels, to be, like Israelite males, circumcised.
\n15:28. And you command the sons of Israel and let them keep this sign of the covenant For the Interpolator, circumcision is a commandment incumbent on the Israelites alone. This is in sharp contrast with Gen 17:10 and Jubilees\u2019 author, who likewise defined the commandment as incumbent on \u201cyou and your descendants after you\u201d (which would presumably include the sons of Ishmael, of Esau, and so forth), indeed even house-born slaves and others who have no genetic connection to Abraham (Jub. 15:11\u201313).
\n15:30. For the LORD did not draw Ishmael and his sons and his brothers and Esau near to himself \u201cHis brothers\u201d should probably be \u201ctheir brothers.\u201d Even though some of these peoples may also practice circumcision (as they apparently did), it is not a sign of their having been chosen by God.
\nBut he chose Israel that they might be a people for himself The Interpolator notes that \u201c(there are) many nations and many people, and they all belong to Him [God]\u201d\u2014a universalistic-sounding sentiment, but he means merely that God ultimately controls all peoples, yet not directly; instead, \u201cover all of them He caused spirits to rule so that they might lead them astray.\u201d See also below 16:17\u201318. The Interpolator is here restating the then-common understanding of Deut. 32:8\u20139: God appointed various angels (\u201csons of God\u201d\u2014this phrase appears in place of \u201csons of Israel\u201d in the LXX and other ancient versions of Deut: 32:8) to rule over the other nations of the world, but He rules directly over Israel, without an angelic intermediary.
\n15:32. He will protect them and \u2026 seek for them at the hand of His angels That is, He will call to account any of the angels in charge of other nations if they seek to harm Israel, so that He might guard them and bless them.
\n15:33\u201334. the sons of Israel will deny this ordinance \u2026 because some of the flesh of their circumcision they will leave Here the Interpolator \u201cforesees\u201d that the rules of circumcision will be violated. Circumcision was a crucial issue in Judea after Alexander\u2019s conquest and the rise of Hellenism: Greeks denounced the practice as barbaric, and Hellenizing Jews therefore sometimes neglected it entirely or performed partial circumcisions or used other procedures to hide the signs of circumcision so as to be able to participate in sporting events of the gymnasium\u2014naked, as Greek practice dictated\u2014without shame (see 1 Macc. 1:15; T. Mos. 8:3; Ant. 12.241).
\nThe Interpolator predicts that \u201call of the sons of Beliar\u201d (i.e., Heb. benei beliya\u2019al, a common biblical phrase meaning wicked or worthless people; Beliar here is not what he is elsewhere, a Satanic figure) will do even worse and neglect circumcision entirely, making \u201cthemselves like the Gentiles to be removed and \u2026 uprooted from the land,\u201d that is, the Land of Israel.
\n16:1. And on the new moon This should be \u201con the first day\u201d; as we have seen (introductory comments and above on 1:13\u201314) Jubilees takes no account of the new moon in reckoning dates.
\nwe also caused him to know that a son would be given to him If God had already told Abraham that Sarah would bear him a son (Gen. 17:19), why should the \u201cthree men\u201d (angels) of Gen. 18:2 have come to announce the same thing (Gen. 18:10)? This was a problem for all interpreters. Here the author gives his answer: on the first of the fourth month, that is, two weeks after God had spoken with Abraham in Gen. 17:19, the angels appeared to Abraham and repeated the same announcement (i.e., \u201cwe also caused him to know\u201d that Sarah was to give birth) but this time Sarah too was informed:
\n16:2\u20134. And Sarah laughed She laughed at the idea of becoming pregnant at her age (Gen. 18:12). Her laughter might seem to have been the cause of her future son being named Isaac (since the apparent root of this name means \u201claugh\u201d), but such an idea hardly suited the Interpolator\u2019s sensibilities\u2014and it certainly could not be that Isaac received the name he did because of an impropriety on the part of his mother. Besides, God had already instructed Abraham to name his son Isaac in Gen. 17:19. In view of this, the Interpolator drew the obvious conclusion: Isaac\u2019s name had actually been established long before: \u201cwe [angels] told her the name of her son Isaac\u2014just as his name was ordained and written in the heavenly tablets.\u201d
\nMissing here is the whole account of Abraham\u2019s generous preparation for his angelic visitors. Perhaps Jubilees\u2019 author was scandalized by the implication that angels\u2014spiritual beings\u2014might have eaten actual food.
\n16:5\u20137. the LORD executed the judgment of Sodom Jubilees\u2019 author also omits the story of Abraham bargaining with God on behalf of the potential righteous men in the city of Sodom (Gen. 18:16\u201333) and the subsequent account of the angels\u2019 visit at Lot\u2019s dwelling in that city (Gen. 19:1\u201314). He certainly would not have approved of the suggestion that Lot might have been one of those \u201crighteous men\u201d mentioned by Abraham, and what could have been more hateful to this author than a story that seemed to imply that humans could have sexual relations with the visiting angels? But if he skipped over those elements, he nevertheless found in the story\u2019s conclusion\u2014God\u2019s utter destruction of Sodom\u2014a most useful lesson. After all, he frequently stresses that fornication and impurity are the two great sins that Israel must avoid. Therefore, after alluding to the Torah\u2019s own description of the Sodomites\u2019 faults (that the people were \u201ccruel [better: wicked] and great sinners\u201d\u2014see Gen. 13:13), he then adds his own two favorite sins, asserting that the people of Sodom \u201cwere polluting themselves and \u2026 were fornicating in their flesh.\u201d If Lot was saved, he adds, it was only because he was Abraham\u2019s nephew\u2014he hardly merited being saved on his own.
\n16:9. behold it is commanded and it is engraved It seems that even this was not a sufficiently severe judgment of Lot for the Interpolator, who adds that the fate of Lot\u2019s descendants had been \u201cengraved \u2026 in the heaven tablets.\u201d God will remove all of his descendants, \u201cuproot them and execute their judgment just like the judgment of Sodom.\u201d (This jangles somewhat with the previous mention of the angels saving Lot.)
\n16:10. the mountains of Gera These are near Beer-sheba, where Abraham lives next. Technically Beer-sheba (the name is rendered here in translation as the \u201cWell of the Oath\u201d) has not yet been named in Jubilees\u2014contrast Gen. 21:31\u2014but since it was subsequently named by Isaac (Jub. 24:25), the angelic narrator feels free to use that name with Moses. Here, chronologically, ought to come the incident between Sarah and Abimelech recounted in Gen. 20:2\u201317. Jubilees\u2019 author skips it entirely, as he does a similar incident involving Abimelech and Rebecca in Gen. 26:6\u201311 (below on 24:13); both are profoundly embarrassing to this author, not only because these biblical heroines came perilously close to zenut, \u201cfornication,\u201d but even more because these incidents involved a non-Jew, Abimelech. For the same reason Jubilees had foreshortened the account of Pharaoh\u2019s taking Sarah in Gen. 12:10\u201320 (above on Jub. 13:12\u201315), omitting any mention of Abraham\u2019s role in the deception.
\n16:12. the LORD visited Sarah and did for her as he had said This is a citation of Gen. 21:1. God\u2019s visit to her here, on the 15th of the sixth month, was what apparently enabled Sarah to become pregnant, since Isaac was born exactly nine months later\u2014on the 15th of the third month, that is, \u201con the feast of the firstfruits of the harvest\u201d (above on 15:1\u20133). Isaac was then circumcised on the eighth day.
\n16:16\u201319. And we returned in the seventh month and we found Sarah pregnant \u201cWe\u201d refers to angels. Following his quick summary of Isaac\u2019s conception, birth, and circumcision (vv. 12\u201314), Jubilees\u2019 author relates an appearance of angels to Abraham that had taken place earlier, while Sarah was still pregnant with Isaac. This flashback is intended to explain the origin of the Festival of Booths (Sukkot). But there is no such angelic appearance reported in Genesis. (This is not the appearance of the three angels to Abraham in Gen. 18:1\u201315; at that time, Sarah was not pregnant\u2014indeed one of the angels\u2019 purposes in coming was to announce that Sarah\u2019s long period of infertility would soon come to an end.) What gave the author of Jubilees the right to invent this second angelic appearance to Abraham\u2014and why did he invent it? The answer to the first question lies in Gen. 18:10 and 18:14; in both of these verses, the angels assert that they will return to Abraham \u201cand Sarah shall have a son.\u201d To Jubilees\u2019 author, this cannot mean that the angels are, as it were, speaking on God\u2019s behalf and announcing that He will return and that, as a consequence, \u201cSarah will have a son\u201d\u2014for this author, angels are clearly different from God. Besides, God had already announced that He would return in Gen. 17:21. Thus, when the angels say they will return, they are certainly not talking about God\u2019s visit to Sarah mentioned in Gen. 21:1 (see above on 16:13). Instead, they must mean that they will come back at the time when Sarah already \u201chas\u201d a son, namely after her son has been conceived and is safely in her womb. Since such a second angelic appearance seemed to be implied by the angels\u2019 words in Gen. 18:10 and 14, Jubilees\u2019 author took it upon himself to fill in the details: the angels appeared again to Abraham one month after God had enabled Sarah to become pregnant (Jub. 16:12), and they used the occasion to inform Abraham about his future progeny\u2014not only Isaac, presently in utero, but about other future descendants as well. Abraham was told by the angels that \u201che would not die until he begot six more sons\u201d (as indeed the Bible later reports; Gen. 25:1\u20132) and that the progeny of these six, like the progeny of Ishmael, would become nations in their own right. None of these nations, however, will be like Abraham\u2019s descendants through Isaac and his son Jacob. Those descendants alone are destined to become a \u201choly seed\u201d (Heb. zera kodesh, a crucial biblical phrase for Jubilees: see Isa. 6:13 and Ezra 9:2), one \u201cnot \u2026 counted \u2026 among the nations\u201d (Num. 23:9), since they alone will be \u201cthe portion of the Most High\u201d (Deut. 32:9), a \u201cpeople (belonging) to the LORD, a (special) possession from [among] all people [Exod. 19:5] \u2026 [indeed] a kingdom of priests and a holy people\u201d (Exod. 19:6).
\n16:20\u201325. And he built an altar there in response to this joyful news, Abraham celebrates what was to become the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths (Sukkot), since that is the festival of \u201cjoy\u201d par excellence, the only festival on which the Torah commands that people rejoice (Lev. 23:40; Deut. 16:14). The sacrifices reported here are at odds with those prescribed in Num. 29:12\u201340; the offering of incense is, however, apparently the same as that of Exod. 30:34.
\nthere was no alien with him or any who were not circumcised \u201cAlien\u201d refers to a foreigner. This was a requirement for partaking of the Passover offering (Exod. 12:43, 48); Jubilees apparently extends it to this festival as well. Israel will be \u201ca righteous planting \u2026 and a holy seed.\u201d For the former, see Jer. 23:5; 33:15; for the latter, above on Jub. 16:19\u201320.
