Parshat Noach4 min read

Noah Learned Medicine to Fight Post-Flood Demons

The waters were gone, and the spirits were still loose. Noah's grandchildren sickened. He asked God to take the demons off the children.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Spirits Walked Out of the Water
  2. Mastema Asked for a Tenth
  3. An Angel Named the Herbs
  4. Hezekiah Hid the Book
Noah Learned Medicine to Fight Post-Flood Demons Click for full size

The Spirits Walked Out of the Water

Noah lifted a grandchild whose skin was too hot. The dove had already found a leaf. God had set a bow in the cloud. The world looked washed. It was not empty of what he feared.

The children of his children began to grow, and they sickened. Something invisible moved through the new houses and put its hands on them. The Flood had drowned flesh. It had not drowned the spirits that had used flesh as a door.

Noah held the hot child and prayed the way a man prays when the water is gone and the danger is not.

"Do not let the spirits rule over my children," he said. "Do not give them power to destroy them."

Mastema Asked for a Tenth

Heaven answered with ropes. Most of the evil spirits were bound and taken to a place of condemnation, where they could not reach a living throat. Nine parts in ten. The air over the new fields went quieter.

Then Mastema, prince of the accusing spirits, stood and argued for his keep.

"Leave me a tenth," he said. "I need servants. Let them stay loose in the world to test human beings and do the work that has to be done."

The request was granted. Nine-tenths went into bonds. One-tenth stayed. Noah looked at the children who were still his to protect and knew the prayer had been answered only in part. He had been given a smaller war, not a finished one.

An Angel Named the Herbs

The second answer arrived walking. God commanded one of the angels to teach Noah. Not law. Not the calendar of offerings. The names of diseases the remaining spirits could throw, the ways those diseases hooked a body, and the herbs of the earth that could drive them out.

The angel walked him through the plants. This leaf for this burning. This root for this shaking. This mixture when a spirit had ridden in on a fever. Noah learned the names as he wrote. He made a book of medicine to fight the demons that still walked after the Flood. He put the book in the hands of Shem, the son he loved above the others, so the knowledge would travel with the covenant line and not die in the ark's shadow.

The same ground that grew the spirits' work grew the cure. Noah had to learn both if his grandchildren were going to live.

Hezekiah Hid the Book

Generations later, King Hezekiah of Judah took that inheritance off the table. He hid a Book of Remedies that held cures for nearly every disease. People had stopped praying. They opened a recipe, dissolved the pain, and never asked why the pain had come. A sinner could skip the part where suffering turns a person back toward God.

Hezekiah wanted the asking to return. He hid the book. When Sennacherib's army came, he also stopped the aqueduct of Gihon, so the easy water would not sit there for an enemy. Both acts had the same stubbornness. Take away the shortcut. Force the harder meeting.

The sages later praised him for hiding the remedies. They praised him for dragging his idolatrous father Ahaz to burial on a rope hurdle, so wickedness would not be dressed in royal honors, and for smashing the bronze serpent Moses had made once the people burned incense to it. They blamed him too. He showed his treasures to the Babylonian delegation, and that vanity would cost Judah later. The herbs were still in the ground. The book was not in anyone's hand. Anyone who wanted healing had to ask.

NoahDemonsMedicineFloodHezekiah
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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Book of Jubilees 10:24Book of Jubilees

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria Community Translation · CC-BY

The familiar story centers on Noah, the ark, and the animals. But what about the aftermath? What kind of world did Noah and his family rebuild?

The Book of Jubilees, a fascinating text from around the 2nd century BCE, fills in some of those gaps. It offers a unique perspective on the period following the great deluge, particularly in its tenth chapter.

In Jubilees, they were actively prevented from harming Noah's descendants. Was there some kind of spiritual quarantine?

Then there's the matter of inheritance. Noah, it seems, wasn't just handing down land or livestock. "He gave all that he had written to Shem, his eldest son; for he loved him exceedingly above all his sons." What was this written material? Was it a record of the flood? Prophecies? Secret teachings? The Book of Jubilees doesn't explicitly say, but it emphasizes the importance of transmitting knowledge and wisdom from one generation to the next. Shem, clearly, was deemed worthy of this sacred trust.

The text then recounts Noah's passing. "And Noah slept with his fathers, and was buried on Mount Lûbâr in the land of Ararat." The phrase "slept with his fathers" is a beautiful, poetic way of saying he died, joining the generations that came before him. And the location, Mount Lûbâr in Ararat, connects us back to the ark's landing place, completing the cycle.

His lifespan is given with remarkable precision: "Nine hundred and fifty years he completed in his life, nineteen jubilees and two weeks and five years." A jubilee is a period of 49 years (seven cycles of seven years, as prescribed in Leviticus). This meticulous accounting highlights the importance of time and chronology in the Book of Jubilees, which aims to provide a detailed historical and legal framework for understanding God's covenant with humanity.

The passage concludes with a powerful statement about Noah's righteousness. "And in his life on earth he excelled the children of men save Enoch because of the righteousness, wherein he was perfect." Noah was considered exceptional, but he still stands second to Enoch. And who was Enoch? "For Enoch's office was ordained for a testimony to the generations of the world, so that he should recount all the deeds of generation unto generation, till the day of judgment."

