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Vayyakhel
Posted on: December 29, 2011
Exodus 35:20 – 36:7
Where are we in the Exodus narrative, which features so many ascents up Mount Sinai, so many conversations between God and Moses, and so many instructions for the building and adornment of the Tabernacle, the portable Sanctuary in the wilderness?
Well, Moses has received the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai and the Israelites have committed the sin of the golden calf. Moses has broken the first set of tablets, and gone back up Mount Sinai, returning with two new tablets.
What happens next? Moses assembles the children of Israel and explains to them the commandment to observe Shabbat. He then charges them to make donations for God, that is to say, for the building of the Tabernacle. He asks for all kinds of precious metals and
valuable textiles, but – and this is repeated several times – the donations are brought only by those with a willing heart. The donors were highly motivated and purposeful, and, besides their valuables, they offered their artistic and creative skills. The women spun fine linen and the goldsmiths Bezalel and Oholiob crafted the treasures of the Tabernacle, with wisdom, understanding and knowledge – chochmah, tevunah and da’at.
For those who were in shul on Shabbat Terumah, just three weeks ago, is there not a sense of déjâ vu? For in Exodus 25, God spoke to Moses, telling him to obtain donations from those of a willing heart: gold, silver, onyx, linen, acacia wood – the whole bag of tricks.
Bezalel and Oholiob were charged with the metalwork, just as in our reading today. After the instructions for the Tabernacle, God told Moses to teach the Israelites the commandment of the sabbath: ‘V’shamru v’nei Israel et ha-shabbat, la’asot et ha-shabbat ledorotam brit olam’.1
Precisely while Moses was receiving these commandments, the children of Israel were making and worshipping the golden calf.
The order of events can be confusing for the reader, even for those who hear these sidrot read every year. In the first instance, Moses goes up Mount Sinai where God commands him concerning the Tabernacle and shabbat, in that order. Moses comes down, sees the calf and breaks the tablets. After punishing the wrongdoers, he obeys God’s command to hew two new tablets of stone, and takes them up the mountain. This time God does not write himself but dictates Torah to Moses. Moses returns from Sinai, numinously radiant and assembles the people. He speaks to them about shabbat and the Tabernacle, in that order.
The kind of literary structure which comes up quite often in the Torah is called chiastic, cross-shaped like the Greek letter chi. The pattern is ABCBA: Tabernacle, Shabbat, Calf, Shabbat, Tabernacle. This literary device is found also in non-Hebrew ancient and epic
literature, for example in Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad.
The passage we are reading today is sometimes seen as describing the repentance of the Israelites, after the sin of the calf, as they bring their treasures so willingly and in such quantities that the wise men tell Moses ‘The people are bringing too much for the work of
the task that the Lord charged to do.’2
But the people are fickle, unreliable. We saw that they donated their jewellery for the molten calf as eagerly as they donate it for the building of the Tabernacle. They are the same multitude of people, changing their opinions and affections, sometimes for Moses and at other times against him; they worship a molten idol and afterwards they worship God.
Moses appears capable of astute political judgment, as he channels the people’s dangerous, volatile energy into building the Tabernacle, governing his unruly nation by involving them in the creation of a Sanctuary where God can dwell among them.
Either Moses knows, or the author of Exodus knows, or God knows that people need sacred objects, sacred space and even sacred land to lead fulfilled religious lives.
A problem may arise if sacredness is seen as residing in the object, rather than in the process where the sacred object plays a symbolic part. Although the children of Israel were more than willing to contribute their gold for the molten calf, their fatal error was in worshipping as a god what was merely an installation. One of the things we hope to learn from these chapters of Exodus is how to call a calf a calf.
26 February 2011
HAFTARAH INTRODUCTION Jeremiah 31:1-17
Jeremiah has a reputation for lamentation and bringing on the bad news, but the verses we are reading are from the section called The Book of Consolation. Jeremiah’s subject is the joyful return from distant exile of those from the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which had been overthrown by the Assyrians.
We heard in the Torah about Jacob returning with his family to Canaan, the land which God promised to Abraham and Isaac, and then to Jacob himself. Jacob had a new name, Israel, a name which belonged to all his descendants, the children of Israel. When the kingdom of Israel was divided after Solomon’s time, it was the name taken by the northern kingdom, while the south was called Judah. The biggest tribe in the northern kingdom was Ephraim, and sometimes the prophets used the name Ephraim when they were talking about Israel.
So we have a patriarch with two names, Jacob and Israel, a nation with at least two names, Israel and Judah, and a kingdom, Israel, referred to as Ephraim.
As Jacob and his family travelled south, on the road to Ephrath, his pregnant wife Rachel, whom he loved very much, went into labour and died giving birth to her second son, Benjamin.
Rachel is mentioned in the haftarah, when Jeremiah says:
A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.
The meaning of the verse is not absolutely clear. Some commentators thought that Rachel was weeping for the exiles, those who lost their homes when the Assyrians conquered Israel, or perhaps the later exiles when the Babylonians conquered Judah. Either way, Rachel had long been dead, and the idea of her spirit lamenting for her children could apply to any generation.
And where was Ramah actually? It would make sense if it was close to Bethlehem where Rachel was buried, and, as Ramah is a fairly common place name, there may have been such a place, on the road to Ephrath. There was a Ramah to the north of Jerusalem, in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin, so that also fits Rachel’s story. This was the birth place of the prophet Samuel, the location where Jeremiah was imprisoned and perhaps most significantly, the place where Jeremiah saw Jewish captives being assembled for deportation to Babylon.[1] This would indeed be a reason why Rachel might weep for her children.
[1] Jeremiah 40:1
Ramah can also mean ‘on high’ which gives the sentence another meaning.
There is a bit of rabbinic folklore, a midrash, which tells that Moses and the patriarchs, Abraham , Isaac and Jacob, all interceded for the children of Israel, asking God to have pity on his children and bring them home from exile. God remained silent. Midrash plays around with chronology, so you can have the patriarchs and Moses all praying at the same time. After that, Rachel interceded, because the exiles were her descendants, through her sons Joseph and Benjamin. She referred to her own experience, overcoming jealousy of her sister Leah, who was Jacob’s other wife and the mother of many of Jacob’s children. Rachel said to God ‘You, too, should forgive my children who have sinned and are now being exiled.’
Then, the midrash tells us, ‘A voice was heard on high of lamentation, of mourning, and weeping, of Rachel weeping for her children’ and God responded ‘For your sake, Rachel, I will restore Israel to their land’. And the midrash cites the verse from our chapter of Jeremiah:
Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears… There is hope for your future, declares the LORD, and your children shall come back to their own country.
For those of you familiar with Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, you may remember that Ishmael, the sole survivor of the doomed ship the Pequod, is rescued by a another whaling ship, the Rachel. Now this is not a matter of chance; Melville chose biblical names for their symbolic meaning, and the Rachel, searching for survivors in the North Atlantic, is certainly named with Rachel weeping for her children in mind.
Hezekiah and his Kingdom
Posted on: November 26, 2011
Just as Josiah was the son of a bad king of Judah, Amon by name, Hezekiah also was the son of a bad king, Ahaz, who sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. Hezekiah, who succeeded his father in about 720 BCE, ‘…did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, according to all that David his father had done.’
Bearing any kind of resemblance to David was the measure of a good king in Judah, and besides Hezekiah, the comparison is made about Solomon, Asa, Josiah, and Jehoshaphat. Regarding Solomon, there is some ambivalence:
Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done.
Other kings of Judah are compared unfavourably with David, as in not walking in his ways, while the kings of Israel tended in the majority of cases to permit foreign worship in the high places. The idiom used of the kings of Israel is that they walked in the ways of Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin.
The political situation in Hezekiah’s time was that Assyria was the dominating power of the region. 2 Kings 18, which deals with the beginning of Hezekiah’s reign, tells us that he removed the high places and the Asherah and broke the brazen serpent which Moses had made; ‘for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan).’ He rebelled against the king of Assyria and refused to serve him and had some military success against the Philistines in Gaza.
In the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign Samaria fell to the Assyrian Shalmaneser, who abducted the Israelites and resettled them in Assyria. Eight years later Assyria, under the leadership of Sennacherib, attacked the kingdom of Judah. Under pressure of Assyria’s superior military force, Hezekiah offered tributes to Sennacherib, from the Temple treasure. This did not have the presumably desired effect of satisfying the Assyrians and keeping them at a distance from Jerusalem, for Sennacherib’s emissaries came to Jerusalem from the Assyrian stronghold in Lachish , at the head of a large army.
And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rab-saris, and the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem.
These names appear to be military titles: Tartan, Rabsaris and Rabshakeh. The etymology suggests high office – saris is used in Genesis to describe Potiphar as a captain or officer of Pharaoh; Rab means great, and Rab-saqu is Assyrian for chief cup bearer; Tartan spelled with a tav may be connected with sar, prince or leader. According to Wikipedia:
There was a tartanu imni or ‘tartan of the right’, as well as a tartanu shumeli or ‘tartan of the left’. In later times the title became territorial; we read of a tartan of ‘Kummuh’ (Commagene). The title is also applied to the commanders of foreign armies ; thus Sargon speaks of the Tartan Musurai, or ‘Egyptian Tartan’.