\n16:27. called the name of this festival \u201cthe festival of the LORD\u201d Sukkot is regularly called simply \u201cthe festival\u201d in biblical and Rabbinic texts, though this is not its \u201cofficial\u201d name (and therefore is attributed to Abraham): with this, Jubilees\u2019 author ends his description of the first Sukkot, a precedent for the festival described later in the Torah (Lev. 23:34\u201336, 39\u201343).
\n16:28\u201331. And we eternally blessed him \u201cWe\u201d refers to angels. To the preceding description the Interpolator appends his own, characteristic additions. Abraham was blessed \u201cbecause he [had] observed this feast \u2026 [in accordance with what had been written long before] in the heavenly tablets.\u201d It is written in those same heavenly tablets that Israel is forever after to observe the same festival throughout \u201ctheir generations \u2026 year by year.\u201d The Interpolator then mentions something that the original author had omitted from his description of the festival, the curious provision of Lev. 23:40: \u201cOn the first day you shall take the product of a goodly tree, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days.\u201d It is not clear why the original author had omitted these details, but their absence clearly disturbed the Interpolator, so he inserted them here. Thus, in addition to having to \u201cdwell in tents\u201d (better: booths), the Israelites are to \u201cplace crowns\u201d (perhaps of woven palm fronds; cf. Lev. 23:40) \u201con their heads\u201d: they are likewise to \u201ctake branches of leaves,\u201d the equivalent of Lev. 23:40 anfei etz avot \u201cand willows from the stream\u201d (arvei nahal in the same verse). Having added these requirements, the Interpolator then asserts that Abraham followed them as well, taking \u201cbranches [i.e., lulavim] of palm trees\u201d \u201cand fruit of good trees.\u201d Since in later times Jews used to go around the altar with branches as part of the Sukkot celebration, Abraham is said here to have anticipated this practice.
\n17:1\u20133. Isaac was weaned Isaac\u2019s weaning was the occasion for a great celebration in Gen. 21:8. The biblical text does not say when this celebration took place, but Jubilees\u2019 author locates it two years after Isaac\u2019s birth, \u201cin the third month,\u201d Covenant Month.
\n17:3. he remembered the word which was told to him in Gen. 13:14\u201316 (Jub. 13:20) he had been told that he would have numerous offspring.
\nhe blessed the Creator of all with all his eloquence Abraham did this, literally, \u201cwith full voice.\u201d
\n17:4. Sarah saw Ishmael playing and dancing Gen. 21:9 says only \u201cplaying,\u201d a word that might be understood as \u201cmocking\u201d; perhaps Jubilees\u2019 author added \u201cand dancing\u201d to suggest otherwise (the Latin text has \u201cplaying with Isaac,\u201d as in the LXX and Vulgate).
\n17:6. because it is through Isaac that a name and seed will be named for you God reassures Abraham about the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. The Hebrew of Gen. 21:12 (\u201cfor it is through Isaac that offspring will be called [or \u2018named\u2019 or \u2018considered\u2019] for [or \u2018by\u2019] you\u201d) is not altogether clear; does it mean that only Isaac\u2019s future descendants will be called (or even will be considered) Abraham\u2019s offspring? That hardly seemed likely to interpreters\u2014certainly Ishmael\u2019s children, along with the children of Keturah (Gen. 25:1\u20134), were also considered Abraham\u2019s descendants. An alternative was to understand that verb as something like \u201cwill be proclaimed\u201d\u2014that is, Isaac will be your descendant par excellence, the one everyone connects with you. Jubilees\u2019 explanatory addition, \u201ca name and [a] seed\u201d (presumably shem vazera, in the sense of a \u201creputation and a seed\u201d) may be intended in this sense.
\n17:7\u201314. regarding the son of this girl That is, Ishmael. The narrative here proceeds as in Gen. 21:10\u201321, with only a few changes. Thus, \u201can angel of the LORD, one of the holy ones\u201d speaks to Hagar\u2014one of the \u201cangels of holiness\u201d who serve God directly and thus can speak for Him. The incident concludes (unlike Genesis) with the birth of Ishmael\u2019s first son, Nebaioth (see Gen. 25:13). Why \u201cthe LORD was near to me when I called to Him\u201d should explain the name Nebaioth is something of a mystery; though the root n-b-\u2019 does mean \u201ccall\u201d in Arabic, Akkadian, and other Semitic languages, this meaning is not attested as such in Heb. or Aram., where n-b-\u2019 means \u201cprophesy.\u201d (Perhaps Jubilees\u2019 author thought it appropriate for Ishmael to give his son a name relying on the Arabic sense of this root.) For God\u2019s being \u201cnear\u201d when people call (as a trope for hearing prayers), see Deut. 4:7; Ps. 145:18. The next item in the Genesis narrative, Abraham\u2019s encounter with Abimelech and the naming of the \u201cWell of Oath\u201d (Be\u2019er Sheva) is omitted entirely in Jubilees. The reason is that the author found repugnant any account of a treaty or agreement between Abraham or the other patriarchs and the Philistines; they, along with all other non-Israelites, are to be banished from Israel\u2019s sacred land. (See below on Jub. 24:14\u201326.)
\n17:15. on the twelfth of that month The story of the offering of Isaac (the Akedah) begins on the 12th because Abraham and Isaac do not arrive at their destination until \u201cthe third day\u201d (Gen. 22:4); the author has arranged the dates so as to have the offering of Isaac take place on the significant day of the 15th of the first month. A significant day for Jubilees\u2019 author is either the 1st or the 15th of the month. Good or important things happen on such days; bad or unimportant things do not. The clearest demonstration of this principle is found in the dates assigned by the author to the births of Jacob\u2019s sons (see below on 28:9\u201324): the \u201cinsignificant\u201d children were all born on insignificant days, but Levi, Judah, and Joseph were all born on significant days, the 1st or the 15th of the month (see Jub. 28:9\u201324). The same is true of events: Abraham offers a sacrifice at Bethel on the 1st of an unnamed month (Jub. 13:8); God promises Abraham numerous descendants on the 1st of the third month (Jub. 14:1); the angels appear to Abraham on the 1st of the fourth month (Jub. 16:1); Isaac was born on the 15th of the third month (16:13); and so forth. Unimportant or unfortunate events are generally not assigned dates.
\nThe fact that some significant days also coincide with festival dates in the Jewish calendar does not necessarily mean that the event in question is intended to serve as a precedent for the later festival. Thus, for example, the author located Abraham\u2019s \u201ccovenant between the pieces\u201d on the 15th of the third month (Jub. 14:10), not as a precedent for the Festival of Firstfruits\u2014that precedent came later, when Abraham did indeed offer his firstfruits to God (Jub. 15:1)\u2014but simply because it was a significant day in the \u201cCovenant Month\u201d par excellence (above, on 6:4\u20139). In the same way, the 15th day of the first month also happens to be the first day of Passover, but the offering of Isaac was not, for Jubilees\u2019 author, in any way connected to this later festival, which commemorates an entirely different event, the exodus from Egypt. As we shall see, however (below on 18:17\u201319), the Interpolator misunderstood the original author\u2019s intentions in this dating.
\n17:15\u201316. words came in heaven concerning Abraham In the story of the offering of Isaac, ancient interpreters faced a major problem: why should an omniscient God need to test Abraham at all? Surely He knew that Abraham would obey; why put him through it? The answer given by Jubilees\u2019 author (and shared by other sources: L.A.B. 32:1\u20132; B. Sanh. 89b) is that God had been challenged by Satan (here, the \u201cPrince [better: the Angel] Mastema\u201d) to prove Abraham\u2019s obedience. God certainly knew how the test would end, but He nevertheless put Abraham through it in order to answer Mastema\u2019s challenge. This ancient midrash (ultimately inspired by Job 1:6\u201312) was tied to the opening verse of the episode, \u201cAnd it came to pass after these things\u201d (Gen. 22:1). The Heb. devarim can mean either \u201cthings\u201d or \u201cwords\u201d; this line of interpretation opted for the latter meaning in order to suggest that \u201cwords came in heaven concerning Abraham\u201d and that it came to pass after these words that God was challenged to put Abraham to the test. Another ancient midrash took devarim in this same verse as \u201cthings\u201d in order to suggest that this was not the only time that God had put Abraham to the test\u2014and Jubilees adopted this other approach as well. \u201cAnd it came pass after these things that God tested Abraham\u201d (Gen. 22:1) could thus be taken to mean that the somewhat vague \u201cthings\u201d being referred to were earlier tests: after these things, God tested Abraham again.\u201d Out of this midrash developed the motif that God had tested Abraham no fewer than 10 times (see M. Avot 5:3).
\n17:17. And the LORD was aware Jubilees\u2019 author knew of the general theme of \u201cAbraham the tested,\u201d but he apparently did not know of the specification that there were precisely 10 tests, since he mentions only 6 here in addition to the Binding of Isaac: \u201che tested him with his land\u201d (by telling him to leave his homeland; Gen. 12:1); \u201cand with famine\u201d (when he arrived in Canaan; Gen. 12:10); \u201cwith the wealth of kings\u201d (if the tests are being presented in biblical order, this must refer to the great possessions given to Abraham by Pharaoh in Gen. 12:16; more likely, however, it is a reference to the offer of wealth by the king of Sodom in Gen. 14:21, which Abraham refused); and \u201cagain with his wife when she was taken (from him) [by Pharaoh; Gen. 12:15]\u201d; \u201cand with [the pain of] circumcision [Gen. 17:24]\u201d; \u201cwith Ishmael and with Hagar, his [Abraham\u2019s] maidservant,\u201d banished by Sarah (Gen. 21:10). The Interpolator, by contrast, knew the \u201c10 tests\u201d tradition and therefore took the trouble to insert mention of it in connection with Sarah\u2019s burial (Jub. 19:8). In either case, these previous tests made it clear that Abraham would pass this one as well\u2014so, precisely for that reason, God did not hesitate to respond to Satan\u2019s challenge.
\n17:18. he was found faithful This is this adjective\u2019s fourth appearance since verse 15. This drumbeat repetition of \u201cfaithful\u201d (ne\u2019eman) is all the more surprising because the word does not appear at all in the Genesis story. Its first occurrence in connection with Abraham is in Neh. 9:8; thereafter it became his adjective par excellence; \u201cfaithful\u201d in the sense of \u201creliable\u201d soon morphed into \u201chaving faith [in God].\u201d For \u201ca lover of God,\u201d see Isa. 41:8; 2 Chron. 20:7; and below on 19:9.
\n18:1\u20132. Take your beloved son, whom you love This represents the version of the text preserved in the LXX, which apparently had yedidekha (your beloved) for MT yehidekha (your only one).
