429 related texts · Page 3 of 9
On the last day of his life, Moses did something no prophet had ever done — he dressed his successor in public, with his own hands. He commanded that a golden throne be brought, al...
Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Read-but-not-Written I) But [the children of] Benjamin would not yield (Judges 20:13). The word the children of is missing, for they did ...
When a lion roars, every animal in the forest freezes. Even the ones who have never been hunted. Even the ones too far away to be prey. The sound itself is the message: there is so...
At the end of days, the prophet Malachi says, you will be able to tell the righteous from the wicked at a glance: "You shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked...
"I will assemble Jacob, all of you; I will bring together the remnant of Israel" (Micah 2:12). The end of Aggadat Bereshit's prophetic arc arrives here: not the death of Jacob, not...
Serah, daughter of Asher, one of Jacob's sons. We find her name nestled in the list of those who went down to Egypt with Jacob to escape the famine. You can find it in (Genesis 46:...
There was an incident involving Doeg ben Yosef who died and left a young son to his mother. She would measure him in handbreadths and donate his weight in gold to the Temple182Lite...
“It was during the days of Aḥashverosh; that [hu] Aḥashverosh who reigned from India to Kush, one hundred and twenty-seven provinces” (Esther 1:1). Hu [appears] five [times] for ev...
“Haman saw that Mordekhai was not bowing and prostrating himself to him and Haman was filled with wrath” (Esther 3:5).“Haman saw that Mordekhai was not bowing and prostrating himse...
Ben Sira, in his wisdom, offers a clue: "Their wisdom the community will repeat, and their praises the assembly will recount." It's through the act of remembering, of telling and r...
Incense fills the air, music swells, and then Simon the High Priest appears. He's just completed the sacred service, and the sight is so breathtaking, so imbued with holiness, that...
Today, we're focusing on a small but powerful passage from chapter 4. The Book of Jubilees tells us that in the fifteenth jubilee period – a "jubilee" being a period of 49 years – ...
The Book of Jubilees, an ancient Jewish text that expands on the stories in Genesis, gives us a compelling glimpse through the example of Noah. The text tells us that Noah's "heart...
When Noah finally stepped onto dry land, one of the first things he did was offer a sacrifice. But what was so special about it? The Book of Jubilees, a text that expands on the st...
Think of it as a really old "director's cut" of the Bible. Specifically, we're looking at Jubilees 6. The passage is talking about a particular festival. What festival? Well, that’...
And in the Book of Jubilees, a fascinating text considered canonical by some but relegated to the Apocrypha by others, we find a particularly intriguing answer. : what makes a day ...
We usually picture him releasing the dove, seeing the rainbow, and then…poof! The story fades. But Jewish tradition, especially in texts outside the Bible, fills in those gaps. Let...
We know he built an altar, offered sacrifices (Genesis 8:20), and, well, planted a vineyard (Genesis 9:20-21). But what about teaching? Did he just let humanity wander off to rebui...
We usually think of him as just relieved, planting vineyards, maybe a little… tipsy. But imagine being Noah. You’ve just survived the unimaginable. The entire world, wiped clean. Y...
The Book of Jubilees, a text considered canonical by some but not included in the standard Hebrew Bible, gives us a peek into Noah's anxieties about the future. Specifically, Jubil...
The Book of Jubilees, an ancient Jewish text that expands on the stories in Genesis, tells us that Eber had something important to write down. But, as it says, "he wrote it down an...
It's a fascinating read, full of details you won't find anywhere else in the Torah. The Book of Jubilees, sometimes called Lesser Genesis, presents itself as a revelation given to ...
to one of them, shall we? We find a fascinating account in the Book of Jubilees, a text considered canonical by some, like the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but considered apocryphal ...
We hear about the ark, the dove, the rainbow... but then what? Turns out, things weren’t exactly smooth sailing. Imagine this: The world is starting over. Noah and his family are t...
We get a glimpse, a chilling snapshot, in the Book of Jubilees. This ancient Jewish text, considered canonical by some but not included in the standard Hebrew Bible, offers a uniqu...
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 sce...
We all know the story: humanity, once united in language and purpose, dared to build a tower reaching for the heavens. God, seeing their hubris, scattered them across the earth, co...
And it's a little different than what you might expect. In Jubilees 14, we find Abraham in a very familiar role: making sacrifices. He offers up pieces of animals, birds, fruit-off...
The Book of Jubilees, a fascinating text from around the second century BCE, offers a glimpse into just that. It paints a picture of a world teeming with angels, a world where the ...
That feeling, that connection, is at the very heart of the Book of Jubilees, a text brimming with blessings, covenants, and the destiny of a people. Specifically, we're going to lo...
The Book of Jubilees, a text that expands on the narratives in Genesis and Exodus, offers a fascinating glimpse into this very idea. It presents a world where our actions have cosm...
Forget the polite smiles and carefully chosen words. Sometimes, the gloves came off. The Book of Jubilees, a text considered canonical by some but not included in the Hebrew Bible ...
We often gloss over that part of the Noah story, but the Book of Jasher, an ancient Hebrew text of legend and lore, dives right in! Chapter 7 is all about the generations that foll...
The version we're looking at today is a medieval text that claims to be that lost book. Think of it as a kind of ancient historical fiction, filling in gaps and offering its own un...
So, picture this: Jacob, after leaving his previous location, arrives in the land of Shalem, near the city of Shechem – a place in Canaan. He buys a piece of land for five shekels ...
The Genesis Apocryphon (Apocryphal Genesis, אפוקריפון בראשית), one of the original seven scrolls discovered in 1947, is an Aramaic retelling of Genesis that adds breathtaking detai...
The Genesis Apocryphon's account of Noah's birth is one of the most vivid nativity scenes in all of ancient Jewish literature—and it is deeply unsettling. The baby does not look hu...
How many people were alive before the flood? According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, an exact census was taken...
After the flood, the entire earth was split into three portions. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, each ...
I’m talking about Noah, the hero of the Ark, the one chosen to rebuild humanity after the Great Flood. But before the ark, before the flood, there was a birth story so extraordinar...
According to Ginzberg's retelling in Legends of the Jews, the raven's journey on the ark wasn't exactly smooth sailing. When Noah needed a scout to check on the receding floodwater...
We know the story of Noah, the ark, and the animals two-by-two. But what about Noah himself? What kind of a man was he? Jewish tradition, as always, has some fascinating things to ...
: the earth itself was rebelling. The text tells us that "wheat being sown, yet oats would sprout and grow." A frustrating, chaotic agricultural landscape. It’s a powerful image of...
But before we get to the ark and the flood, let's rewind a bit. According to Legends of the Jews, a collection of stories compiled by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, Noah’s arrival on the sc...
And while the Torah gives us hints, it's in the later Jewish traditions, the stories whispered from generation to generation, that we really start to get a sense of just how wild t...
That’s essentially Noah's predicament in the lead-up to the Flood. According to Legends of the Jews, even after God decided, with a heavy heart, that the world had become too corru...
The story of Noah's flood, as told in Genesis, isn’t just about a big storm. It’s about the ultimate second chance... or rather, the chances before the ultimate one. And the incred...
It wasn't just about fitting a pair of every animal; according to tradition, it had to accommodate spirits as well. Only the fish were exempt from needing a berth. So how did he ma...