The Rabshakeh has a speaking part, and he speaks in Hebrew, to impress or influence the people of Jerusalem, essentially telling them to cease reposing trust in Egypt since Pharaoh is toast, or as the Rabshakeh says: the broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. He tells them not to trust in God, since the Assyrians are invincible, without God.
Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah, and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall.” 27 But the Rabshakeh said to them, “Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and to drink their own urine?” 28 Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! 29 Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand. 30 Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD by saying, The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ 31 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make your peace with me and come out to me. Then each one of you will eat of his own vine, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern, 32 until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live, and not die. And do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying, The LORD will deliver us. 33 Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? 34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? 35 Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?'” 36 But the people were silent and answered him not a word, for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.” 37 Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.
An identical passage is found in Isaiah:.
In 2 Chronicles 32, the servant of Sennacherib harangues the people of Jerusalem with a very similar speech, but he is not designated as Rabshakeh, Rabsaris or Tartan.
On being told the Assyrian’s words, Hezekiah rends his garments in distress, and sends for Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah tells him:
Thus says the LORD: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.
The Rabshakeh departs as Sennacherib is engaged in wars on other fronts, but Hezekiah receives a threatening letter from the Assyrian king, in the same mode as the Rabshakeh’s speech, which Hezekiah takes to the Temple.
Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD and spread it before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD and said: “O LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed. So now, O LORD our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O LORD, are God alone.”
Isaiah tells Hezekiah that God has heard his prayer and declaims an oracle in defiance of Sennacherib:
Thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. 33 By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the LORD. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”
That night an angel of God killed 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. After this Sennacherib returned to Nineveh where he was later assassinated by his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer,and succeeded by his son Esarhaddon.
Hezekiah became ill and Isaiah told him that God said he would not recover.
Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, saying, “Now, O LORD, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.’
Isaiah told Hezekiah that God had relented and that in three days Hezekiah would be recovered sufficiently to go up to the Temple. God would add another fifteen years to his life, while saving Jerusalem from Assyrian aggression.
Curiously, Hezekiah asked Isaiah for proof, a sign from God, and was duly granted a miracle, when the shadow on the sundial went backwards.
After this, Hezekiah made a strange misjudgment while showing hospitality to some Babylonian envoys. At this time, Babylon was not yet a great power, and Hezekiah felt secure enough to show them all the treasures of his kingdom.
There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.
Isaiah perceived the error of this and told Hezekiah that the time would soon come when all the treasures would be carried off to Babylon and Hezekiah’s sons with them. In fact it was the sons of Josiah who were carried off to Babylon. Hezekiah heard the prophecy stoically, commenting that these events would not befall during his lifetime. The year of Hezekiah’s death is 692 BCE, so nearly a hundred years will pass before Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled.
This is not the only instance of an apparent conflation of the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah.
Hezekiah in Chronicles
In the Chronicles account, Hezekiah becomes king at the age of twenty-five, as in Kings. He appoints Levites to carry out the cleansing of the Temple and the Levites get rid of all the utensils of idolatry which had been permitted by King Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah. The Temple is reconsecrated with the priests slaughtering large quantities of bulls, sheep and goats, as sin offerings, on behalf of all Israel. The sacrifices took place to musical accompaniment, including singers and trumpeters. There were not enough priests to do all the sacrifices:
…so until other priests had consecrated themselves, their brothers the Levites helped them, until the work was finished, for the Levites were more upright in heart than the priests in consecrating themselves.
Hezekiah then sent letters to all Israel and Judah that they should come to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. This was to take place in the second month, Iyyar, as there were not enough consecrated priests in Jerusalem during the month of Nisasn to hold the Passover on the usual date. Hezekiah’s couriers went as far as the tribe of Zebulun in the north, where they were mocked, but some men from Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun responded to the call and came to Jerusalem.
And the people of Israel who were present at Jerusalem kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with great gladness, and the Levites and the priests praised the LORD day by day, singing with all their might to the LORD.
Hezekiah arranged the divisions of priests and Levites, according to their appointed tasks and commanded the people to tithe their produce as a means of support for the priests and Levites.
After this, Sennacherib invaded Judah, and Hezekiah prepared for war, building fortifications and diverting the water supplies outside the city. The Assyrian servants – in this version, anonymous – of Sennacherib addressed the people of Jerusalem, as in the accounts in 2 Kings and Isaiah.
Hezekiah and Isaiah resorted to prayer, and God sent an angel, who annihilated – יכחד – the Assyrian commanders and warriors, so that Sennacherib withdrew to his own country. 2 Chronicles does not include the poem spoken by Isaiah in 2 Kings 19. 2 Kings does have the angel who smote – יך – the Assyrian officers.
The Chronicler tells of Hezekiah’s illness, and that God answered his prayer and cured him, but does not mention the sun-dial.
But Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem. But Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the LORD did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah.
In Kings, Hezekiah’s pride is shown in his dealings with the Babylonian envoys, when he shows them the treasures of the kingdom. Isaiah then warns him that the city will fall to the Babylonians, although not in his own lifetime.
Hezekiah compared with Josiah
Passover
The narratives concerning Asa and his son Jehoshaphat, kings of Judah, have material in common, as do those of Hezekiah and Josiah, notably ending the cult of male prostitutes, and engaging in both war and diplomacy with Israel and Syria, but Jehoshaphat was Asa’s successor, which permits some continuity in foreign and domestic affairs.
A notable point in common for Hezekiah and Josiah is that they revive the celebration of Passover. Josiah’s Passover seems to have taken place on the usual dates, beginning on 14 Nissan, as there is no assertion to the contrary, whereas Hezekiah’s Passover was the precedent for Pesach Sheni, occuring in the middle of Iyyar. The author of josiah’s narrative does not alluide to Hezekiah’s Passover, which would have taken place nearly a hundred years earlier than that of Josiah.
No such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this Passover was kept to the LORD in Jerusalem.
Hezekiah and Josiah both sacrifice thousands of sheep, goats and cattle for the Passover.
The reference to the time of the Judges may refer to Joshua who had celebrated the first Passover in the promised land with the people at the camp in Gilgal,
Destroying the idols
Hezekiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah.Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah.
Hezekiah also breaks the bronze serpent which Moses had made, because it had become an object of worship.
The bronze serpent is therefore not there in Josiah’s day, but Josiah fills the empty spaces of the former Asherim with human bones, which had the dual effect of rendering the places ritually unfit for worship and invoking the prophecy of the Ish Elohim in 1 Kings that Josiah would burn human bones on the high places.
We read that Jerusalem was to be spared destruction in the time of Hezekiah but Huldah the prophetess has similar words for Josiah:
Because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the LORD, when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, declares the LORD. Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place.
Because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and its inhabitants, and you have humbled yourself before me and have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, declares the LORD. Behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place and its inhabitants.
Names in common
Certain proper names appear in both the Hezekiah and Josiah narratives. Hilkiah is one example, thus, in the reign of Hezekiah:
And when they called for the king, there came out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder.
In the reign of Josiah:
And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the LORD.”
Shebnah and Shaphan are similar and may be cognate.
Other names common to both reigns as written in Kings or Chronicles are: Eliakim, Zechariah, Azariah, Conaniah and Shemei/Shemaiah, Jehiel, Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun and Jozabad, the latter appearing in the Levite accounts of the Chronicler:
Then Hezekiah commanded them to prepare chambers in the house of the LORD, and they prepared them. 12 And they faithfully brought in the contributions, the tithes, and the dedicated things. The chief officer in charge of them was Conaniah the Levite, with Shimei his brother as second, 13 while Jehiel, Azaziah, Nahath, Asahel, Jerimoth, Jozabad, Eliel, Ismachiah, Mahath, and Benaiah were overseers assisting Conaniah and Shimei his brother, by the appointment of Hezekiah the king and Azariah the chief officer of the house of God.
[Josiah’s] officials contributed willingly to the people, to the priests, and to the Levites. Hilkiah, Zechariah, and Jehiel, the chief officers of the house of God, gave to the priests for the Passover offerings 2,600 Passover lambs and 300 bulls. 9 Conaniah also, and Shemaiah and Nethanel his brothers, and Hashabiah and Jeiel and Jozabad, the chiefs of the Levites, gave to the Levites for the Passover offerings 5,000 lambs and young goats and 500 bulls.
Dual narratives
The replication of names and incidents raises the question of common narrative source used in the histories of Hezekiah and Josiah.
However, there are very many examples in the bible of dual versions, with or without the replication of names. The case of Abraham and Isaac pretending that their wives are sisters; the thankless children of both Jacob and David and the stories of Dinah and Tamar; Michal, like Rachel, deceiving her father to protect her husband; David sparing Saul’s life in two separate caves; Elijah and Elisha each reviving a child; we could make this the subject of future study. Edward Greenstein has written on this subject in an article The Formation of the Biblical Narrative Corpus and he notes a tendency for the book of Judges to retell versions of the Genesis narrative – when an angel appears to Gideon under a terebinth in Judges 6, there are parallels with the angels which appear to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18 and with Jacob’s encounter with the angel at the ford of Jabbok; the annunciation to Samson’s parents in Judges as aspects in common with the angels’ annunciation to Abraham and Sarah.
Hezekiah and archaeology
Hezekiah’s historicity is attested by archaeological evidence: the well-known Siloam inscription records the construction of Hezekiah’s tunnel which brought water from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam in East Jerusalem. The inscription, in paleo-Hebrew script, is believed to date from the late eighth century, during the reign of Hezekiah.
