Parshat Noach5 min read

Noah Learned Medicine to Fight Post-Flood Demons

When Noah stepped out of the ark, evil spirits were still at large. An angel was commanded to teach him medicines before demons could harm his grandchildren.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. What the Flood Left Behind
  2. The Prayer That Bound Most of Them
  3. The Angel Who Taught Medicine
  4. Hezekiah and the Book He Hid
  5. Three Things Praised, Three Condemned

What the Flood Left Behind

Noah stepped out of the ark into a washed world. The waters had receded. The dove had found dry land. God had set a bow in the cloud. Everything that had been alive before was gone, and Noah and his family stood at the beginning of a new account of human history.

The Book of Jubilees, working with the same tradition and pressing where the Torah left gaps, had a question: what had survived the Flood that was not on the ark? Demons had. Evil spirits. The destructive forces that had been part of the world before the Flood were part of the world after it. They had not been on the passenger list, but they had not drowned either. When Noah's grandchildren began to grow and move through the washed world, the spirits found them. Noah watched his family being harmed.

The Prayer That Bound Most of Them

Noah prayed. The Book of Jubilees records his prayer as a direct appeal to God: let the spirits not rule over my children. Do not let them have power to destroy them. Heaven answered with a partial solution. Most of the evil spirits were bound and removed, placed in a place of condemnation where they could not reach the living. The text is careful about this. Not all. The leader of the spirits, Mastema, argued his case before God. Let a tenth remain with me. I need servants. Let them stay loose in the world to test human beings and carry out necessary work.

The request was granted. Nine-tenths of the evil spirits were bound. One-tenth remained free. The washed world was not entirely cleaned. A portion of the danger that had existed before the Flood survived into the new beginning, reduced but not eliminated.

The Angel Who Taught Medicine

Then came the second answer to Noah's prayer, the one the Book of Jubilees gives equal weight with the binding of the spirits. God commanded one of the angels to teach Noah. Not Torah. Not prayer. Medicine. The diseases that the remaining spirits could cause, the seductions connected to those diseases, and the herbs of the earth that could heal them.

This is a remarkable kind of revelation. Noah receives practical pharmacological knowledge as a gift from heaven. The same world that contains harmful spirits also contains remedies. The same angel that tells him which spirits remain free also teaches him which plants answer which afflictions. He writes it all down and gives the book to his son Shem, whom he loves above all his other children. The medical knowledge passes through the line of the covenant.

Hezekiah and the Book He Hid

Generations later, King Hezekiah of Judah made a decision the sages divided over. He hid a Book of Remedies, a text containing cures for nearly every disease. The tradition preserved in the Hebraic Literature anthology gives the reasoning the sages used to defend him. When people could open a book and dissolve their suffering with a recipe, they stopped asking why the suffering had come. The edge of judgment dulled. The sinner never felt the full weight of consequences because the consequence could be removed at the apothecary. Hezekiah wanted his people to feel their lives again, to pray for healing, to return to the relationship with God that sickness is sometimes designed to restore.

He hid the book. He also, as the same chronicle records, stopped the aqueduct of Gihon when Sennacherib's army approached. Both acts had the same logic: remove the easy solution to force engagement with the harder and more transformative one.

Three Things Praised, Three Condemned

The sages kept a careful account of Hezekiah's reforms and divided them into columns. Three things they praised. He dragged his idolatrous father Ahaz to burial on a rope hurdle rather than honoring him with royal rites, so that Israel would learn that wickedness costs dignity even at death. He broke the bronze serpent Moses had made, because the people had begun burning incense to it and the old holy object had become an idol. He hid the Book of Remedies so that prayer would not be replaced by pharmacology.

Three things they blamed him for. He blocked access to the Temple treasury when Sennacherib came. He stopped the Gihon without broader counsel. He showed his treasures to the Babylonian delegation. The sages gave him credit for judgment and assigned him responsibility for errors. His hiding of Noah's inherited medical book was, in their accounting, on the right side of the ledger.

NoahDemonsMedicineFloodHezekiah
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From the tradition

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Book of Jubilees 10:24Book of Jubilees

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. It makes you wonder what methods were employed! 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

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. It's a fascinating thought, isn't it? 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. It makes you wonder: what other hidden stories are waiting to be uncovered in the ancient texts? 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)

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)

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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