\ngo into the high land The same wording is found in the LXX, suggesting an underlying Hebrew text with eretz ramah, instead of MT eretz moriyah, \u201cthe land of Moriah.\u201d See above on 13:1\u20139.
\n18:3\u20138. arose while it was still dark at daybreak An emphatic restatement of Gen. 22:3, stressing Abraham\u2019s zeal to obey even this difficult demand. The rest follows the biblical narrative with only a few changes. \u201cAnd he arrived at a well of water\u201d is added to show Abraham\u2019s concern for his servants; he would not leave them just anywhere. \u201cBehold, the fire and the knife and the wood\u201d: the knife is not mentioned in the biblical account (22:7); Jubilees corrects the omission. They \u201cdrew near to the (holy) place of the mountain of the LORD\u201d: Jubilees uses the phrase from Gen. 22:14; later, he adds that this is Mount Zion (18:13). The mountain of Moriah was specifically identified as being in Jerusalem in 2 Chron. 3:1.
\n18:9\u201311. And I stood before him and before Prince Mastema That is, \u201cI [the angel of the Presence] stood before him [Abraham] and before [the angel] Mastema.\u201d Precisely at that moment, God told the angel of the Presence not to harm Isaac, \u201cbecause I know that he is one who fears the LORD.\u201d
\nThere was one further problem with the idea of God\u2019s testing Abraham. If God truly knew how the test would end and tested Abraham only to show Mastema that Abraham was indeed faithful, why, in Gen. 22:12, is Abraham told to cease and desist \u201cbecause now I know that you are one who fears the LORD.\u201d \u201cNow I know\u201d seems to imply that previously God did not know! Therefore, Jubilees inserts something here that is not found in the Genesis account: \u201cDo not let his hand descend upon the child,\u201d God says to the angel, \u201cbecause I know that he is one who fears the LORD.\u201d Not \u201cnow I know,\u201d just \u201cI know\u201d\u2014because in fact God knew all along that Abraham was His faithful servant. It was only the angel, in repeating God\u2019s message, who inserted the word \u201cnow\u201d\u2014the angel did not know!
\n18:13. The LORD has seen This reading is attested as well in the LXX (MT, \u201cwill be seen\u201d or \u201cis regularly seen\u201d). On \u201cit is Mount Zion,\u201d see above on 18:3\u20138.
\n18:14. And the LORD called Abraham \u2026 just as He caused us to appear Jubilees stresses that this time God does not speak through an angelic intermediary but addresses Abraham directly from heaven. (In Gen. 22:15, by contrast, it is \u201cthe angel of the LORD\u201d who calls out to Abraham a second time.) For Jubilees, the distinction between God and his angels is absolute; if the biblical text has God tell Abraham that \u201cI have sworn by Myself,\u201d then He must be speaking directly. Note that while others may swear \u201cby God,\u201d when God swears, it must be \u201cby Myself.\u201d It is thus God who promises Abraham directly that his descendants, including the Jews of Jubilees\u2019 own day, will ultimately inherit the cities of their enemies and be blessed.
\n18:16. I have made known to all Better: \u201cto everyone.\u201d This was another, quite separate midrashic tradition designed to solve the \u201cnow I know\u201d problem discussed above on 18:9\u201311. Since the biblical text did not yet come with today\u2019s vowel-points, many words were potentially ambiguous. If, instead of reading attah yada\u2019ti, \u201cNow I know,\u201d one were to read the same letters as attah yidda\u2019ti, God would be saying, \u201cNow I have made known,\u201d \u201cNow I have informed.\u201d According to this interpretation God knew all along how the test would come out, but at its conclusion asserted, \u201cNow I have made known,\u201d to Mastema and all future generations, how faithful a servant Abraham is. Jubilees\u2019 author probably preferred the solution put forward in 18:9\u201311 (though even there the Latin text has him say, \u201cbecause I have shown,\u201d manifestavi), but here he alludes to the second solution, which, judging by its diffusion, was certainly well known.
\n18:17\u201319. Abraham went to his young men That is, he \u201cwent [back]\u201d to them. The author\u2019s retelling ends in verse 17, as the biblical story does (Gen. 22:19). At this point, the Interpolator adds his own, brief conclusion to a story narrated by the original author.
\nAs explained above on 17:15, Jubilees\u2019 author had located the Binding of Isaac on the significant day of the 15th of the first month, which happens to be the date of the first day of Passover; but nowhere did the original author suggest that Abraham made a sacrifice of thanksgiving or celebrated in some other fashion on that day, thus anticipating the festival of Passover. With good reason! He knew perfectly well that Passover commemorated the exodus from Egypt\u2014and said so (Jub. 49:18). Thus, the incident of the Binding of Isaac was fundamentally different from Abraham\u2019s offering his firstfruits on the day that was to become the Festival of Firstfruits (Jub. 15:1), or his rejoicing and offering a sacrifice on the day that was to become the festival of rejoicing par excellence (the Festival of Booths; Jub. 16:20\u201327), or Jacob\u2019s mourning on the day that was to become the day on which Israelites mourned for their sins (the Day of Atonement)\u2014all these were indeed precedents for later holy days. If this distinction is somewhat subtle, that may explain why it was apparently lost on the Interpolator, who adds here that Abraham \u201cobserved this festival every year (for) seven days with rejoicing \u2026 according to the seven days during which he went and returned in peace\u201d\u2014as if everyone could see that this story was somehow intended to serve as a precedent for the seven days of Passover. But if one follows the dates of the narrative, the seven days in question start on \u201cthe twelfth of the month\u201d (Jub. 17:15), not the 15th, as Passover does. It is thus clear that the Interpolator misunderstood; although he wrote that it is \u201cordained and written on the heavenly tablets\u201d that Israel should keep the \u201cfestival\u201d in question in the future, this was not at all the original author\u2019s intention in his dating of the events.
\n19:2\u20137. the days of Sarah\u2019s life were completed The death and burial of Sarah (Gen. 23) was, according to Jubilees, another of Abraham\u2019s trials (above on 17:15\u201316). Here Abraham is being tested by the angels; God had no need to put Abraham to the test.
\n19:5. he begged politely from the sons of Heth That is, the Hittites. This was a test because of the protracted negotiations Abraham had to conduct before burying his wife. These were of course particularly distasteful for the author in that they involved conducting business dealings with non-Israelites. Nevertheless, he was courteous, all the while holding his nose, as it were, at the indignity of it all. As in his earlier tests, here too Abraham succeeded. He could have mentioned in his dealings with Hittites that God had promised him and his descendants the whole land, but he did not.
\n19:8\u20139. This (is) the tenth trial at this point, the Interpolator adds his own conclusion. He is aware (as the original author apparently was not) of the tradition holding that Abraham was tested by God precisely 10 times (see M. Abot. 5:3), and by his count, this was the 10th and final test. He basically repeats what Jubilees\u2019 author had already said: this was a test of Abraham\u2019s patience since, although God had already promised Abraham the land, \u201che [Abraham] did not say a word concerning the rumor [better: promise]\u201d that God would give him the whole land, but was content to buy the burial plot from the Hittites.
\nhe was recorded as a friend of the LORD in the heavenly tablets By this the Interpolator seeks to refer to Isa. 41:8, where God describes Abraham as one \u201cwho loved Me\u201d (in some translations, \u201cMy friend\u201d). This became a famous part of Abraham\u2019s reputation; he is called a \u201cfriend of God\u201d in numerous sources. The same appellation also appears frequently in Rabbinic and patristic sources. The Interpolator says that this is recorded \u201cin the heavenly tablets\u201d and thus it seems always to have been written there: this future appellation of Abraham\u2019s was of course written on high long before Isaiah spoke it.
\n19:10. he took a wife for his son The long story of Abraham\u2019s servant and his mission to find a wife for Isaac (Gen. 24) is skipped entirely\u2014for Jubilees\u2019 author, apparently nothing was to be learned from that episode. On Abraham\u2019s third wife and descendants: see Gen. 25:1\u20135.
\n19:13. Rebecca bore two children for Isaac, Jacob and Esau Jubilees\u2019 author altered somewhat the biblical story of the birth and early youth of Jacob and Esau (Gen. 25:20\u201334). First, there is no mention of Rebecca\u2019s barrenness nor of the divine oracle she receives foretelling Israel\u2019s eventual triumph over Edom (Gen. 25:21\u201323). Jubilees also omits the account of Jacob seizing his brother\u2019s heel as they were born (v. 26). Perhaps the reason for both is that Jubilees\u2019 author is well aware that the Genesis narrative does not present Jacob as particularly virtuous\u2014from the womb on, Jacob keeps trying to get what rightly belongs to Esau. On the other hand, the author shows no desire to show the athletic, happy-go-lucky Esau in a particularly bad light, as later writers did. No son of Isaac, he felt, could be truly bad. He is thus content to say that Jacob was \u201csmooth and upright\u201d; the former adjective in Greek (meaning \u201crelatively lacking in body hair\u201d) is based on Gen. 27:11; the latter represents the Heb. tam (\u201cstraightforward, upright\u201d) in Gen. 25:27. As for Esau, he is a \u201cfierce man and rustic and hairy.\u201d The words \u201cfierce\u201d and \u201crustic\u201d (i.e., uncouth) are based in a general way on Gen. 25:27: someone who loves hunting must be fierce enough not to shrink at the sight of violent death, and a \u201cman of the field\u201d can be taken as meaning \u201crustic,\u201d that is, not a man of the town or city.
\n19:14. Jacob learned writing This odd assertion is also based on Gen. 25:27, where Jacob is said to \u201cdwell in tents.\u201d Since a single person would normally need no more than one tent, ancient interpreters understood this to mean that, apart from his own residence, Jacob frequented the dwelling place of a teacher, who taught him how to write (or, in the Rabbinic version of this motif, taught him Torah).
\nEsau did not learn \u2026 he learned war Not at this stage of life, but later on, as his father foresaw (Gen. 27:40).
\n19:15. Abraham loved Jacob Genesis 25:28 asserts that Esau was the favorite of his father and Jacob, of his mother. Jubilees\u2019 author certainly did not like this characterization of Jacob as a mama\u2019s boy. More to the point, however, the author considered Jacob to be Abraham\u2019s \u201ctrue\u201d descendant, while Isaac was principally important as the means to Jacob\u2019s birth. So, although Abraham\u2019s death had been recounted in Gen. 25:8, Jubilees\u2019 author knew that he must have still been alive at the time of Jacob and Esau\u2019s birth, since Isaac, who was born when Abraham was 100 (Gen. 21:5), was himself 60 at his sons\u2019 birth (Gen. 25:26); Abraham was thus to live another 15 years before dying at the age of 175 (Gen. 25:7). Genesis does not state which of his grandsons Abraham preferred, but Jubilees\u2019 author had no doubt who his favorite would have been.