William J Dever, in his 2005 book ‘Did God Have a Wife’ uses archaeological finds such as inscriptions at Khirbet el-Qom and Kuntillet Ajrud as evidence to support his view that the worship of the Asherah was common practice in ancient Israel and Judah.
He cites archaeological evidence that a central cult room, dated to the late eighth century, of the fortress at Arad was demolished, with altars and massevot concealed under the floor. Dever writes:
The deliberate dismantling of the temple and its replacement by another structure in the days of Hezekiah is an archeological fact. I see no reason for skepticism here.
Josiah’s birth is predicted by ‘a man of God’at King Jeroboam’s altar at Bethel, notable for being ornamented with two golden calves. The ish Elohim says:
O altar, altar, thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, a son shall be born to the house of
David, Josiah by name, and he shall sacrifice on you the priests of the high places
who make offerings on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.’
After king Amon of Judah was assassinated, his son Josiah, at the age of eight, became king of Judah. He reigned for thirty-one years, until he was killed by the Egyptian Pharaoh Neco on the battlefield of Megiddo.
And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the way of
David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.2 Kings 22:1
It should be noted that the assessment of a king as good or bad depends on the extent to which he prioritises the Temple and its cult. The northern kings were therefore at a disadvantage, and Jeroboam’s altar at Bethel with its two golden calves is a symbol of corrupt kingship.
Josiah was the son of King Amon who reigned briefly in Judah after King Manasseh. Both Amon and Manasseh encouraged and participated in idolatrous cults. There is some dispute as to whether the hegemony of Assyria over Judah left Manasseh and Amon much choice, whereas Josiah ruled in a Judah which was for a short time free of external domination. Mordechai Cogan has suggested that ‘the foreign innovations reported of the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh are attributable to the voluntary adoption by Judah’s ruling class of the prevailing Assyro-Aramaean culture.’1
Discovery of the scroll
In the eighteenth year of his reign, Josiah was having repairs and renovations carried out in the Temple, under the supervision of the high priest, Hilkiah. The background story that Josiah commences renovations in the Temple indicates that he was worthy of the discovery of the sacred sefer ha Torah.
Jeremiah the prophet was the son of a priest called Hilkiah, who would be roughly contemporary with the Hilkiah of Josiah but Hilkiah the father of Jeremiah served as a priest in Anathoth.
Jeremiah has an involvement with the Josiah story, and, while the usual opinion is that the two Hilkiahs are two different people, the possibilty of them being one and the same is not rejected in every commentary. Jeremiah is not mentioned in Kings, although his use of language connects him with the Deuteronomistic history.
Josiah sent a scribe called Shaphan to Hilkiah, with instructions for paying the workmen, and Hilkiah took the opportunity to tell Shaphan that he had discovered a book of the Law in the Temple. The term used in 2 Kings 22:8 is Sefer ha Torah, with the definite article. In 2 Chronicles, a connection with Moses is emphasised: sefer Torat Hashem b’yad Moshe.
While reporting to the king on the business of paying the workmen with Temple silver, Shaphan told him about the scroll and read it to him. In the account of Josiah in 2 Chronicles, he begins his reforms before the discovery of the scroll.
Josiah responded by rending his clothes, as mourners do, repenting because the laws of the scroll had not been kept during the years while it was hidden away. He told Hilkiah, Shaphan and other scribes and ministers to go and enquire of God – Lechu dirshu et Hashem – concerning the words of the scroll. This they did by consulting the prophetess Huldah who lived in Jerusalem.
Huldah is one of seven prophetesses named in the Talmud. The others are Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail and Esther. Huldah replied in an oracle from God, that He would bring disaster on Jerusalem and its inhabitants, because they had gone after other gods, and committed evil deeds. However, Josiah would be spared the sight of this, as he was repentant, so the destruction of Jerusalem would not occur in his lifetime.
Destroying the high places (bamot)
Josiah went to the Temple and had the sefer ha brit read to all the people, great and small. He then destroyed the idolatrous altars, beginning with those in the Temple.
And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of
the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah.
He destroyed all idolatrous centres in and around Jerusalem, and beyond, including the altar at Bethel. This was the altar about which the man of God in 1 Kings 13 had prophesied to Jeroboam that human bones would be burned on the altar. Josiah fulfilled this prophecy, then went on to destroy the pagan altars of Samaria, after which returned to Jerusalem.
Josiah’s Passover
According to 2 Kings 23:
21 And the king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover to the LORD your
God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.” 22 For no such Passover had been
kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the
kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah. 23 But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah
this Passover was kept to the LORD in Jerusalem.
The expression ‘no such Passover’ resembles the locution that there was no king, before or since, such as Josiah, no prophet such as Moses.
The Chronicles version is:
No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet.
None of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah, and the
priests and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel who were present, and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem.
The Chronicles version of Josiah’s Passover is much longer, with details of the great quantity of animals slaughtered by the priests for the paschal feast and the notable presence of the Levites at the forefront of the organization. The Temple singers – the sons of Asaph – were a feature of the Second Temple One of the differences in the Chronicles version of Josiah’s story is the prominent role of the Levites, not surprisingly as the author of Chronicles is an advocate for the Levites of the Second Temple. One of the offices of the Levites was to provide music, especially psalmody; another was to be keepers of the gate, a responsible position, perhaps to maintain the security of the Temple precinct. They were also scribes and teachers.
Was the scroll the book of Deuteronomy?
Why is there such a broad consensus that the book of the law found by Hilkiah is Deuteronomy? The language, the theology and the account of Passover correspond to Deuteronomy. The expression ‘book of the law’ comes from no other book of the Pentateuch than Deuteronomy. Abolition of the high places and centralisation of the cult is prescribed only in Deuteronomy. The passover in Josiah’s time (2 Kings 23:21-23) corresponds with verses in Deuteronomy:
1 “Observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the LORD your God, for in
the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night. 2 And
you shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the LORD your God, from the flock or the
herd, at the place that the LORD will choose, to make his name dwell there. 3 You
shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened
bread, the bread of affliction–for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste–that
all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land
of Egypt. 4 No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days, nor
shall any of the flesh that you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain all
night until morning. 5 You may not offer the Passover sacrifice within any of your
towns that the LORD your God is giving you, 6 but at the place that the LORD your
God will choose, to make his name dwell in it, there you shall offer the Passover
sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, at the time you came out of Egypt. 7 And you
shall cook it and eat it at the place that the LORD your God will choose. And in the
morning you shall turn and go to your tents. 8 For six days you shall eat unleavened
bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly to the LORD your
God.
Was the scroll found, in some kind of genizah, or was it written during the early reign of Josiah? A German theologian called De Wette, writing in 1805, believed that Deuteronomy was the book Hilkiah handed over to King Josiah and that it was written during the reign of Josiah, to justify his religious reform. ‘Book of the law’ may refer to the Code of Laws which form the central passages of Deuteronomy, chapters 12 to 26, the huqim and mishpatim, statutes and ordinances, whereas the introductory and
supplementary chapters are a review of the history of God’s relationship with the Israelites in the wilderness and the imminence of entering the Promised Land.
Deuteronomy is believed to be written in stages between the 7th century BCE and the early 5th. The term Deuteronomistic history was coined in 1943 by the German biblical scholar Martin Noth, referring to the authorship of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings which he believed were the work of a sixth century historian seeking to explain the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile. In the so-called Deuteronomistic history, Israel goes through a cycle of infidelity, punishment and restoration, ultimately facing exile by the end of 2 Kings.
In 1968, Frank Moore Cross, who was an authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, made the radical suggestion that the Deuteronomistic History was written first in the time of Josiah in the late 7th century (he called this Deuteronomy 1), and revised by a 6th-century author in a version which he called Deuteronomy 2. Deuteronomy 1 is positive towards Judah and negative towards Israel and its kings. Deuteronomy 2, written in exile according to Frank Moore Cross, adds warnings of a broken covenant, followed by punishment and exile.
Deuteronomy includes in its legal code the Law of the King, as follows:
14 “When you come to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you
possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations
that are around me,’ 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your
God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You
may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. 16 Only he must not
acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to
acquire many horses, since the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall never return that
way again.’ 17 And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn
away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. 18 “And when he
sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this
law, approved by the Levitical priests. 19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read
in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping
all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, 20 that his heart may
not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the
commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in
his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.
These laws show that the king is subordinate to the Torah and in fact the only duty prescribed for a king is that he should read Torah every day, fear God and keep the commandments. It does not require that he should be a military leader or a judge, although the kings often filled these roles, or that he should have quantities of horses and wives, although this was precisely the manner of Solomon’s rule.
Bernard M Levinson in a 2001 article shows that the Deuteronomic Law of the King limits the authority of the king and queries why Josiah would have promulgated such a book. From this point of view, it does not seem likely that Josiah would commission the
writing of Deuteronomy. Levinson argues that the Deuteronomistic author of Kings reverses the Law of the King, as found in Deuteronomy, by showing Josiah as the instigator and advocate of the Law. Josiah follows Deuteronomy on Passover, commanding the people to observe it and presiding over the centralized festival.
