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The Book of Jubilees is a retelling of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus in the form of an angel speaking to Moses. It was written by a Jew in [...]

AUTHORSHIP Jewish tradition assumes that the Book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) was penned by Solomon. One finds in chapter 15 of Seder Olam Rabbah that Solomon wrote three books, Proverbs, Song [...]

Within a relatively short period of time, four insurrections threaten Moses. Two of them are counter-revolutionary, in the sense that their leaders reject Moses and deny God's plan to settle [...]

Recent history enables us to understand in a new way Isaiah's famous passage about God's servant whose tragic suffering can be redemptive to those who once reviled and belittled him [...]

The episode of the Golden Calf [egel ha'zahav] stands as an eternal embarrassment and a blight on our distinguished yet sometimes problematic history. It remains a mystery how an intelligent [...]

Others go down to the sea in ships, ply their trade in the mighty waters; They have seen the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep (Ps. [...]

The Talmud (Bava Batra 15a) tells us that the Books of I and II Kings were written by the prophet Jeremiah (640-588 BCE), and the Books of I and II [...]

From time immemorial, man has been striving to comprehend the purpose and meaning of life. Ordinary people, no matter what their station in life, ponder over the value of their [...]

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Jonah ben Amitai is mentioned briefly in II Kings, where he delivered a short prophecy during the reign of King Jeroboam II (765-745 BCE) who restored the border [...]

The Mesorah lists certain letters that are written in the Torah scroll larger than the others (oht rabati is the Hebrew term for such a letter). There are differing traditions [...]

The main theme of the Book of Jonah appears to be the power of penitence [teshuvah]. There are two stories of sin and penitence in the Book: the primary one, [...]

The most controversial passage in the Hebrew Bible is, arguably, Isaiah 53:1-7. For centuries, Jews and Christians have been debating the meaning of the so-called 'Suffering Servant' described in these [...]

In England, in 1814, occurred what must be one of the most surprising events in the history of literary responses by a Gentile to the Jewish Testament. (1) In that [...]

PSALM 67 1 For the Leader; with string music. A Psalm, a Song. 2 God be gracious unto us, and bless us; May He cause His face to shine towards [...]

The confluence of the brotherhood theme in Genesis Chapter 37--the antagonism of Jacob's older sons toward their brother Joseph--and the festival of Hannukah that celebrates the victory of the unified [...]

The reading of hevel as 'vanity' is not only misleading, but in some cases it makes the text impossible to read. Perhaps the most striking example can be found in [...]

For instruction shall not fail from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor oracle from the prophet (Jer. 18:18). Jeremiah directs our attention to the three spiritual forces that [...]

The book of Ecclesiastes is a philosophical account of the attempt to find happiness by a man who has everything. Written in the name of Kohelet son of David, King [...]

The role of women as initiators in the Books of Genesis and Exodus is fairly obvious. (1) According to Pardes, certain essential aspects of the story of Israel would not [...]

Each individual [Egyptian] who afflicted the Israelites, had he desired not to do so, was possessed of complete freedom of will to desist from that evil. For [the Holy One, [...]

... all hypotheses are working proposals until confirmed in detail, and ... many must be discarded while others will require drastic overhauling in the face of new evidence. There is [...]

On the verse and Dinah the daughter of Leah went out (Gen. 34:1), Rashi says: The daughter of Leah, and not the daughter of Jacob; because of her yetzi'ata [going [...]

The book of Proverbs claims to be the work of Solomon (1:1, 10:1, 25:1), redacted in Hezekiah's time (25:1; cf. Bava Batra 15a). The Midrash says Solomon wrote the Song [...]

Certain plot lines seem to repeat themselves in the Bible, which scholars have identified as a literary technique called the type-scene. A type-scene is 'a series of recurrent narrative episodes [...]

I will raise up a prophet ... like you (Moses). I will put My words in his mouth, and he will speak to them all that I command them (Deut. [...]

History differs from chronicles in that the latter is simply a description of past events, that is, what happened, while the former is a systematic search for patterns and causal [...]

The prohibition of bal tashhit (do not destroy), arguably the most important religious precept directly relating to man's relationship with the environment, is derived from the following verses in Deuteronomy [...]

This article is dedicated to the memory of Patricia Berlyn z'l who assisted the author enormously in her role as associate editor. Only man is distinguished from all the animals [...]

The relationship between the Code of Hammurabi and some portions of the Bible is taken for granted by scholars today. Much has been written about the striking similarities between the [...]

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to the people of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes [tzitzit] on the borders of their garments throughout their [...]

Why is the Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Ha-Shanah Genesis 21, The Lord took note of Sarah? On the first day of Rosh Ha-Shanah, millions of Jews [...]

In I Samuel 28, Saul, the king of Israel, sought the help of a medium to raise up the dead prophet Samuel. Although he had previously exorcised mediums, Saul now [...]

When Solomon became king at the age of twelve, it was his mother's influence with King David, and not Solomon's personal abilities or virtues that made Solomon the new ruler [...]

Every Pentateuchal book has its own major theme: Genesis is the book of beginnings: the Creation, the history of early man and the origin of the Israelites. Exodus is the [...]

Of the 150 chapters of the Psalms only very few have an introductory heading describing their setting or purpose (e.g. 30:1, 34:1, 51:1-2). For the vast majority of them, it [...]

This essay explores some of the Chronicler's concerns with respect to worship. Four kings of Israel help guide this search: David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and Josiah. I CHRONICLES 15-16: REMEMBERING DAVID [...]

Upswept, uplifted, upraised. One or all of these terms constitute appropriate translations of the biblical word ramah which was the image chosen for describing the fate of the pharaoh's troops [...]

I am a Creationist. Not in the sense of the most common usage of that term but in my own particular way of using the word. I believe that at [...]

The stage is set; the players are all in place. The text recounts how Barak ben Avinoam assembles the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, ten thousand in number, and together [...]

To the Egyptians, their pharaoh (1) was a literally divine figure, an earthly incarnation of the god Amon-Ra. Yet in encounters with the Israelites and their forebears, god-kings of the [...]

INTRODUCTION The Book of Ezekiel distinguishes itself from other prophetic books in several significant ways. Ezekiel's prophetic tenure is entirely in the exile. There is an unprecedented level of revelation [...]

Many of my male friends, when they were about to get married or had just gotten married, received the advice to listen to their wives. This advice echoes the verse [...]

Though much of the biblical narrative focuses on men, women often are powerful figures behind the scenes. Each of the four matriarchs, for example, influences the direction of the Abrahamic [...]

And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, 'Take the rod, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron, your brother, and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it give [...]

The second plague to befall Egypt was that of tzefarde'a. It is widely believed that the term tzefarde'a refers to frogs, but Ibn Ezra notes that there are actually two [...]

Intra-biblical interpretation may be loosely defined as the process by which biblical texts cite and/or allude to earlier biblical texts. This mode of analysis has joined source criticism, form criticism, [...]

And the Canaanite, the King of Arad who dwelt in the Negev heard that Israel came by way of Atarim and he fought against Israel and took some of them [...]

The passage in Pesukei de-Zimra section of the morning prayer service which begins Yehi Khevod consists of various verses from different books of the Bible. However, one verse is actually [...]

Commentators in main agree that most, if not all, of the royal allusions in Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) are contained in 1:12-2:26, which forms a self-evident and recognizable unit. In this unit, [...]

In Exodus 16:15, we read how the Israelites reacted when they first saw the miraculous food that God had provided for them in the wilderness: When the Israelites saw it, [...]