Enoch, who "walked with God" (Genesis 5:24) and was taken directly into heaven, held a unique position as a celestial scribe and witness. He was responsible for recording the history of humanity and bearing witness to their deeds until the final judgment. The Zohar tells us of the great mysteries surrounding Enoch, who became the angel Metatron.

So, what does all of this tell us? Jubilees 10 gives us a glimpse into a world confronting the consequences of a global catastrophe. It highlights the importance of transmitting knowledge, upholding righteousness, and remembering the past. It's a reminder that even after the most devastating events, the work of rebuilding, both physically and spiritually, must continue. And it leaves us pondering the legacy of Noah, the wisdom of Enoch, and the enduring power of stories to shape our understanding of the world.

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Book of Jubilees 10:18Book of Jubilees

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria Community Translation · CC-BY

The Book of Jubilees, a text considered scripture in some traditions but not included in the Tanakh, fills in gaps in the Genesis story. It's like the director's cut with extra scenes and behind-the-scenes explanations. And in its tenth chapter, we get a glimpse into Noah's post-flood education.

See, according to Jubilees, God knew that humanity wasn't exactly going to emerge from the Ark as a band of perfectly righteous individuals. They wouldn't "walk in uprightness, nor strive in righteousness." So, what to do?

The solution? Send down some angelic teachers.

Not just to teach them Torah or ethics. These angels were tasked with revealing something quite practical: medicine. "One of us He commanded that we should teach Noah all their medicines," the verse states.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. The angels weren't just dealing with illnesses. They were dealing with the cause of those illnesses, which, in this worldview, was often demonic. The text mentions "malignant evil ones" who were causing trouble. Think of it like this: they were spiritual viruses spreading spiritual diseases.

And the angels? They rounded up most of these troublemakers, binding them in a "place of condemnation." A celestial jail, if you will. But, crucially, they didn't capture them all. A tenth of these demons were left on Earth, "that they might be subject before Satan." Think of it as a controlled release, a necessary evil to maintain some kind of cosmic balance or perhaps as a test for humanity.

So, Noah wasn't just given a list of symptoms and cures. He was given the whole package: "all the medicines of their diseases, together with their seductions, how he might heal them with herbs of the earth." He learned about the demonic influences and the natural remedies to combat them. Talk about a holistic approach to healthcare!

And what did Noah do with all this newfound knowledge? He wrote it down. "Noah wrote down all things in a book as we instructed him concerning every kind of medicine." Imagine that book! A compendium of angelic wisdom, demonic strategies, and herbal cures, all compiled by the man who survived the Flood. What happened to that book? What secrets did it hold?

The Book of Jubilees offers a unique perspective, blending the practical with the supernatural, the physical with the spiritual. It suggests that even in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event, the pursuit of healing and understanding continues, guided by divine intervention and human effort. And what can they teach us about ourselves and the world around us?

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Hebraic Literature (Harris, 1901), Talmudic MiscellanyHebraic Literature (1901)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Project Gutenberg eBook #14368, Hebraic Literature · PD-US-pre-1929

There is a tradition that King Hezekiah hid away a Sefer Refuot, a Book of Remedies, containing cures for nearly every disease. To modern ears this sounds cruel — why withhold healing? But the rabbis defended the act on moral grounds.

When people could open a book and dissolve their suffering with a recipe, they stopped examining the conduct that brought the suffering. The edge of judgment dulled. The sinner never felt the weight of his sin, because the consequence could be bought off at the apothecary. Hezekiah, the reformer-king, wanted his people to feel their lives again.

The same chronicle tells that Hezekiah stopped the aqueduct of Gihon when Sennacherib’s army approached Jerusalem (2 (Chronicles 32:3)-4). The inhabitants of the city did the same thing, the old chroniclers note, when the Crusaders besieged Jerusalem in 1099 CE. Rashi, however, asks a sharp question: why is this not praised? Because, Rashi answers, Hezekiah should have trusted God’s own promise: “I will defend the city” (2 Kings 19:34). Stopping the water was prudent. It was also, for a king of Judah, a small failure of faith.

Healing withheld to teach the soul, water withheld to save the body — Jerusalem remembers both, and judges both.

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Talmud, Pesachim 56aHebraic Literature (1901)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Project Gutenberg eBook #14368, Hebraic Literature · PD-US-pre-1929

Kings are remembered in lists, and the sages kept careful accounts. For Hezekiah, they drew up two columns.

On one side, the three things they praised him for.

First, he dragged the bones of his father Ahaz on a hurdle of ropes, denying the wicked king a royal burial, so that Israel would learn that idolatry brings no dignity even in death.

Second, he broke the brazen serpent Moses had made in the wilderness, because the people had begun to burn incense to it. What had once healed had become an idol, and even a Mosaic relic was not too sacred to smash.

Third, he hid the Book of Remedies. The sages reasoned that when people could reach for a cure without prayer, they stopped asking God for healing. Hezekiah removed the shortcut.

On the other side, three things they blamed him for. He stripped the gold from the Temple doors and sent it as tribute to the King of Assyria. He stopped up the upper waters of Gihon, diverting the spring before asking. And he intercalated the month of Nisan on his own authority, bending the calendar.

Pesachim 56a preserves the audit. Even a righteous king gets graded in two columns.

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