Levinson says:
Despite the royal insistence upon conformity to the law, Josiah’s very invocation of
that law transforms it…Torah is here implemented under royal aegis, The king
commanded the people…In one deft stroke the Deuteronomistic Historian revokes
and redefines both the Deuteronomistic Passover, now enacted under royal
command, and Deuteronomy’s Law of the king, as the monarch now leads the cultus.
The Deuteronomistic historian subordinates Deuteronomistic law to his own more
conservative view of the proper relation between king and cult and thus reverses
Deuteronomy’s innovation. With Josiah made the royal enforcer of Torah as the law
of the land, the Deuteronomistic historian, several generations after Deuteronomy,
returns to the monarch the active connection to cultus and law that had been, so
briefly and idealistically, denied him.
Cross’s ‘dual redaction’ thesis about Deuteronomy is widely accepted, but there is also a view that there is a post exilic phase in the composition of the book, and that Chapters 1-4 and 29-30 were added in the time of the Persian Empire. The additions in the narrative are about the Israelites being about to enter the Promised Land, an analogy with the end of the exile, when they were about to return to it.
The Death of Josiah
Josiah became king of Judah in about 641/640 BC, when the Assyrian Empire was beginning to disintegrate. Babylon and Egypt jostled for ascendancy but neither had yet achieved it so Josiah was able to rule without external interference.
In 609, Pharaoh Neco II led an army up to the Euphrates River to aid the Assyrians. Josiah attempted to block Neco’s advance at Megiddo, and in the course of the battle, Josiah was killed.
Herodotus (c484 BC – 425 BCE) wrote:
Necos…stopped work on the canal and turned to war; some of his triremes were
constructed by the northern sea, and some in the Arabian Gulf, by the coast of the
Sea of Erythrias. The windlasses for beaching the ships can still be seen. He
deployed these ships as needed, while he also engaged in a pitched battle at
Magdolos with the Syrians, and conquered them.
Josephus says of Josiah:
He was of a most excellent disposition and naturally virtuous and followed the
actions of King David as a pattern and a rule to him in the whole conduct of his life.
Josephus reports that Josiah turned the people away from the practice of idol worship
and destroyed the altars which previous kings had permitted.
His account of Josiah’s last battle and death is as follows:
Now Neco, king of Egypt, raised an army, and marched to the river Euphrates, in
order to fight with the Medes and Babylonians, who had overthrown the dominion
of the Assyrians, (9) for he had a desire to reign over Asia. Now when he was come
to the city Mendes, which belonged to the kingdom of Josiah, he brought an army to
hinder him from passing through his own country, in his expedition against the
Medes. Now Neco sent a herald to Josiah, and told him that he did not make this
expedition against him, but was making haste to Euphrates; and desired that he
would not provoke him to fight against him, because he obstructed his march to the
place whither he had resolved to go. But Josiah did not admit of this advice of
Neco, but put himself into a posture to hinder him from his intended march. I
suppose it was fate that pushed him on this conduct, that it might take an occasion
against him; for as he was setting his army in array, (10) and rode about in his
chariot, from one wing of his army to another, one of the Egyptians shot an arrow at
him, and put an end to his eagerness of fighting; for being sorely wounded, he
command a retreat to be sounded for his army, and returned to Jerusalem, and died
of that wound; and was magnificently buried in the sepulchre of his fathers, when
he had lived thirty-nine years, and of them had reigned thirty-one.
According to 2 Chronicles:
Jeremiah also uttered a lament for Josiah; and all the singing men and singing
women have spoken of Josiah in their laments to this day.
The Chronicler does not refer to the Assyrians in his account of the battle at Megiddo,
and asserts that Josiah was carried wounded but alive from battle, to die in Jerusalem,
with which Josephus’s version agrees. The much briefer version in Kings speaks of
Neco killing Josiah at Megiddo, but does not mention the battle.
We must remember Huldah who prophesied of Josiah:
You shall be gathered to your grave in peace.
There is also an account of Josiah’s reign in the apocryhal book of 1 Esdras, which
follows closely the Chronicles version. Here is the story of the death of Josiah, as
related by Esdras (which is Greek for Ezra):
25 Now after all these acts of Josias it came to pass, that Pharaoh the king of Egypt
came to raise war at Carchamis upon Euphrates: and Josias went out against him. 26
But the king of Egypt sent to him, saying, What have I to do with thee, O king of
Judea? 27 I am not sent out from the Lord God against thee; for my war is upon
Euphrates: and now the Lord is with me, yea, the Lord is with me hasting me
forward: depart from me, and be not against the Lord. 28 Howbeit Josias did not
turn back his chariot from him, but undertook to fight with him, not regarding the
words of the prophet Jeremy spoken by the mouth of the Lord: 29 But joined battle
with him in the plain of Magiddo, and the princes came against king Josias. 30 Then
said the king unto his servants, Carry me away out of the battle; for I am very weak.
And immediately his servants took him away out of the battle. 31 Then gat he up
upon his second chariot; and being brought back to Jerusalem died, and was buried
in his father’s sepulchre. 32 And in all Jewry they mourned for Josias, yea, Jeremy
the prophet lamented for Josias, and the chief men with the women made
lamentation for him unto this day: and this was given out for an ordinance to be
done continually in all the nation of Israel. 33 These things are written in the book
of the stories of the kings of Judah, and every one of the acts that Josias did, and his
glory, and his understanding in the law of the Lord, and the things that he had done
before, and the things now recited, are reported in the book of the kings of Israel and
Judea.
Josiah in Midrash
Genesis Rabbah records:
Three were called by their names before they were born: Isaac, Solomon and Josiah.
What is said in the case of Isaac? ‘Nay but Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son and
thou shalt call his name Isaac.’ In the case of Solomon? ‘Behold a son shall be born
to thee, who shall be a man of rest, and I will give him rest from all his enemies
round about, for his name shall be Solomon.’ In the case of Josiah? ‘And he cried
against the altar by the word of the Lord: O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord, Behold a
son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name.’
Lamentations Rabbah tells:
[Josiah] had sent two disciples of the sages to eradicate idolatry from the people’s
houses. When they entered the houses, they found nothing. As they went out, they
were told to shut the doors, and when they shut the doors, the people inside could
see the idol.
This failure of Josiah to implement his reforms throughout the land may be a
rationalization of his violent death,which does not fulfil the prophecy of Huldah. Kings
is very favorable to Josiah but Chronicles even more so with its devotion to the
Davidic/Solomonic dynasty. The fact that Josiah is brought back alive to Jerusalem in
Chronicles (and in Esdras) permits the interpretation that his end was peaceful, as
foreseen by the prophetess.
There are many parallels between the narratives of King Josiah and King Hezekiah, and, next time, we can look more closely at the reign of Hezekiah, about a hundred years before Josiah.
Prayer for the people of Sharon
Posted on: October 9, 2011
Yom Kippur 5772
Do Not Let Their Homes Become Their Graves
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The prayers of the High Priest
The Avodah service, which takes place during Mussaf on Yom Kippur, is based on the Temple service, as described in the Mishnah and the Gemara. The High Priest – the Cohen Hagadol – said penitential prayers on behalf of himself and the whole community.
When the High Priest emerged from the Holy of Holies, he prayed that the coming year would be fruitful, prosperous and peaceful, and then added the prayer v’al ha anshei Sharon… for those who lived in the region of Sharon, in danger of sudden earthquakes ‘…do not let their homes become their graves’.
Where does the prayer come from?
The source of this prayer is the Talmud Yerushalmi, also called the Jerusalem Talmud or the Palestine Talmud, or the Talmud of the Land of Israel (Tractate Yoma perek 5 hilchot 2).
The Jerusalem Talmud is shorter than the Babylonian Talmud, and was completed earlier, about 429 CE. As the name suggests, it is a product of the Land of Israel, probably from the academies of Tiberias, Caesarea and Sepphoris.
Life in Palestine had been more agriculturally based than amongst the Babylonian communities, so the Jerusalem Talmud pays more attention to agricultural halakhah than the Bavli, and also more attention to the geography of the region, which may be why we find this focus on the Sharon Plain, the northern half of the coastal plain of Israel, running from Jaffa up to Carmel.
What was the problem for the people of Sharon?
Our translation explains that the region was in danger of earthquakes, but the Hebrew words do not refer to earthquakes, or name any specific danger.
It may be that this region was subject to flooding, being on the coast.
There is a geological fault called the Dead Sea Transform, which extends through the Jordan River Valley, and is part of the Great African Rift Valley and this may have caused seismic disturbances. The geography of Palestine in the time of the Jerusalem Talmud shows that the Sharon was a marshy, swampy area, not easily cultivated until deforestation, around the third century.
The Babylonian Talmud has a more oblique reference, when commenting on exemption from military service. Deuteronomy 20:5 states that a man is exempt who has built a new house and not had time to dedicate it. The Babylonian sages considered the exceptions to this rule:
R. Eliezer says: also he who built a brick house in Sharon does not return home. A Tanna taught: [The reason is] because they have to renew it twice in a period of seven years.
Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 44a
Why do the prayers of the Avodah service conclude with this particular prayer, for the safety of a particular section of the population?
Yehuda Kurtzer (President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America): ‘The route to a universal vision runs through our particular experience of the world…If we cannot identify with the particular, will we be able to pray for the universal?’ (YK 2010)
Are earthquakes mentioned in Tanakh?