\n19:16\u201318. And he called Rebecca That is, Abraham called. He instructed his daughter-in-law to continue to favor Jacob, since he already knew that \u201cRebecca \u2026 loved Jacob\u201d (Gen. 25:28). Abraham also knew that Jacob\u2019s descendants would be a \u201cpeople who will rise up [better: who will be a special treasure] [distinct] from all the nations which are upon the earth\u201d (see Exod. 19:5; Deut. 7:6).
\n19:21\u201323. I love him more than all of my sons That is, \u201csons\u201d in the sense of descendants. Abraham repeats the words that God spoke to him, \u201cIf a man is able to count the sand of the earth\u201d (Gen. 13:16), and then explains that \u201call of the blessings with which the LORD blessed me\u201d (like the one just cited) will henceforth apply specifically to Jacob and his descendants (a point never made in Genesis).
\n19:27. Jacob, my beloved son Rather, \u201cgrandson.\u201d Abraham blesses him, mentioning Adam, Enoch, Noah, and Shem. This was the priestly line, according to Jubilees and other Second Temple period sources (see above on 3:27; 4:17\u201323; 6:1). As seen earlier, a section of Jubilees is missing (see above on 13:22\u201325), one that would doubtless have mentioned the person of Melchizedek, \u201cPriest to God most high\u201d (Gen. 14:18) and his interaction with Abraham. It is likely that, along with other Second Temple period sources, Jubilees identified him with Noah\u2019s son Shem, mentioned here. If so, then Shem would have been Abraham\u2019s immediate predecessor in the priesthood, which is why he is mentioned here.
\n19:28 And may the spirit of Mastema not rule over you Better: \u201cspirit[s].\u201d See above on 10:1\u20136.
\n19:29. and may you be a firstborn son That is, \u201c[His, God\u2019s] firstborn son.\u201d This is an allusion to Exod. 4:22, where Israel is specifically called God\u2019s \u201cfirstborn son.\u201d See above on 2:20.
\n20:1. on the seventh week Probably should be amended to \u201csixth week,\u201d since Abraham would have died before this date in the seventh week.
\n20:1\u201310. Abraham called Ishmael and his twelve children and Isaac and his two children in Genesis, Abraham dies without giving his children his spiritual \u201ctestament,\u201d that is, his last bit of advice and wisdom. But other biblical figures do so\u2014Jacob, Moses, David, and others\u2014and it eventually became a convention in Second Temple period literature to create such spiritual testaments for various biblical figures: Abraham (Testament of Abraham), Isaac (Testament of Isaac), Levi (ALD), Judah (4Q538 Testament of Judah), Moses (Testament of Moses), and so forth. Here, Abraham\u2019s \u201clast words\u201d to his descendants are an example of this genre. On the vague basis of Gen. 25:5\u20136, Jubilees\u2019 author supposed the existence of a family conclave, including all of Abraham\u2019s grandchildren; since Abraham was about to send most of them away (Gen. 25:6), this was his last chance to impart to them some of the wisdom he had acquired in his lifetime. God had said this would happen in Gen. 18:19: \u201cFor I know him that he will command his children and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD to do righteousness and justice.\u201d \u201cCommand,\u201d Heb. tsivvah, has the technical meaning of \u201cproclaim one\u2019s last will or charge,\u201d and Abraham proceeds here to do just that.
\n20:2. guard the way of the LORD An allusion to Gen. 18:19. Jubilees\u2019 author probably interpreted this phrase to mean keeping the various teachings passed on by Enoch, Noah, and Abraham himself.
\nso that they might do righteousness This again cites Gen. 18:19, which, however, uses the common biblical phrase, la\u2019asot tsedakah umishpat. Interestingly, Jubilees does not include the last word of this phrase, \u201cto do righteousness and justice\u201d; perhaps \u201cdo righteousness\u201d alone suggested to him, as to other Second Temple period authors, to \u201ckeep the commandments.\u201d
\nand each one might love his neighbor Lev. 19:18; for Jubilees\u2019 author, as for later Rabbinic interpreters, a central commandment.
\nthat it should be thus among all men Abraham is thus adumbrating (and interpreting) a commandment given only later to Israel. (This one was particularly important to Jubilees, since it implied that all the Abrahamic nations ought always to be at peace with one another.) Moreover, his descendants are \u201cto act justly and rightly\u201d (Deut. 12:28; cf. 4Q398 Halakhic Letter [frag. 14\u201317, col. 2:7], where so doing is also deemed \u201crighteousness\u201d).
\n20:3. circumcise their sons As verse 1 had specified, this commandment was given to all of Abraham\u2019s descendants, in keeping with Gen. 17. This also parallels Jub. 15:11\u201312, on which see above. However, Jub. 15:28\u201330 states that circumcision is a commandment given to the Israelites alone. The reason is that 15:11\u201312, like the present passage, was written by Jubilees\u2019 original author, who, following the biblical text, understood circumcision to be the sign of \u201cthe covenant between Me and you and your offspring\u201d (Gen. 17:10)\u2014all Abraham\u2019s offspring. The Interpolator, however, saw circumcision as a commandment incumbent on Israelites alone.
\nthey should not cross over either to the right or left from all of the ways which the LORD commanded us Roughly = Deut. 28:14. Here, unexpectedly, the text says \u201cus\u201d; what started out as the angelic narrator\u2019s account of Abraham\u2019s words to his descendants now seems to be a direct citation from those words.
\nthat we should keep ourselves from all fornication and pollution, and that we should set aside from among us all fornication and pollution \u201cPollution\u201d is better rendered as \u201cimpurity.\u201d This near-repetition could be the result of a scribal error, or it could be a summons to society as a whole not to tolerate such behavior in its citizens.
\n20:4. you will burn her with fire Lev. 21:9 orders this punishment for the daughter of a priest (kohen); the same punishment was evoked in the biblical story of Tamar (Gen. 38:24), who was not the daughter of a priest; that may explain its mention here. (See below on 41:23\u201326.) The Torah\u2019s legislation distinguishes between a woman who is married or engaged and one who is not (Deut. 22:20\u201328), but Jubilees does not.
\nand let them not fornicate with her eyes and hearts The Heb. surely read: \u201cAnd let them not stray (yiznu; lit. \u201cgo a-whoring\u201d) after their eyes and after their hearts,\u201d an evocation of Num. 15:39, translated too literally into the Ethiopic text.
\nand let them not take wives from the girls of Canaan This is a common theme in Gen. 24:3 and 28:1; for Jubilees\u2019 author, any contact between a Jew and a non-Jew results in impurity.
\n20:5. he told them the judgment of the giants and the judgments of the Sodomites \u201cJudgment\u201d in both cases is better rendered as \u201cpunishments,\u201d and \u201cthe giants\u201d as \u201cthe Watchers.\u201d God\u2019s punishment of the Watchers and the people of Sodom were two famous examples of divine justice. The two are mentioned together in Sir. 16:7\u20138 and 3 Macc. 2:4\u20135.
\nAnd on account of their fornication and impurity and \u2026 corruption Cf. the three causes of the Flood in Jub. 7:20. Although Jubilees\u2019 author sometimes includes a third term along with fornication and impurity, it is clear that these two are, in his eyes, the main source of Israel\u2019s troubles. See above on 7:20; 9:14\u201315; and especially 16:5\u20137; as well as below on 23:8\u201321.
\n20:6. all your life a hissing That is, a sign of derision when contemplating a ruin, hence the biblical clich\u00e9 \u201ca hissing and a ruin.\u201d
\n20:8. gods of molten or carved images \u2026 they have no spirit These are virtually the same words spoken by Abraham to his father in Jub. 12:2\u20134; they reflect, among others, Exod. 20:5.
\n20:9. and hope for his countenance always This seems to be a quote from Ps. 105:4 and should be translated \u201cbeseech [i.e., pray to] Him\u201d; and \u201cdo what is upright and righteous,\u201d etc.
\n20:11. he gave gifts to Ishmael and to his sons and to the sons of Keturah Gen. 25:6; that is, these other sons (Gen. 25:2\u20134) were not disinherited entirely.
\n20:13. mixed with each other An etymology of the word \u201cArab,\u201d as if from the Heb. arab, \u201cmingle,\u201d \u201cmix.\u201d
\n21:1. I am old This introduces another spiritual testament, the second of three (see above on 20:1). The normal pattern is to have only one, presented to all the dying person\u2019s descendants simultaneously, as in chapter 20. If Jubilees\u2019 author has added two more, it is because he wished to have Abraham pass on to Isaac alone a detailed set of priestly instructions (based on a section of the ALD) that would be irrelevant to Jacob, since he was never to become a priest. At the same time, Jacob was, for Jubilees, Abraham\u2019s true spiritual heir, so he merited the special blessing and very last words in chapter 22.
\nI do not know the day of my death Cf. Gen. 27:2; as if to say that as far as Abraham knew at the time, these might indeed be his last words. That might explain why Abraham is actually addressing Isaac at some period before his actual death (see below). As in 20:2, so here the phrase \u201ccommanded him\u201d (better: gave him his [final] charge; Heb. vayyitsavvehu in 4Q219 1:1) has the technical sense of \u201cto give one\u2019s last spiritual will or testament.\u201d
\n21:2. one hundred and seventy-five years old This is apparently a mistake in the Ethiopic text, since 4Q219 1:13 seems to have read \u201cone hundred and seventy-two.\u201d It is easy to imagine a scribe \u201ccorrecting\u201d this figure to fit Abraham\u2019s well-known age at his death, 175; on the contrary, it may have been the author\u2019s intention to introduce a time gap between Abraham\u2019s charge to Isaac and his last words to Jacob.
\nsought with all my heart to do his will A slightly different version of this sentence seems to underlie a Dead Sea Scrolls Jubilees fragment (4Q219): \u201cAnd I have soug[ht Him with all my heart to do His will].\u201d This is the biblical idiom \u201cto seek [darash] the LORD,\u201d that is, to seek His favor, to beseech Him.
\n21:4. holy, and faithful, and \u2026 more righteous than all (others) This last phrase is a Hebrew idiom used in the legal sense, that is, He will always be found to have acted rightly; see above on 1:6.
\nno accepting of persons That is, no favoritism; the expression is taken from Deut. 10:17, as is the next phrase, \u201caccepting of gifts,\u201d that is, bribes.
\n21:5. keep His commandments and ordinances and judgments Deut. 8:11. Genesis. 26:5 says that Abraham kept \u201cMy charge, My commandments, My laws, and My teachings,\u201d so it is only fitting that he should tell his offspring to do the same. Presumably, these include the commandments that Abraham has already learned from his forebears, some of them in writing (above, on 12:25\u201327); he has in turn passed these teachings on to his son Isaac.
\nand do not follow pollutions Better: \u201cidols.\u201d
\n21:6. do not eat any blood A key issue for the author of Jubilees; see above on 6:10\u201311.