Resh ayin shin means earthquake, from a verb to shake or tremble.
1 Kings 19:11-13
Alone in the wilderness, Elijah sees a whirlwind, an earthquake and a fire, after which God speaks to Elijah in a still, small voice.
Isaiah 29:6
God tells Isaiah that he will bring thunder, earthquake and a tempest, save Jerusalem (Ariel) from her enemies.
Ezekiel 3:12
Ezekiel hears the sound of an earthquake, during a mystical, prophetic vision
Ezekiel 38:19
God tells Ezekiel that He will bring an earthquake and other upheavals on the day of a future, apocalyptic battle.
Amos 1:1
The time of Amos’s ministry as a prophet is said to be during the reign of King Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam II, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.
Zechariah 14:4-5
Zechariah prophesies about a future time when God will intervene to defend Jerusalem from her enemies, causing a rift in the Mount of Olives. The people will run away, he says, just as they fled from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah.
What did the sages say in times of danger?
Rabbi Joshua says:
One who is travelling in a dangerous place should offer a brief prayer, and say: Save, Hashem, Your people, the remnant of Israel; even when they distance themselves through sin, let their needs be before You. Blessed are you Hashem, Who hears prayer.
Mishnah 4:4
The scriptural source for this mishnah is Jeremiah 31:7:
For thus says the Lord, Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, ‘O LORD, save your people, the remnant of Israel.’
Our Yizkor service includes a similar prayer:
‘Guardian of Israel, Guard the Remnant of Israel, and suffer not Israel to perish who daily declare Hear O Israel.’ p619 Yamim Noraim
The Talmudic sages used to add personal appeals to God following the set prayers and these were standardized in the Middle Ages, a time of danger for the Jewish people.
What is the modern Jewish response to natural disasters?
It is not to view the disaster as a punishment from God. I believe mainstream orthodoxy repudiates such a view as, of course, does Progressive Judaism. The modern Progressive Jewish response emphasizes human agency, regarding divine agency as a source of support rather than punishment. The modern siddurim include prayers where we ask God to make us strong and effective so that we are able to take responsibility, to withstand disaster and act for the good of the community; then as always, we ask God to spare us.
The High Priest prays for the safety of others, in the region of Sharon, but is it ok to ask God to give us things we want?
Hannah, whose story is told in the opening chapters of 1 Samuel, is cited by the rabbis of the Talmud as exemplary in prayer, and she does indeed ask God for the thing she longs for, a child. God answers her prayer.
Said Hannah before the Holy One, blessed be He: Sovereign of the Universe, of all the hosts and hosts that Thou hast created in Thy world, is it so hard in Thy eyes to give me one son? A parable: To what is this matter like? To a king who made a feast for his servants, and a poor man came and stood by the door and said to them, Give me a bite,8 and no one took any notice of him, so he forced his way into the presence of the king and said to him, Your Majesty, out of all the feast which thou hast made, is it so hard in thine eyes to give me one bite?
Berakhot 31b
Ribbono Shel Olam
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, a Chasidic master of the eighteenth century, used to address God with one of the many names used in Talmudic times: Ribbono Shel Olam. He used to repeat this name as a mantra to enhance kavanah in prayer. When God is addressed as ‘Master of the Universe’, the person who says it relinquishes their sense of controlling the world. A person can control his response to a situation, but the situation itself may be outside his control. A mantra can be an expression of faith, when words fail, or when we can’t find the right words, or when too many words make excessively difficult demands on faith.
When all else fails, zog tehillim
Psalms are often specially recited in times of trouble or danger. The Yiddish expression, zogen tehillim, refers to the recitation of psalms, when all else fails. Tsadikim of the East European communities used to say:
Rabosai, Mir Ken Zich Mer Nisht Farlozen Oif Nissim, Kum, Laz Mir Zogen
Tehilim.
My friends, we can no longer rely on miracles, come let us recite Tehillim.<a
Daniel, chapters 7-9
Posted on: July 29, 2011
Daniel Chapters 7 – 9
In the first six chapters of Daniel, we read a series of stories about the integrity and advancement of Daniel and his friends, while captives at a foreign court. For Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel was an inspired interpreter of dreams. Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah survived the fiery furnace, a miracle which caused Nebuchadnezzar to revere God, however briefly.
For Belshazzar – according to the book of Daniel, the son and successor of Nebuchadnezzar – Daniel interprets the writing on the wall which heralds Belshazzar’s demise and the fall of the Babylonian empire. Although a favourite of the next king, Darius the Mede, Daniel becomes the victim of an envious plot, which gets him cast into the lions’ den. Darius is pleased when Daniel survives this ordeal, and has Daniel’s persecutors and their families thrown to the lions.
The language of the book is Hebrew until 2:4, and thereafter in Aramaic until Chapter 8, when the book reverts to Hebrew.
Chapter 7 onward deals with Daniel’s visions, experienced during the reigns of Belshazzar, Darius and Cyrus. These are related by Daniel in the first person, suitable for prophecy, whereas we have had until now a third person narrative.
The first vision, in Chapter 7, resembles the dreams recounted by Nebuchadnezzar insofar as the images are prophetic of future empires, and they are interpreted for Daniel by one of the heavenly beings in the vision. The vision is explicitly a dream,[1] חלמא in Aramaic, which Daniel dreams while in bed at night, and afterwards records in writing.
Four winds from heaven or from the sky break forth on the sea, and four beasts emerge from the sea.
The first animal is a winged lion, usually understood to representBabylon. An archaeologist called Henry Layard, working in Nimrud in Iraq in the 1840s, excavated the palaces of Ashurnasirpal II, Shalmaneser III, and Tiglath-Pileser III and discovered several colossal statues (lamassu) of lions and bulls, two of which are displayed in The British Museum. Winged lions and bulls were part of Assyrian and Babylonian iconography. They were known as lamassu and shedu, protectors of ordinary households and, in more extravagant form, of royal palaces.
Jeremiah uses the metaphor of a lion to refer to Babylon:
A lion has gone up from his thicket, a destroyer of nations has set out; he has gone out from his place to make your land a waste; your cities will be ruins without inhabitant.[2]
Next up is a bear-like animal, with three ribs in its mouth. The bear is said to represent the empire of the Medes and the Persians, but there is no real consensus on the three ribs. One commentator suggests:
They may represent the unsuccessful alliance of the Urartians, Manneans and Scythians who tried to stop the Persians, but they are much more likely to represent Lydia, Babylon and Egypt which were the three major conquests of the Persian empire.[3]
Ibn Ezra suggests that דב be translated not as ‘bear’, the usual translation of dov, but wolf, which in Hebrew is זאב but the zayin may become a dalet in Aramaic.
According to traditions in Talmud and Midrash, the second animal represents the Persian Empire because the Persians ‘…eat and drink like a bear, are fleshy like a bear, overgrown with hair like a bear, and are restless like a bear.’[4]
Jewish commentators suggests that the three ribs refer to three Persian kings: Cyrus, Ahasuerus and Darius. The only consensus is that the beasts symbolize kingdoms. The third animal, the winged leopard, is also regarded asPersia, with the preceding bear like animal representing Medea.
The fourth, most fearsome beast with teeth of iron is understood to be the Greek Empire, which fits the supposed dating of the book of Daniel. Several texts of Daniel were found at Qumnran, the earliest, dating from around 125 BCE represents the terminus ad quem. In other words, the Qumrantexts could be later copies taken from an earlier work, or it could be contemporary with the earliest known manuscript. As we saw, Josephus refers to Alexander the Great receiving a copy of the book of Daniel, so it existed in 330 BCE, if Josephus is accurate.
Alexander’s sudden and untimely death in 323 complicated the succession of his enormous empire and the ten horns of the fourth beast are believed to be the various successors among whom the Macedonian empire was divided. The first successors were called the diadochi, friends, relations and rivals of Alexander, all with some claim to kingship. A state was created in 312 BCE by Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander’s generals, inSyria, southern Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Iran. The rulers were called Seleucids, after Seleucus Nicator. The Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled inEgypt, was founded in 305 BCE by Ptolemy I, the builder of the library atAlexandria.
The Pontine dynasty ruled in north-east Asia Minor until it was absorbed into theRoman Empire.
The Seleucid dynasty eventually produced the tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes who ruled from 175 to 163, the period of the Maccabean revolt. The ‘little horn’ of verse 8 is understood to refer to Antiochus IV who tried to suppress the Jewish religion, and to enforce the hellenization of the Jews.
In the vision which begins in verse 9, the scene is being set as if for judgment. Thrones are placed, plural and עתיק יומין, one that was ancient of days sits down, all in white with white hair. His throne is fiery and has wheels. There is a heavenly court, with thousands of thousands ministering.
The judgment is set, and the books were opened.
דינא יתב וספרין פתיחו
William Blake’s painting follows the KJV in using the definite article: ‘The Ancient of Days’. The Aramaic does not call for a definite article, so some of our translations vary from the KJV.
HL Ginsberg in the Jewish Encyclopeda points out that the image is a metaphor for God, just as the beasts are metaphors for human kings and emperors:
One cannot ask therefore ‘Why is God called the Ancient of Days’ in Daniel7?’ because He is not, but only ‘Why is God represented in the vision of Daniel 7 by the figure of an ancient of days?’[5]
The meaning of Daniel’s name, ‘God is my judge,’ is of interest in this vision of judgment, dina in Aramaic.
The fourth beast (presumed to be Greece orRome) is slain and the other beasts cease to rule, but their lives a spared, for a time.
The next vision is one like a son of man, who comes from the clouds of heaven. You may recall that the expression ‘…coming from the clouds of heaven’ occurs in the NT gospel of Matthew and Mark, in connection with The Son of Man.[6] The Aramaic is כבר אנוש, c’var enosh, ‘like a son of man’.
Traditional Jewish interpretations regard this figure as Israe l(as is the case with Isaiah’s Suffering Servant) or as the messiah (as is the case with the Targum to Isaiah 53). Note that the one like a son of man comes from shemaya, from the sky or from heaven, while the beasts came from the sea.
In verse 15, Daniel approaches one of the ministering figures, perhaps an angel, like Zechariah’s guide[7]and asks for an explanation of the vision.
The angel interprets: the beasts are kingdoms, but the holy ones of the Most High will receive and possess these kingdoms, for ever. ‘For ever’ is most emphatic: ad alma v’ad olam almaya. A similar idiom appears in the kaddish. The king represented by the ‘little horn’ would make war against the holy ones and prevail against them, until the Ancient of Days would come and judge. The fourth kingdom would spread across the earth; it would be succeeded by ten further kingdoms, then another which would speak against the Most High. The holy ones would be in his power ‘until a time and times and half a time’. Much depends on the interpretation of idan, ‘time’. It may mean year and refer to two and a half years of persecution under Antiochus.
After this period, the kingdom would be given to the kadishei Elyonin, whose kingdom is everlasting.
Daniel concludes that he was much frightened by his vision, but kept his thoughts to himself.
In chapter 8, the language reverts to Hebrew. Daniel experiences another vision in the third year of the reign of Belshazzar, two years after the previous one. In the vision of chapter 8, the location is Shushan the castle, well-known to us from Megillat Esther. Only in Esther and Daniel do we find this reference to Shushan Ha-birah.
In the vision, Daniel sees a ram with two horns, one, the later horn, larger than the first. Given our experience so far of visions in the book of Daniel, we might suppose these horns to represent kingdoms, and Media andPersiafit the bill, coming from the east, to push west, north and south, as reported in verse 4.
The he-goat from the west must then represent Greece, conquering Persia and the known world and the goat’s horns are Alexander and his successors, followed by Antiochus Epiphanes, encroaching on ‘the beauteous land’ of Israel. We find this use of צבי , which can also mean gazelle, in the writings of another exile, Ezekiel.[8]
The little horn, Antiochus, is self-aggrandising, and pollutes the sanctuary.
Daniel hears one ‘holy one’ speaking to another, just as Isaiah heard a dialogue between celestial beings, which segued into Isaiah’s prophecy, ‘O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion…’[9]Daniel is told that the period of oppression will last for ‘two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings; then shall the sanctuary be victorious’.[10]
This period works out to about seven years, assuming that 2,300 days are intended, but this verse has been interpreted variously, to signify other periods of time.
When Daniel sought an interpretation of the vision, there stood before him ‘the appearance of a man,’ which suggests a celestial being in the form of a man. The word for man is ‘gever’. Although this is a common word for a man in Aramaic, our text is now in Hebrew, where gever suggests a strong man or warrior; we then learn that the man’s name is Gabriel, a contraction of gever El, mighty man of God. The heavenly dialogue continues when the voice of a man calls to Gabriel, bidding him to interpret for Daniel.
Gabriel explains that the vision belongs to the time of the end, לעת־קץ. He addresses Daniel as ‘son of man’, as Ezekiel also is addressed in his visions. Daniel is the only book in Tanakh where an angel is named, so it is only in Daniel that one finds mention of Gabriel and Michael. Gabriel appears in the NT and the Qur’an as well as in Enoch and in the rabbinic literature.
In the interpretation which follows, Gabriel specifies מדי ופרס, the ram, and the שעיר (an animal usually associated with Esau, Edomand Rome) is מלך יון. The great horn is the first Greek king, implying Alexander and after four successors there will come a new king, cunning, powerful and destructive, who will eventually be destroyed – ‘broken without hand’.[11]
Gabriel assures Daniel that these events belong to the distant future. Daniel faints and is ill, then resumes his work at the king’s court, greatly disturbed by the vision but still not understanding it.
In Chapter 9, there is a new king and a new kingdom: Darius the Mede, who is the son of an Ahasuerus who is also a Mede – not the Ahasuerus of Esther and not identifiable as any known Median king. Xerxes and Astyages have been suggested; the LXX has Ασσουηρος.
Daniel looks at the prophecy of Jeremiah that Jerusalemwill be desolate for seventy years:
This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.[12]
Daniel then makes a confession of sin, on behalf of all Judah, who have been unfaithful to God and the commandments. Daniel also refers to the transgression of ‘all Israel’;[13] it may be that the nameIsrael more accurately expresses the people in exile, whereasJudah expresses the region of and aroundJerusalem. These verses are incorporated into the prayers on Selichot and Yom Kippur. Why is Daniel fasting and repenting? He mentions in verse 2 that he has read Jeremiah’s prophecy thatJerusalem will be desolate for seventy years, so the repentance seems to be associated with the condition of exile and the loss of theTemple. Note that the spelling of the name of God in these penitential verses is several times written in full, rather than as the tetragrammaton.
While Daniel was praying and making confession, ‘the man Gabriel’ appeared. Note that he is not called an angel but האיש גבריאל. You will recall that when the text was Aramaic, Gabriel appeared as one having the appearance of a gever, a man.[14]However,it seems that unlike an ordinary man, Gabriel flies. The verb which is mostly translated as flying, or being caused to fly, seems to be not עןף, to fly, but יעף, to be weary (as in hanoten layaef koah).[15] The form of the verb appears to be hophal, passive causative.
The American theologian Albert Barnes (1798-1870) commented thus:
If derived from this word, the meaning in Hophal, the form used here, would be, “wearied with swift running,” and the sense is, that Gabriel had borne the message swiftly to him, and appeared before him as one does who is wearied with a rapid course. If this be the idea, there is no direct allusion to his “flying,” but the reference is to the rapidity with which he had come on the long journey, as if exhausted by his journey. The Latin Vulgate renders it cito volans and [the Greek versions as] πετομενος … The common representation of the angels in the Old Testament is not with wings, though the cherubim and Seraphim (Isaiah 6:2, following.) are represented with wings; and in Revelation 14:6, we have a representation of an angel flying. Probably the more exact idea here is that of a rapid course, so as to produce weariness, or such as would naturally produce fatigue.[16]
‘I am now come forth to make thee skilful of understanding.’ gabriel appears as a kind of tutor, interpreting visions and revealing the future. Remember that Gabriel appears in other faiths, to announce the miraculous pregnancies of Elizabeth[17]and Mary[18] and to reveal the Qur’an to Muhammed.[19]
In the pseudepigraphical book of Enoch, Gabriel, along with Michael, Raphael, Uriel and Suriel witnesses the blood being shed on earth, in the time before the flood, and appeals to the Almighty.[20]
The seventy weeks
This period has been interpreted as ‘seventy weeks of years’ – in other words, 490 years. Rabbinic commentary on the meaning of this prophecy cites the Seder Olam Rabbah, attributed to a Tannaitic author, R Jose bar Halafta who died around 160 C.E. His Seder Olam, later called Seder Olam Rabbah to distinguish it from a shorter work, is cited several times in the Talmud as an earlier authority. According to R Jose, the first seven weeks are related to the exile and return and the next sixty-two weeks are in the time of the SecondTemple.
The prophecy which Gabriel shares with Daniel has been the subject of so much commentary that we can hardly begin to adumbrate it here. Within an uncertain period of time, weeks or years, or years multiplied by seven, Daniel’s people, the Israelites, are to finish transgression – פּשע, end their sins – חטאות, and to atone for iniquity – לכפר עון, the language of our liturgy on Yom Kippur.Jerusalemwill be restored in the time of a mashiach nagid, a messiah prince. Judah Slotki’s commentary in the Soncino edition suggests that this refers to Cyrus. After sixty-two weeks, an anointed one will be cut off and people will destroy the city and the sanctuary. This is often understood as referring to the Romans, but it could refer to Antiochus, assuming that Antiochus flourished during the lifetime of the author, which is not demonstrable. The description of the desecration of the sanctuary in verse 27 does seem to suggest the period of Antiochus and the Maccabean revolt.
The talk of weeks and half weeks lends itself to all kinds of interpretation and speculation, and the arithmetic can be adapted to fit doctrinal requirements. In the Greek of the Septuagint, mashiach nagid is Χριστου ηγουμενου, that is Christou Hegoumenou. It is not surprising that in a Christian bible, the book of Daniel is found in the prophets, between the major and the minor prophets, that is, between Ezekiel and Hosea. In Tanakh, Daniel is not accorded prophetic authority and is therefore in the ketuvim.
This genre of religious writing which reveals the future and especially suggests events leading to the eschaton, the last times, is called apocalyptic (the book of Revelations in the NT is also called by the Greek name Apocalypse).