\n21:7. And if you slaughter a sacrifice There follows a set of instructions about the offering of sacrifices that is paralleled by the passage of priestly instructions incorporated in the ALD. For the biblical basis and wording, see Lev. 1\u20138.
\n21:10. do not let the sun of the second (day) set upon it until it is consumed See Lev. 7:16\u201318; 19:6\u20137; Jubilees, in common with Rabbinic sources, understands from the phrase \u201con the day following\u201d (Lev. 19:6) to be saying that the meat may be eaten only until sunset of the second day.
\nBecause thus I have found written Better: \u201cfound [it] written.\u201d How did Abraham know these rules of proper sacrificing? Since he is part of a \u201cchain of priests\u201d stretching back to Adam (see above on 3:27, 6:1, 19:26), he could have been instructed by his predecessor priest, Shem. But Abraham had also learned Hebrew in order to be able to read \u201chis father\u2019s books\u201d (above, on 12:25\u201327). Perhaps the missing section about Melchizedek\/Shem (see above on 13:22\u201325) explained the transfer of the priesthood to Abraham in circumstances that would have required him to learn priestly regulations from the (written) words of Enoch and of Noah instead of, or in addition to, the instructions of Shem. Since this section was written by the original author and not the Interpolator, it makes no mention of these provisions being written in the heavenly tablets, as the Interpolator surely would have done.
\n20:11. you shall not omit the salt of the covenant Lev. 2:13; see above on 6:1.
\n21:12. take caution with the wood This list of the different kinds of acceptable wood is also paralleled in ALD 7:5\u20136. The ALD and T. Levi 9:12 both stipulate that there are 12 kinds of acceptable wood, as here, but other Jubilees manuscripts list 13, and 1 En. 3 speaks of 14.
\n21:13\u201314. split or dark wood \u2026 because its aroma has gone These further provisions about the wood are not paralleled in the ALD, indeed, the latter specifies that split wood must be used; perhaps Jubilees has misunderstood its source, since the split wood is to be examined for worms (ALD 7:4).
\n21:16. at all \u2026 times be pure in your body Priestly ablutions are, of course, a biblical requirement.
\n21:17. let there not be seen any blood On covering the blood (Lev. 17:13), see above on 6:9\u201314. Jubilees then reiterates that it is forbidden \u201cto eat any blood\u201d (21:18). This leads metaphorically to the next commandment.
\n21:20. you shall not accept gifts or tribute for human blood Here Jubilees, in keeping with Gen. 9:6 and Lev. 7:30\u201333, forbids \u201cransoming\u201d someone guilty of murder (and perhaps even of wounding his fellow) with monetary compensation. Rather, the only proper compensation is \u201cblood through [better: for] blood\u201d; only this, Jubilees says, \u201c[will be] accepted before the LORD God Most High.\u201d
\nHe will be the protector of the good Better: \u201cHis guarding [mishmar] will be over the good,\u201d as in 4Q219 2:21. This is a curious assertion. To begin with, the Heb. mishmar really does not mean \u201cprotection\u201d so much as \u201cguarding\u201d (sometimes of prisoners); however, in late biblical Hebrew and at Qumran it was used in the sense of \u201csteady service,\u201d especially in the Temple. It thus seems more likely that the original text read: \u201cand His service will be to your benefit,\u201d that is, may your serving God and being in proximity to Him bring you only good.
\nso that you might guard yourself from all evil, and so that He might save you from all death Better: \u201cfrom every evil spirit [reshef],\u201d as in 4Q219 2:22. The word reshef here is probably not intended as an abstract noun, \u201cpestilence,\u201d nor yet as a reference to a long-forgotten pagan god, but as a generic evil spirit, that is, a wicked angel of the sort that Jubilees often warns against.
\n21:21. there is no righteousness with them 4Q219 2:24 has for \u201crighteousness\u201d emet, that is, with them \u201cthere is no faithfulness [to God\u2019s precepts],\u201d a restatement of Deut. 32:20.
\n21:22. your name and seed will perish See above on 17:6. For this phrase 4Q219 2:27 reads \u201cyour name and your remembrance,\u201d the latter term being a synonym for \u201cname\u201d in biblical Hebrew; however, here the Ethiopic text seems preferable. The meaning is that, as a result of you and your descendants being uprooted, your name will also disappear\u2014a common biblical notion (see Deut. 25:6).
\n21:24. a righteous plant The version of this verse in 4Q219 reads: \u201c[and He will raise up from you a plant of] truth upon the land.\u201d That is, Isaac will be the father of Jacob, whose descendants will fill the land of Canaan.
\n22:1. in the first week of this forty-fourth jubilee This date in the Ethiopic mss. appears to be mistaken, since it would have Abraham dying at the age of 233, whereas Gen. 25:7 says he died at the age of 175. 4Q219 Jub. col. 2:35 reads \u201cin the first week of the fo[rty-]third jubilee.\u201d This would not quite solve the chronological problem, however, since it would still have Abraham die at too old an age, 184 instead of 175. (Note that Abraham says in Jub. 22:7 \u201cI am now 175 years of age,\u201d so Jubilees\u2019 dating here must clearly be off.) It may well be that 4Q219 itself represents a later copyist\u2019s attempt to come close to Abraham\u2019s biblical age; the original numbers may have been altogether distorted.
\n22:1\u20132. to observe the feast of Shavuot, which is the feast of the firstfruits of the harvest Abraham had already inaugurated the Festival of Firstfruits in Jub. 15:1; now his sons Isaac and Ishmael are said to keep it as well. Note that Jubilees\u2019 author first identifies this festival by its other name, Shavuot, \u201cWeeks,\u201d explaining that the two names refer to the same festival. It is clear from this that he knew nothing of the Interpolator\u2019s insertion concerning the Festival of Oaths (Shevuot), since, according to Jub. 6:19\u201320, Shevuot only came to be combined with the Festival of Firstfruits \u201cduring your lifetime, [Moses,]\u201d after the Israelites had neglected its observance. There is also a slight contradiction between the Interpolator\u2019s assertion there that the festival was kept by \u201cAbraham alone\u201d (followed by Isaac and Jacob), since here, clearly, Ishmael is also keeping it.
\n22:2. Isaac used to go \u2026 and return to his father This is a subtle dig at Ishmael. According to Gen. 18:1 and subsequently, Abraham had lived for a time at Mamre, near Hebron. He later went south to Gerar (Gen. 20:1, Jub. 16:10), and from there to Beer-sheba (Gen. 21:33\u201334; 22:19). Nevertheless, Jubilees seems to believe that, after Sarah\u2019s burial in the cave of Machpelah near Hebron (Gen. 23), Abraham stayed in Hebron, since that is where he is in Jub. 22. Presumably, since Abraham had purchased a field near Hebron (Gen. 23:17), he must have decided to move there, near his wife\u2019s grave. Isaac, meanwhile, was said to have gone to the southland (Gen. 24:62), where he is sighted first at Gerar (Gen. 26:1; cf. Gen. 26:17) and later at Beer-sheba (Gen. 26:23, 33). On the basis of the biblical text, therefore, it would have been reasonable to assume that Isaac continued living in Beer-sheba while his aged father dwelt in or near Hebron. However, Jub. 22:2 implies that Isaac, the dutiful son, actually lived with his father and used to go to Beer-sheba only to inspect his possessions and then returned to his father.
\n22:3. in those days Ishmael came to see his father By contrast, Ishmael did not regularly visit his father; it was only on this occasion that Ishmael made the trip, accompanying Isaac there. (It was necessary to have both of them together at Hebron when Abraham dies, since, according to Gen. 25:9, the two of them buried Abraham in the cave of Machpelah.) Here, clearly, Isaac is the good son, Ishmael the less good.
\nIsaac slaughtered a sacrifice Since the priesthood had already passed from Abraham to Isaac. (Abraham had instructed Isaac about priestly matters in Jub. 21.)
\n22:4\u20136. So that he might eat and bless \u2026 eat and drink and bless It was apparently firmly established that eating and drinking were to be accompanied by a blessing (cf. Jub. 2:21), as in later Rabbinic practice, perhaps under the influence of Deut. 8:10. See also above, on 8:18\u201320.
\n22:10\u201323 Abraham\u2019s blessing is another pastiche of biblical phrases.
\n22:16. keep the commandments of Abraham, your father That is, \u201cyour [grand] father.\u201d These are the divine commandments that have already been passed on to Abraham and earlier generations, including: \u201cSeparate yourself from the Gentiles, and do not eat with them\u201d because contact with them brings impurity.
\n22:17. They slaughter their sacrifices to the dead These are the stereotypical sins in Ps. 106:28, 37; Deut. 32:17.
\n22:18. And they have no heart to perceive Better: \u201c[mind] to perceive.\u201d That is, they cannot understand that worshiping idols is nonsense, cf. Isa. 44:9\u201320; this was a favorite theme of later writers: Wis. 14:15\u201320; 15:7\u201319, and the whole of the Letter of Jeremiah. The idolators are \u201csaying to the tree [better: a piece of wood], \u2018You are my god\u2019 and to a stone\u201d (Jer. 2:27).
\n22:20. do not take a wife from any of the seed of the daughters of Canaan Genesis stresses that Abraham\u2019s descendants were not to have Canaanite wives (Gen. 24:3; 28:1), but here Jubilees gives a unique rationale for this prohibition.
\n22:21. through the sin of Ham, Canaan sinned That is, \u201cCanaan [also] sinned.\u201d Perhaps Jubilees, like other ancient interpreters, means that Canaan was complicit in Ham\u2019s sin, but it seems more likely that he believes Ham\u2019s sin was simply the beginning of a chain of misdeeds. Canaan must have learned from his father\u2014that is why he was cursed, says Jubilees\u2019 author\u2014and he then set a pattern of \u201cabhorrent things\u201d (i.e., sexual sins) that were to continue to characterize his descendants (Lev. 18:24\u201328). Thus, Canaanite women, Ham\u2019s offspring, should not be taken as wives, and it is also why \u201call of his seed [the peoples of Canaan] will be blotted out from the earth\u201d after the conquest of Canaan by Moses\u2019s successor, Joshua.
\n22:22. all of those who worship idols As the Canaanites do.
\n22:23. Do not fear, my son, Jacob, and do not be in terror, O son of Abraham Abraham is rephrasing Jer. 30:10. (Abraham cannot say \u201cand do not be upset, Israel,\u201d as in Jer. 30:10, because this other name of Jacob\u2019s was not revealed until after Abraham\u2019s death.)