Josephus offers a view of Daniel’s vision, writing in an age of Roman domination:
…There should arise a certain king that should overcome our nation and their laws, and should take away their political government, and should spoil the temple, and forbid the sacrifices to be offered for three years…and indeed it so came to pass that our nation suffered these things under Antiochus Epiphanes, according to Daniel’s vision, and what he wrote many years before they came to pass. In the very same manner, Daniel also wrote concerning the Roman government, and that our country should be made desolate by them.[21]
More than a millennium later, Maimonides wrote his rational, non-supernatural understanding of the messianic era;
The Messianic age is when the Jews will regain their independence and all return to the landof Israel. … Do not think that the ways of the world or the laws of nature will change, this is not true. The world will continue as it is. The prophet Isaiah predicted “The wolf shall live with the sheep, the leopard shall lie down with the kid.” This, however, is merely allegory, meaning that the Jews will live safely, even with the formerly wicked nations. All nations will return to the true religion and will no longer steal or oppress. Note that all prophecies regarding the Messiah are allegorical. Only in the Messianic age will we know the meaning of each allegory and what it comes to teach us. Our sages and prophets did not long for the Messianic age in order that they might rule the world and dominate the gentiles, the only thing they wanted was to be free for Jews to involve themselves with the Torah and its wisdom.[22]
Lastly in this chapter, Daniel refers to an abomination in theTemple. This could be the desecrations of Antiochus, or it could be the Roman eagles.
[1] Daniel 7:1
[2] Jeremiah 4:7
[3] George Pytlik, internet article on Daniel 7
[4] Kiddushin 72a et al
[5] Encyclopedia Judaica vol 2 p941
[6] Matthew 24:30, 26:64; Mark 14:62
[7] Zechariah 1:9, 2:2
[8] Ezekiel 20:6, 25:9, 26:20
[9] Isaiah 40:3 – 9
Daniel 8:14
[11] Daniel 8:25
[12] Jeremiah 25:11
[13] Daniel 9:11
[14] Daniel 8:15
[15] Gesenius, Mandelkern, BDB, New Englishman’s concordance.
[16] commentary of Albert Barnes on Daniel 9:21
[17] Luke 1:19
Luke 1:26
Qur’an 2: 97, 98; 66: 4
[20] Enoch 9:1–2,
[21] Josephus, Antiquities 10:11:7
[22] Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sanhedrin 10:1
Chapter 10 situates Daniel in the third year of Cyrus’s reign. He has been mourning three weeks,with fasting and abstinence, but we do not know the cause of the mourning. An indication of the time of year comes in verse 4, where the day named is 24 Nisan, shortly after the end of Passover. If Daniel fasted for the three weeks immediately prior to this date, he would have fasted through Passover, resembling Esther, who fasted on 14th, 15th, and 16th Nisan.
The angel by the Tigris
On 24 Nisan, Daniel is by the Tigris when he sees a man (not in this case called a dream or a vision), איש־אחד, with a supernatural appearance. He is clothed in linen and pure gold, and his face and body have the radiance of jewels, lightning and fire. The voice, being ‘like the voice of a multitude’, is at variance with the singularity expressed in ish echad.
The men with Daniel are filled with awe, although they do not see the man. They run away, leaving Daniel alone, and he too is so awed that his strength leaves him and he falls face down on the ground.
The man calls Daniel ‘beloved’, איש־חמדות, repeating the term hamudot which Gabriel uses of Daniel in 9:23 and says ‘Now am I sent to you’. He speaks reassuringly and tells Daniel that he has come because of Daniel’s words. We are not told that this angel is Gabriel.
Verse 13
According to Dr Slotki in the Soncino translation, the prince of the kingdom of Persia is the guardian angel allocated to Persia. The dramatist Tony Kushner employs this concept of angels representing geographical territories in his play ‘Angels in America’ where the angels symbolize the inner life of the characters in the play.
The angel tells Daniel that he has been delayed by the prince of the kingdom of Persia, for a period of twenty-one days. ‘I was left over there’ is unclear. Does this mean the angel was held up in Persia, or in conflict with the guardian angel of Persia?
He was assisted by Michael, echad ha-sarim ha-rishonim. Michael, whose name means ‘Who is like God?’ is one of the foremost of the angels, according to mainly ex-biblical tradition. Daniel is the only canonical book in which Michael is mentioned by name. Rashi commented that the captain of the host who appeared to Joshua is the archangel Michael.
In Daniel 12:1, Michael is named as ‘the great prince who stands for the children of your [Daniel’s] people’, and in the book of Enoch, which develops an elaborate Jewish angelology, Michael is ‘the prince of Israel’.
According to midrashic tradition, Michael is sometimes called upon, as the advocate of Israel, to fight with the princes of the other nations.
This idea of angels representing territories and peoples is prefigured in the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy (Ha’azinu), although not so in the Masoretic Text. The English Standard Version compromises with:
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.
This ESV translation takes into account the LXX and Qumran documents which reads
‘…according to the number of the angels of God’.
…κατα αριθμον αγγελως Θεου
The Masoretic text varies, saying למספר בני ישראל.
The angel tells Daniel that he has come to give Daniel a vision of the ‘end of days’ – באחרית הימים, εσχατων των ημερων. Daniel becomes faint and dumbstruck, but a being like the sons of men – is it the same angel as before – touches his lips, giving him strength and speech. The being then tells Daniel hazak ve hazak. He is returning to fight the prince or angel of Persia and says that when he goes, the prince of Greece will come – a reference to the Hellenistic empire which came after the Persians. The angel will then tell Daniel what is written in the book of truth, and only Michael will support him against the others – presumably, against the other angels, who support other peoples. Michael, according to the speaker, is שרכם, ‘your prince’, that is to say, Daniel’s prince – Israel’s prince.
Chapter 11
The legacy of Alexander
Dr Slotki identifies the speaker as Gabriel, who declares that he was a supporter of Darius the Mede; however the speaker seems to be the one designated as an ‘appearance like a man’ mentioned in 10:18.
The Achaemenid dynasty of Persians kings is as follows:
559-530 Cyrus the Great
529-522 Cambyses
522 Smerdis (Bardia)
521-486 Darius I the Great
485-465 Xerxes I
464-424 Artaxerxes I
424 Xerxes II
424 Sogdianus
423-405 Darius II
404-359 Artaxerxes II
358-338 Artaxerxes III
337-336 Arses
335-330 Darius III
The events described in chapter 11 are those which took place after Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire.
The second verse refers to a military engagement with the Greeks while the third and fourth verses describe the rise of Alexander and the division of territory which followed his death. The king of the south in verse 5 is Ptolemy of Egypt, who made peace with the northern Seleucid empire by marrying his daughter Berenice to Antiochus II.
Berenice, (died c. 246 bc) replaced Laodice, the first wife of Antiochus II and disinherited Laodice’s children when her own were born. When Ptolemey died, Antiochus remarried his first wife but, in a twist worthy of Eastenders, she poisoned him, while her son disposed of Berenice and her son, taking the throne himself. All the young men in this story are called either Seleucus or Antiochus. War ensued between the brother of Berenice – another Ptolemey – and the son of Laodice, Seleucus II. The next verses describe the continuation of these wars between the next generation of Ptolomeys, Seleucuses and Antiochuses.
Verse 16: “The invader will do as he pleases. No one will be able to stand against him. He will establish himself in the Beautiful Land and will have the power to destroy it.” ‘The beautiful land’ always refers to Israel/Judea. Antiochus III attacked Egypt in 200 B.C. but was crushed by the king of the South, Ptolemy V Epiphanes. Antiochus conquered Sidon and by 197 B.C., had taken control of Judea.
The daughter given in marriage in verse 17 is Cleopatra I, daughter of Antiochus III. She was married to Ptolomey around 194 BCE. (The Cleopatra we know from her relations with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony is Cleopatra VII.)
By the time of Antiochus III, Rome was a significant force in the Mediterranean.. They fought the first Illyrian was with the Greeks in 221. They claimed a victory over Carthage after Hannibal’s invasion of Italy in 217. In 191, the Romans, under the leadership of Scipio Africanus, overcame the forces of Antiochus III in the battle of Magnesia, and in the ensuing peace, Antiochus paid reparations to Rome while his son, Antiochus IV (who later was to provoke the Maccabean Revolt), was held hostage in Rome.
Antiochus IV Epiphanes
Verse 20 refers to the fairly brief reign of Seleucus IV, older brother of Antiochus IV, designated in verse 21 ‘a contemptible person’, נבזה from the verb בזה, to despise. Antiochus IV engaged in wars with both Egypt and Rome. The second part of verse 30 refers to his plundering of the Temple in Jerusalem and promoting of Hellenized Jews. His profanation of the Sanctuary is described in verses 31 and 32 while verse 33 describes the persecution of the devout. Verse 34 may be an allusion to the Maccabean Revolt. Antiochus’s tyranny and grandiosity are described and further aggressive wars against Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia. Regarding the Edomites, Moabites and Ammonites, they seem to have formed an alliance with Syria, as, according to I Maccabees:
Then Judas fought against the children of Esau in Idumea at Arabattine, because they besieged Israel: and he gave them a great overthrow, and abated their courage, and took their spoils.
While the revolt continued in Judea, Antiochus led the main Seleucid army against King Mithridates of the Parthians who attacked from the east in 167. Parthia had developed from a satrap under the Achaemenid kings to become the dominating force in Persia. After the death of Antiochus in 164, the Seleucid Empire dwindled away under the pressure of civil wars, Jewish rebellion and Parthian ascendancy. Eventually, the Romans took possession of the region, in 63 BCE, when Pompey made Syria a Roman province.