\n22:24. This house I have built for myself so that I might cause my name to dwell upon it in the land \u201cHouse\u201d here means \u201cfamily,\u201d that is, Jacob and his descendants; Abraham has \u201cbuilt it,\u201d as it were, to assert that his name is connected specifically with one branch of his descendants, Jacob\u2019s branch. (His other descendants, the Ishmaelites and the Edomites, will not be \u201cin the land [of Israel],\u201d so, although they are technically part of \u201cthe house of Abraham\u201d (Gen. 17:23), they will not be the true bearers of his name.) In any case, Jubilees\u2019 author implies, it is altogether appropriate that Israel alone be associated with Abraham\u2019s name, since \u201cyou will raise up my name before God forever.\u201d
\n22:26. And both of them lay down together in one bed The start of a surprising incident, one with no basis in Genesis: Jubilees arranges for Abraham and Jacob to sleep in the same bed, so that when Abraham dies that night Jacob will incur the severest form of impurity, contact with a corpse. There is pointedly no mention of impurity in this and the following passage, nor is it related in Jubilees that Jacob subsequently purified himself\u2014as was of course required by later biblical law (Num. 19:11\u201313). Was this not the author\u2019s way of thumbing his nose at priestly impurity\u2014not, of course, saying that such laws were unimportant, but asserting that the most troubling form of \u201cimpurity\u201d was the kind he has already mentioned: sexual transgressions and any contact with non-Israelites. Perhaps for that reason Abraham refers to Jacob\u2019s descendants here as a holy seed (see above on 16:19\u201320) who therefore will be free of these corrupting contacts.
\n23:1. two fingers of Jacob on his eyes A symbolic gesture at the time of a person\u2019s death.
\nand he was gathered to his fathers This is a biblical idiom for death (Num. 27:13; Judg. 2:10, etc.).
\n23:3\u20134. And Jacob awoke from his sleep It is appropriate that Jacob was the first to know of Abraham\u2019s death, and that Isaac heard of it only third hand. For Jubilees, Jacob is Abraham\u2019s \u201ctrue\u201d descendant, and Isaac principally the means to his birth (above, on 19:15; 22:24).
\n23:6. the sound was heard An idiom meaning \u201cthe news reached\u201d (Gen. 45:16; cf. Exod. 36:6; Eccles. 10:20).
\n23:8\u201310. And he lived three jubilees and four weeks of years This introduces one of the cleverest parts of Jubilees. The author has frequently asserted that God\u2019s people, Israel, is plunged in sin, specifically sexual license (zenut, \u201cfornication\u201d) and impurity (tumah). Yet for all this brazen sinfulness, Israel is not being punished in any obvious way. Has God simply given up on His people? Not at all. Jubilees\u2019 author points out that Abraham \u201clived three jubilees and four weeks of years\u201d (= 175 years), and died in a decrepit state, \u201cold and full of days.\u201d It was not Abraham\u2019s fault, he says. After the Flood, the human life span began to decrease, as any reader of the Bible knows: no one lived to the age of \u201cnineteen jubilees\u201d (931) anymore; in fact, human life shrank dramatically, so that even the righteous Abraham, \u201cperfect in all of his actions with the LORD \u2026 did not complete four jubilees [196 years]\u201d by the time he died. Once sinfulness caused humans to live shorter life spans, even the righteous shared in their punishment. But the worst is yet to come, Moses is told here. After your time, \u201call of the generations \u2026 will grow old quickly.\u201d
\n23:12. And in those days if a man will live a jubilee and a half It is here that Jubilees\u2019 account begins to dovetail with Ps. 90, \u201cA psalm of Moses, the man of God,\u201d whose subject is the brevity of human life in comparison to God\u2019s eternal being. If Moses wrote that psalm, Jubilees seeks to imply, it was after the angel of the Presence broke the bad news to him here about the further reduction of the human life span. Thus, by saying \u201cthe span of our life is seventy years, or at the most, eighty years\u201d (Ps. 90:10), Moses was certainly not talking about his own lifetime, 120 years, or human life in general (since people in the past lived much longer than Moses), but about the future revealed here by the angel of the Presence. In times to come, he is told, \u201ca man will live a jubilee and a half,\u201d that is, 73 years; and \u201cthe majority of his days were suffering and anxiety and affliction,\u201d a restatement of \u201cand most of them are trouble and sorrow\u201d (Ps. 90:10).
\n23:13\u201315. And there was no peace Better: \u201c[will be] no peace.\u201d Jubilees now has the angel \u201cforetell\u201d the ills awaiting Israel, leading up to the author\u2019s own day. This section is strikingly vague; this is no \u201capocalypse\u201d in the traditional sense. Instead, it describes only a steady series of calamities, \u201cplague \u2026 upon plague \u2026 wound upon wound\u201d and other hardships imposed by God, sometimes through the forces of nature, but also through human agency, \u201cdeath, and sword [better: warfare], and captivity.\u201d This is as close as this author comes to mentioning any specific times or events. All this has to do with the author\u2019s view of the Sinai covenant (above, on 6:19). Just as that covenant did not, in his opinion, inaugurate the connection between God and Israel\u2014that connection went back to the first week of Creation and was enacted through all God\u2019s dealings with the patriarchs\u2014so Israel\u2019s eventual violation of that covenant (and the Babylonian exile that followed) did not mark the end of God\u2019s connection to Israel. On the contrary, the story that Jubilees tells here is one of steady decline from Moses\u2019s time on, \u201cevery evil judgment [i.e., punishment] of this sort\u201d in unending succession.
\n23:15. Then they will say, \u201cThe days of the ancients\u201d Thus, if even today things are not going well, it is because Israel is still sinning\u2014a fact reflected in the diminished human life span. In the arrangement originally intended for humankind, human life was to last as many as 1,000 years, and they were good years; in the future, sinfulness will whittle down a person\u2019s life span to \u201cseventy years or if he is strong (for) eighty years\u201d (again, a direct quote from Ps. 90:10, \u201cthe span of our life is seventy years, or if in strength, eighty years\u201d). What is more, those 70 or 80 years will all \u201c[be] evil\u201d (again, Ps. 90:10, \u201cand most of them are trouble and sorrow\u201d). People will not even realize that their shortened life span is the result of divine anger and not \u201cnatural causes\u201d!
\n23:16. children will reproach their parents and their elders An expression of the utmost degeneracy of a society.
\n23:19 because they have forgotten the commandments and covenant and festivals and months and Sabbaths and jubilees and all of the judgments Better: \u201call of the [laws].\u201d Not so much forgotten as \u201cneglected\u201d (also Heb. shakhah), a reflection of Jubilees\u2019 campaign against his people\u2019s religious laxness in his own time.
\n23:23. the sinners of the nations who have no mercy or grace \u2026 and who have no regard for any persons old or young \u201cGrace\u201d is better rendered as \u201ckindness.\u201d Jubilees is evoking the curses pronounced in Lev. 26 and Deut. 28, here specifically alluding to Deut. 28:50.
\n23:25. an infant three weeks old will look aged like one whose years (are) one hundred It is hard to know how to interpret this since, as a matter of fact, many newborns do look like the very aged, with wispy hair or bald heads and wrinkled skin. Perhaps Jubilees seeks to suggest that this too is not \u201cnatural\u201d at all. The author\u2019s point throughout has been that Israel is indeed being punished for its sins\u2014punished by decreased longevity and hardship\u2014and it does not even realize it.
\n23:26\u201327. Children will begin to search the law That is, they will \u201cbegin [to study the Torah]\u201d and will realize the error of their parents\u2019 ways; and then the punishment of diminished life spans will gradually be lifted, \u201cuntil their days [lifetimes] approach a thousand years,\u201d the proper lifetime of a human being, which is the amount originally granted to Adam and Eve before their sin.
\nand to a greater number of years than days Apparently the meaning is that people will now live more years than the number of days that those fast-aging infants were living in Jub. 23:25. It seems that here the author is returning to the words of Ps. 90, interpreting its verse 15, \u201cGive us joy according to the [number of] days that You afflicted us, the years that we suffered misfortune,\u201d as if it meant: \u201cmatch the number of days of misfortune that we suffered with a corresponding number of years of joy from now on.\u201d In that eschatological heyday, even the aged will not show signs of aging.
\n23:28\u201331. Because all of them will be infants and children. And all of their days will be complete and live in peace and rejoicing That is, \u201call of them will be [as] infants and children.\u201d This echoes Ps. 90:14, \u201cthat we may sing for joy in all our days,\u201d that is, in the whole 1,000-year lifetime originally assigned to humans. Then people will \u201crejoice forever and ever with joy \u2026 and their spirits will increase joy,\u201d all elaborating on \u201cthat we may sing for joy\u201d (Ps. 90:14).
\n23:31. they will know that the LORD is an executor of judgment That is, \u201cthey will know \u2026 [when it comes to other nations,] but He will show mercy to hundreds and thousands, to all who love him\u201d and keep His commandments, that is, Israel (Exod. 20:6).
\n23:32. And you \u2026 eternal generations To all this the Interpolator added one line: \u201cAnd you, Moses, write these words\u201d\u2014and so he did, in the words of Ps. 90\u2014\u201cbecause thus it is written and set upon the heavenly tablets.\u201d These words were intended to assert that Moses\u2019s knowledge of future events (as evidenced in Ps. 90, authored by him) derived from the heavenly tablets (cf. above on 19:8 and below on 24:33).
\n24:1. he arose from Hebron Isaac leaves Hebron, where he had settled temporarily to take care of his father (above, on 22:1\u20132); now he returns to the south, specifically to the Well of Vision, that is, Be\u2019er lehai Ro\u2019i (Gen. 24:62).
\n24:2\u20137. A famine began in the land Gen. 26:1; this famine is actually mentioned just after Esau\u2019s sale of his birthright, but Jubilees cleverly has it begin before that incident in order to explain why Esau could have been so famished that he sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. (His hunger was not necessarily the immediate result of his virtuously hunting game for his family; everyone was in a famine.)
\n24:3\u20137. Jacob was cooking lentil soup The story itself is told basically as in Gen. 25:29\u201334, but Jubilees adds bread to the meal promised by Jacob (to fit what Jacob actually gave in Gen. 25:34). Jubilees also saves for the end of the story any mention of the connection between this incident and the fact that \u201cEsau\u2019s name was called Edom [red],\u201d perhaps to suggest that it was not his hunger for the stew so much as the fact that Esau gave up his right of firstborn for it, that caused his name ever after to be called Edom. Thanks to this, Jacob became the older one, not older in years but in title and rights, that is, he was now considered the bekhor, the firstborn.
\n24:8\u201312. there was a famine This is not a new famine, but the same mentioned in Jub. 24:1. For God\u2019s blessing of Isaac, see Gen. 26:2\u20135.
\n24:11. My restrictions and My commandments and My laws and My ordinances and My covenant The first four are apparently intended to correspond to the four items mentioned in Gen. 26:5. The fifth, \u201cmy covenant,\u201d is presumably added in reference to the covenant(s) found in Gen. 15 and 17. The idea that Israel\u2019s ancestors were bound to God by legal covenants long before Sinai was, as we have seen, extremely important to Jubilees\u2019 author.
\n24:13. And Abimelek gave orders A glaring omission by Jubilees: instead of telling the story of how a patriarch once again hid the fact that his wife was his wife and all that ensued (Gen. 26:11), a story that clearly embarrassed Jubilees\u2019 author, he gives only its last line: \u201cAny man who touches him or anything which is his,\u201d where \u201canything which is his\u201d has replaced \u201chis wife\u201d in Genesis. See above on Jub. 16:10.
\n24:14\u201326. And Isaac grew prosperous This narrative closely follows Gen. 26:12\u201334, except for the end, Jub. 24:21\u201326. Here, Isaac goes to \u201cthe Well of the Oath\u201d\u2014the narrator uses this phrase to designate the place later called by that name, that is, Beer-sheba, but as far as Jubilees is concerned, the well itself has not yet been dug. That happens in verse 24: \u201cthey dug a well and found running water.\u201d Subsequently, however, Isaac\u2019s servants \u201cdug another well and did not find water\u201d (this presumes the reading of Gen. 26:32 found in the LXX \u201cWe have not found water\u201d). This was surprising: how could such a thing happen to Isaac, son of God\u2019s beloved Abraham? Hearing of the incident, Isaac understands at once: it happened because \u201cI have sworn (an oath) on this day to the Philistines.\u201d Consequently, \u201che [Isaac] named that place \u2018the Well of the Oath,\u2019 \u201d as a reminder never to make treaties or agreements with the Philistines (see also above on Jub. 17:4\u201314).
\n24:27\u201330. under pressure he swore an oath This is the only reason Isaac would have consented to the oath in question (Gen. 26:29). But an oath, even one sworn under pressure, cannot be undone. Isaac therefore does the next-best thing, uttering a curse (in the biblical world, a kind of negative oath, and an equally effective one) against them. Since his oath with Philistines was a kind of mutual nonaggression treaty, Isaac asks God here to bring about the Philistines\u2019 destruction Himself, first at the hand of unspecified enemies as well as at the hand of the Kittim. This name is found several times in the Bible, where it apparently refers to people from Citium, Cyprus. In Second Temple period literature, it is used to refer to the Macedonians or Greeks, and later on, the Romans. By the same token, those same Kittim, as well as the Caphtorim (the Cypriots), will be annihilated in turn, since these outsiders (it is not clear if Jubilees means actually Cypriots or, more likely, the Macedonian troops of Alexander) dared to conquer Israel\u2019s homeland.
\n24:31. if they go up to heaven This phrasing is based on Amos 9:2\u20134; Obad. 1:4; Ps. 139:8.
\n24:33. And thus it is written and engraved At the end of this passage, the Interpolator inserted this sentence, which says that, in keeping with Isaac\u2019s curse, it had indeed been recorded long before in the heavenly tablets that the Philistines would eventually be \u201cuprooted from the earth [better: land],\u201d and this did indeed happen, but long after the time of Moses.
\n25:1. do not take \u2026 a wife from the daughters of Canaan Elaborating on Rebecca\u2019s brief remark in Gen. 27:46 (which was, in Genesis, a pretext for sending Jacob to visit Laban, but here becomes a heartfelt plea against marrying Canaanites), Jubilees\u2019 author created an exchange between mother and son on the subject of intermarriage, one of his favorite themes.
\n25:4. I am nine weeks of years old That is, \u201c63 years.\u201d Jacob is thus the ideal model of the avoidance of zenut (fornication).
\n25:6. I heard some time ago Genesis relates that Isaac commanded Jacob to go to Laban\u2019s house (Gen. 28:2), but here the idea comes from Jacob himself.
\n25:8\u201310. he frequently spoke with me Rebecca\u2019s excuse for having Isaac send Jacob to Laban\u2019s house was her stated fear that Jacob might marry a Hittite woman as Esau had (Gen. 27:46). But why should she ever have feared that? Here Jubilees has Jacob report that Esau had been urging him to do so for years. Rebecca was thus afraid that, despite Jacob\u2019s innate goodness, he might surrender to this fraternal pressure.
\n25:9. I will not act wickedly as my brother has done Not only had Esau married two Hittite women (Gen. 26:34; \u201cHittites\u201d were deemed to be a type of Canaanite), but later, hearing his father\u2019s instructions to Jacob in Gen. 28:1, Esau went on to marry a daughter of Ishmael (Gen. 28:9) rather than one of Laban\u2019s daughters.
\n25:10. Do not fear Better: \u201cTake heart, I will never corrupt my ways,\u201d that is, never go astray.
\n25:11. she lifted her face toward heaven \u2026 spread out the fingers That is, \u201c[her] fingers.\u201d This is the common posture for prayer; cf. ALD 3:1\u20132.
\n25:12. who gave to me Jacob, a pure son and a holy seed This is a crucial phrase for Jubilees\u2019 author (see above on 16:19).
\n25:14. a spirit of truth That is, true prophecy.
\n25:15\u201323. May He bless you more than all the generations of man In her words to Jacob, Rebecca foresees that God will \u201cmultiply your sons \u2026 [so that] they rise up according to the number of the months of the year,\u201d that is, give you 12 of them. Though her son is 63, Rebecca still hopes to be a grandmother and \u201csee \u2026 that you shall have blessed sons in my lifetime,\u201d as she will indeed. When the \u201cgreat day of peace\u201d foreseen in Jub. 23 comes to pass, \u201cmay it [your progeny]\u201d still be around and \u201chave peace.\u201d
\n26:1\u201312. Isaac called Esau, his elder son Having just been blessed by his mother (thanks to Jubilees\u2019 author), Jacob is now about to be blessed by his father, as recounted in Gen. 27. The narrative basically follows the Genesis account, with only a few pious touches added. Thus, when Rebecca suggests that Jacob pretend to be Esau and bring him his food, Jacob says that he would willingly bring \u201canything which my father would eat and which would please him,\u201d but adds that he is reluctant to do \u201ca deed which he did not command\u201d (contrast Gen. 27:12). Reassured by Rebecca, he proceeds to do as she says; unlike Genesis, however, this narrative is careful not to make Jacob a liar.
\n26:13. I am your son He tells his blind father \u201cI am your son\u201d rather than \u201cI am Esau your firstborn\u201d (Gen. 27:19). A widespread, somewhat tongue-in-cheek tradition held that Isaac\u2019s preceding question, \u201cWho are you my son?\u201d was actually to be read as two: \u201cWho are you? My son?\u201d in that case, Jacob\u2019s answer could likewise be divided in two: \u201cI am [indeed your son; but] Esau [is] your firstborn,\u201d in which case Jacob did not lie.
\n26:18. The voice is the voice of Jacob Gen. 27:22. If, although Isaac recognized Jacob\u2019s voice, he nevertheless blessed him, it was because \u201cthe change was from heaven\u201d (i.e., direct, divine intervention) \u201cin order to distract his [Isaac\u2019s] mind.\u201d In other words, this was no shabby deception on Jacob\u2019s part, but part of the divine plan.
\n26:24. may all of the blessings \u2026 belong to you and to your seed forever Jacob\u2019s issue, the people of Israel, are the true, intended recipient of the divine blessing.
\n26:25\u201334. And Esau, his brother, arrived This section also follows Genesis closely, save for the end.
\n26:34. And it will happen when you become great This is an interpretation of the difficult word tarid in Gen. 27:40 (NJPS: \u201cwhen you grow restive\u201d), \u201cand you will remove his yoke from your neck\u201d; that \u201cthen you will surely sin completely unto death\u201d interprets \u201cyou shall break his yoke\u201d (Gen. 27:40) as if it were \u201cHis yoke,\u201d that is, God\u2019s, not Jacob\u2019s, that was causing Esau to give up all obedience to God\u2019s ways.
\n27:1\u20135. were told to Rebecca in a dream Genesis reports that Esau \u201csaid in his heart\u201d (Gen. 27:41) that he would kill Jacob, but the next verse says that Esau\u2019s words \u201cwere told to Rebecca.\u201d How did she know if Esau did not say the words aloud? Hence the necessity for this dream.
\n27:4. If he desires to kill me, I shall kill him \u201cDesires\u201d is better rendered as \u201cseeks.\u201d This provides some grounds for what Rebecca is quoted as saying in Gen. 27:45, \u201cWhy should I be bereaved of both of my sons in one day?\u201d (restated in Jub. 27:5). In the biblical account, one is left to wonder why she fears losing both sons because of Esau\u2019s planned fratricide.
\n27:6\u20138. Behold, you know that my father is old Here the pious Jacob expresses a further misgiving: he does not wish to abandon his poor, blind father (whose blindness, we are to have forgotten, had just aided Jacob in fraudulently obtaining his father\u2019s blessing!). In response, Rebecca returns to the excuse in Gen. 27:46, her fear that Jacob will marry a Hittite\/Canaanite woman (see above on Jub. 25:1\u201310), even though she knows full well that Jacob in fact plans to go to Laban\u2019s house in order to marry one of his daughters.
\n27:17. he is upright in his way and he is a perfect man Better: \u201che is [righteous] in his way[s].\u201d Though Isaac had initially preferred his son Esau to Jacob (Gen. 25:28), his opinion is in the process of changing.
\n27:19. On the first of the first month This is the first of Nisan, in keeping with Jubilees\u2019 preference for locating significant events on significant days (see above on 17:15).
\n27:20\u201325. And he took one of the stones The narrative of Jacob\u2019s dream vision follows Gen. 28:10\u201322, but omits Jacob\u2019s \u201cSurely the LORD is present in this place, and I did not know it\u201d (Gen. 28:16). Perhaps Jubilees\u2019 author was disturbed by Jacob\u2019s confession of ignorance about God, or perhaps, in common with other Second Temple period exegetes, he was disturbed by the implication that holiness legitimately dwelled in Bethel, later the site of one of Jeroboam\u2019s temples.
\n27:26. set it up as a pillar for a sign Jubilees adds \u201cfor a sign\u201d (contrast Gen. 28:18), one that will enable him to carry out his vow of a tithe (Gen. 28:22) in the same place: see below on Jub. 32. (Jubilees\u2019 author was also eager to deny any implication that this \u201cpillar\u201d [matzevah] was for purposes of worship, which would violate the law of Deut. 16:22.)
\n28:1\u20133. served him for Rachel, his daughter, one week That is, \u201cone week [of years].\u201d The author skips the narrative of Jacob\u2019s first encounter with Rachel and Laban (Gen. 29:1\u201314) and moves immediately to the story of the switched brides (Gen. 29:15\u201330).
\n28:4. and behold, she was Leah All ancient interpreters were puzzled by the fact that Jacob failed to notice until the next morning that the woman in his bed was Leah, not Rachel (Gen. 29:25), and they proposed various solutions. Jubilees\u2019 author has Jacob notice as soon as the marriage is consummated, rather than the next morning, since even at that point it is already too late for him to demand a refund. But the author no doubt found the whole tale distasteful, in part because of the implication that Leah, future mother of six of Israel\u2019s tribes, had cooperated in the deception. He thus had Jacob take a principled stand against Laban and say what he does not in Genesis, \u201cTake your daughter, and I will go.\u201d
\n28:5. because the eyes of Leah were weak, but her appearance was very beautiful Jubilees adds these last words to explain that it was not tawdry lust for Rachel that caused Jacob to stay on\u2014after all, both sisters were beautiful. Jacob preferred Rachel on ophthalmological grounds alone.
\n28:6\u20138. And it is not right to do this An insertion of the Interpolator, who saw in Laban\u2019s excuse for his sneaky switch\u2014\u201cIt is not the practice in our place to marry off the younger before the older\u201d (Gen. 29:26)\u2014another opportunity to suggest that a story in Genesis reflected one of the eternal teachings that are inscribed on high, namely, that \u201cit is not right\u201d to marry off the younger sister before the older, \u201cbecause thus it is ordained and written in the heavenly tablets.\u201d
\n28:11\u201324. And the LORD opened the womb of Leah Jubilees\u2019 author ran through the birth of Jacob\u2019s sons quickly, without the name etymologies of Gen. 29 and 30 and without the story of the mandrakes (Gen. 30:14\u201318), which doubtless outraged his sense of modesty. Note that he assigned significant days of the month\u2014the 1st or the 15th\u2014to the \u201cimportant\u201d sons, Levi, Judah, and Joseph, while the other sons are born on insignificant dates: Reuben on the 14th of the 9th month, Simeon on the 21st of the 10th month, Dan on the 9th of the 6th month, and so on. (See also above on 17:15.)
\n28:27\u201330. And they agreed with one another This agreement is narrated in Gen. 30:25\u201343. The text here refers to lambs and kids that are born \u201cblack or spots or white,\u201d but the Ethiopic text is notoriously difficult. Note in any case that Jubilees\u2019 author does not mention Jacob\u2019s attempts to affect the outcome of his agreement with Laban (Gen. 30:37\u201343), since they appeared designed to cheat his uncle out of his flocks. On the contrary, it was Laban who \u201ccollected his sheep from him,\u201d a creation of Jubilees\u2019 author, perhaps inspired by Gen. 31:42\u201343; moreover, Laban \u201ckept watch on him with evil intent,\u201d an interpretation of Gen. 31:2.
\n29:3. as he had seen it in the dream Jubilees does not relate the actual dream as told in Gen. 31:10\u201313, probably because it quotes God as saying. \u201cI have noted all that Laban has been doing to you; I am the God of Bethel\u201d (Gen. 31:12\u201313). Certainly Jacob had no need to be told that God has seen everything, and \u201cthe God of Bethel\u201d was too limiting a title for the LORD of all.
\n29:4. Jacob blessed the God of Isaac, his father, and the God of Abraham Jacob did so in keeping with the principle of blessing God in thanks for a good outcome (above on 8:18\u201320).
\n29:5\u20138. And Laban pursued him Jubilees\u2019 author omits the story of Laban\u2019s hypocritical reproach of Jacob (Gen. 31:26\u201330) and the following narrative of Rachel\u2019s deception of her father. For the former: this author is actually careful not to portray Laban in too unfavorable a light, skipping even his assertion in the Bible that he uses divination (Gen. 30:27) or here that he has (images of) \u201cgods.\u201d After all, Laban is the brother of Rebecca and the father of Rachel and Leah, all of them the mothers of the people of Israel. As for Rachel, her failure to honor her father and her deception are both best passed over in silence. Jubilees does narrate the pact between Jacob and Laban, which takes place \u201cin the third month \u2026 on the fifteenth of those days\u201d (a significant day), in \u201cCovenant Month\u201d (above on 6:1; 17:15).
\n29:9. the Raphaim were born as giants This is because Deut. 2:10 and 21 assert that the Emim and Anakites, both classified as Raphaim, were indeed very tall. Having mentioned the northern area of Gilead, Jubilees\u2019 author discourses on the Raphaim here because they are said to inhabit that region.
\n29:10. Qarnaim \u2026 Ashtaroth \u2026 Edrei \u2026 Misur, and Beon \u201cMisur\u201d = mishor, \u201cthe plain\u201d or \u201ctableland,\u201d in Deut. 3:10. The palaces of the Raphaim were located in these places, all northern locations associated with the Raphaim; there is no substance to the suggestion that the author mentioned these because two of them were sites of Maccabean victories.
\n29:11. evil and sinful The Amorites\u2019 postbiblical reputation for sinfulness was based on their mention in Gen. 15:16.
\n29:13. in the ninth month on the eleventh day Jubilees\u2019 dating of Jacob\u2019s reunion with his brother Esau tells us that this meeting was without importance. (See above on 17:15, \u201csignificant days.\u201d) In fact, Jubilees\u2019 author here performs one of his most drastic foreshortenings, reducing to two verses the whole biblical account of (1) Jacob\u2019s anxieties about encountering Esau (Gen. 32:2\u20139), (2) Jacob\u2019s pious prayer (32:10\u201313), (3) the lavish gift he sends to Esau (32:14\u201322), (4) Jacob\u2019s famous wrestling match with the angel (32:23\u201333), and finally (5) his reconciliation with Esau (33:1\u201317). Of these items, numbers 1, 3, and 5 were apparently repugnant to Jubilees\u2019 author because they involved an Israelite placating a \u201cforeigner,\u201d the ancestor of the Edomites; item 2, unobjectionable in itself, was inextricably bound to placating Esau; while item 4 was disturbing for theological reasons (disturbing enough was the idea that a man could wrestle with a divine being at all\u2014not to speak of defeating him!).
\n29:14\u201316. And he was pasturing his sheep Jacob shepherds his flocks near the \u201cSea of the Heap.\u201d From there he sends gifts to his father, Isaac, since in biblical society males were the principal holders of property, but also, at four regular intervals, gifts to his mother, Rebecca.
\n29:17. the tower of his father, Abraham An unknown locale, probably to be identified with the \u201ctower of Eder\u201d in Gen. 35:21.
\n29:18. Esau took for himself a wife He took a new wife, Mahalat (Gen. 28:9), with his other wives and settled in the Edomite homeland around Mount Seir, abandoning his father.
\n29:20. Jacob sent there everything \u2026 all of their needs Jacob\u2019s filial piety, paralleled by that of his father Isaac (see above on 22:1\u20132) is intended here to contrast with Esau\u2019s behavior.
\n30:1. to Salem \u2026 in peace Interpreters were in doubt as to the meaning of the word shalem in Gen. 35:18; Jubilees\u2019 author therefore mentioned both possibilities, \u201cto Salem\u201d and \u201cin peace.\u201d
\n30:2. Dinah \u2026 was snatched away She was taken by Shechem, the son of Hamor. The author\u2019s assertion that \u201cshe was little, only twelve years old\u201d is not mentioned in Genesis; apart from increasing the pathos of the incident, he may have specified this age because it had some particular legal significance (in Rabbinic practice, 12 is the age of majority for a girl).
\n30:3. Jacob and his sons were angry Only the sons are so described in Gen. 34:7; actually, Jacob maintains a studied neutrality throughout the incident.
\n30:4. They killed everyone painfully This alludes to Gen. 34:25, which, however, refers to the Shechemites\u2019 condition before they were killed. Moreover, Jubilees\u2019 author says, \u201call of the men of Shechem \u2026 every man they found therein\u201d were killed, and not just the rapist, because all of them \u201chad polluted [better: rendered impure] Dinah,\u201d basing this assertion on the plural verb in Gen. 34:27, \u201cbecause they had defiled their sister.\u201d
\n30:5\u20137. let nothing like this be done henceforth This is a restatement of Gen. 34:7, \u201cand let it not be done thus.\u201d In Genesis, this is the reaction of Jacob\u2019s sons to the rape\u2014such things should never take place!\u2014but an ancient tradition preferred to see these words as those of the (divine) narrator of the story; God Himself (or, in Jubilees, the narrator of the book, the angel of the Presence) says, \u201csuch a thing ought not to be [or, alternatively, \u2018will not be\u2019] done\u201d: cf. Gen. 34:7 LXX, Jdt. 9:2 LXX. For Jubilees and other writers, these words in Genesis justify all that follows: the \u201cjudgment [better: punishment] was ordained in heaven against them \u2026 the LORD handed them over into the hand of the sons of Jacob \u2026 so that nothing like this might therefore happen in Israel.\u201d
\n30:7. if there is any man in Israel The larger lesson of this incident, according to Jubilees\u2019 author, had to do with contact with non-Israelites\u2014in fact, the worst kind of contact, forced sexual contact. He thus recounts the rape in such a way as to remove any ambiguity about Dinah\u2019s role (she did not \u201cgo out to visit the daughters of the land\u201d as in Gen. 34:1, but was quite simply \u201csnatched away to the house of Shechem\u201d). She was in no way complicit. Moreover, much of the biblical story is taken up with the subject of marriage negotiations (Gen. 34:8\u201323). These exchanges, even if conducted hypocritically by Jacob and his sons, filled Jubilees\u2019 author with horror: no Jew should ever make agreements with non-Israelites, and an agreement to give one\u2019s daughter in marriage to such a person was doubly unthinkable. The author therefore skipped almost entirely the biblical account of these negotiations; and although other ancient interpreters, balking at the idea that Jacob and his sons had lied to the Shechemites, felt compelled to say that the negotiations had in fact been sincere (T. Levi 6:3\u20136), Jubilees\u2019 author was under no such constraint. He thus did not hesitate to say that Jacob and his sons \u201cspoke treacherously with them and defrauded them and seduced them.\u201d
\n30:8\u20139. And do not let an adultress or defilement be found in Israel At this point, the Interpolator inserted his own interpretation of the Dinah story. He had a somewhat different understanding of the story: the point was not so much rape and the horrors of intermarriage, but \u201cdefilement\u201d in general (of which intermarriage is, in his view, merely one example). He therefore began by mentioning \u201can adultress or defilement [better: or any impure person]\u201d and adds, \u201clet any man who causes defilement surely die, let him be stoned, because thus it is decreed and written in the heavenly tablets.\u201d No such broad interdiction of \u201ccausing defilement\u201d exists in the Torah; technically, a person who has contracted impurity by touching a corpse can \u201ccause defilement\u201d simply by inadvertently touching someone else\u2014surely he was not to be stoned! But the Interpolator wished to condemn all sorts of defiling (in v. 15 he includes \u201cthose who defile the sanctuary of the LORD\u201d).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COMMENTARY of the Divisions of Days This phrase (better: of the divisions of the times; Heb. mahlekot ha-ittim) in Jubilees means a chronological history, that is, a history in which important events are accompanied by the date of their occurrence in anno mundi (i.e., calculated from the time of the Creation). of the Law and … <\/p>\n