The author of Daniel 11 has knowledge of events up to 164 BCE as the terminus post quem.
Chapter 12
The last times
There is a question as to whether בעת ההיא refers to an unspecified future time, a specific time, or to the eschaton. Dr Slotki regards it as referring to the time following the death of Antiochus IV.
Verse 1 ‘Written in the book’: this expression sometimes refers to the book of the law – the Torah, and is sometimes used in connection with lost books, as in ‘Is this not written in the book of Yashar/Acts of Solomon/ Chronicles of the Kings of Israel (or Judah). However, Daniel’s meaning appears much closer to that of Malachi, who said:
Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.
Verses 2 – 3
This is the most unambiguous mention in Tanakh of the resurrection of the dead to everlasting life. Although Elijah and Elisha both revived children who died, those children were restored to live out their natural lifespan, as with Lazarus in the NT. It may be a reflection of a Phaisaic belief in the world to come, already germinating in the Maccabean period.
Verse 4
It appears to be the angel who tells Daniel to seal the book, that is, the book of Daniel, which draws to a close.
Verses 5 -7
Daniel then saw two other angels, one on each bank of the Tigris, and one of them questions the ‘man clothed in linen’, that is, the angel who has been addressing Daniel up to this point. As we saw for example in Isaiah 40, angels are sometimes portrayed as multivocal, questioning and answering eachother.
The question is ‘How long shall it be to the end of the wonders?’
עד־מתי קץ הפלאות
The linen-clad angel raises both his hands to heaven and swears ‘by Him that lives forever’ – contrasting the eternity of God with the relative and temporal nature of the happenings on earth – ‘for a time, times and a half’. Daniel 7:25 has the Aramaic equivalent of this expression. The fact that this period of time mentioned in Revelations is also referred to as 1260 days is an indication that this could be an idiom meaning ‘a year, two years and half a year’.
Verse 8 – 9
Daniel asks to know what will be the outcome of these things but the angel tells him that the words are now closed and sealed up until the time of the end.
Verse 10
A distinction is made between the wicked and the wise, the רשעים and the משכילים. Maskilim suggests ‘the enlightened’, as in Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in which Moses Mendelssohn was a prominent influence.
Verse 11-12
168 BCE was the beginning of the defilement of the Sanctuary by Antiochus IV, who died approximately four years later in 164. The number of days mentioned in these two verses, 1290 and 1335, like the 1260 previously mentioned, fit approximately the period of persecution by Antiochus.
Verse 13
This verse can be interpreted as speaking of resurrection, meaning that Daniel will rest after death until the time when he is raised up לקץ הימין, ‘at the end of days’. You will recognize this expression from the hymn called the Yigdal, based on Maimonides’ principles of faith, where ‘the end of days’ refers to a messianic time:
ישלח לקץ ימים משיחנו
לפדות מחכי קץ ישועתו
מתים יחיה אל ברוב חסדו
ברוך עדי עד שם תהלתו
And at the end of days
an anointed one will come
redeeming those
who wait for God to save.
Life beyond death,
God gives with greatest love
We bless for evermore
God’s glorious name.
Job 38 – 42
God speaks to Job from a whirlwind. He spoke to Moses through a burning bush, and to Elijah He spoke in a still small voice which followed wind, earthquake and fire.
Theophanies often occur in the bible through natural phenomena, especially extreme weather. Other cultures often held the god of thunder to be preeminent among their gods.
Does God’s answer to Job, which expresses God’s might, transcendence and power of creation, seem any more helpful than the responses of Job’s friends?
God’s first words are a question; ‘Who is this that darkens counsel in words without knowledge?’ Are they a rebuke to Job, who expressed a wish for the darkness of oblivion?
Robert Alter points out that God speaks first of the creation of the earth (38:4-21), then of meteorology (38:22-38), then of zoology (38:39:39:40). The cosmogony includes the control of the sea, also prominent in Mediterranean cultures.
The meteorological verses invoke snow, hail, wind, storm, rain, ice, cloud and lightning, and reference the constellations mentioned by Job in 9:9: the Pleiades, Orion and the Bear. Some translations have ‘rooster’ for sechvi – שכוי in 38:36; BDB suggests celestial phenomenon, meteor or rooster. The word seems to be a hapax. Its meaning in the Yerushalmi is rooster. Lions are distinguished as young or old, lavi and kefir. The bestiary of Job includes the raven, the goat, the gazelle, the donkey, the ox, a large bird which may be a peacock or an ostrich, and the stork, and tells us at least that the author had good zoological knowledge. The verses about the horse have been made familiar to modern theatre-goers by Peter Schaffer, who quoted them in his play Equus. The hawk and the eagle are mentioned. Implicit is God’s providence in the life cycle of all these creatures.
God then calls on Job to answer:
Shall he that contends with the Almighty instruct him? He that reproves God, let him answer it.
Job replies that he is unworthy and has no answer. God speaks again from the whirlwind. He draws Job’s attention to the animal Behemoth, literally ‘beast’ a herbivorous counterpart to leviathan in its mythical proportions. Alter comments that behemoth is derived from the Egyptian hippopotamus, just as leviathan is a mythical version of the Egyptian crocodile. The habitat of behemoth is the river, an indication that this is a hippopotamus rather than a bovine. Rabbinic tradition holds that behemoth and leviathan will be served at the banquet for the righteous in the world to come.
The description of leviathan which follows, sea monster or whale, may be derived from Lotan, the sea monster of Canaanite mythology. Without vocalization, the Hebrew word leviathan -לויתן- resembles the name Lotan.
How can we use this CV of God’s omnipotence?
When Job at last replies he says:
I knew (past tense: ידעתי) that You can do everything.
This significant use of the past tense, not ‘I know now’ but ‘I know already’ is all the more striking as the word is spelled defectively, without a yod at the end. A footnote to the text tells us that the qere is yada’ati. Job’s question in 42:3 ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ is a reference to God’s question to Job: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel, with words without knowledge?’
God asks ‘Mi zeh makhshikh etzah vemilin beli da’at?’
Job retorts ‘Mi zeh ma’lim etzah beli da’at?’
But he is speaking of himself because he goes on to say: ‘I told but did not understand’. Something in Job’s relationship with God has changed – ‘I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, and now, v’atah, my eye has seen You’.
Although God has rebuked Job, when he turns to Eliphaz to rebuke him, He refers to Job as His servant. Eliphaz and his two companions did not speak correctly, nekhonah, of God, unlike Job. The fourth friend, Elihu, is not mentioned; Elihu occupies only chapters 32 – 37.
God tells Eliphaz that he, Bildad and Zophar should offer seven bulls and seven rams, while Job prays on their behalf.
And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.
God says of Job ‘I will lift up his face’; thus Job’s prayer is acceptable when the prayers
of his companions are not. There may be an implication here that the the sacrifice of rams and bulls is less potent than the prayer of the broken and contrite heart.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Why does God lift up Job’s face when He has just rebuked him? How is it that God and Job are reconciled?
The Talmud says the following:
Job speaketh without knowledge, and his words are without wisdom. Raba said: This teaches that a man is not held responsible for what he says when in distress.
Job is reputed in popular culture to epitomise patience, but we have seen that he is not always patient. He can complain just as well as the next person.
Maimonides regards Job’s impatient questioning of God as due to a lack of knowledge which is expressed by Job himself when he says ‘I did not understand’.
However, God’s favouring Job above his friends seems to vindicate Job’s argument that suffering is not an indication of retributive justice and a divine rejection of the view of, for example Eliphaz, ‘Whoever perished, being innocent?’ This may be satisfying dramatically, but it leaves the problem of theodicy unanswered.
Rabbi Theodore Friedman in Encyclopedia Judaica writes:
The enigmatic character and dubious relevance of God’s reply to Job have suggested an interpretation that…denies that the book was written as an attempt to solve the mystery of the suffering of the innocent. Neither the colloquy nor the theophany penetrate to the reason for Job’s suffering. That reason, however, emerges quite clearly from the prologue and epilogue. Job’s suffering is merely a divine test of his piety. In addition to controverting the conventional view that suffering is punishment for sin, the book proposes not an answer but an experience. The message of Job is neither theological nor philosophical. It is profoundly religious.
Job’s agony, suggests Friedman, is that Job feels isolated from God; even that God has become his enemy.
God’s reply from the whirlwind is tantamount to the assurance that suffering need not spell isolation from God.
In his patient role, seen at the beginning of the narrative and in his final answer to God, Job becomes a model of proper conduct in the face of suffering.
A saying from Pirkei Avot is: It is beyond our power to understand why the wicked are at ease, or why the righteous suffer.
In this final chapter, poetry gives way to narrative.In 42:7-8, God refers to Job three times as his servant, avdi Iyyov. It evokes the opening narrative of the book, where, in conversation with Satan, God designates Job His servant. Here God uses the term when talking to Eliphaz.
The friends make the sacrifices as God commands and God restores Job’s fortunes, recomensing hime twice over, we are told; the expression is Hashem shav et shevit Iyyov. There is some similarity to the verse from Isaiah that Israel has received double for all her sins, in that instance, a double portion of retribution.
This is what happens to Job:
His brothers, sisters and friends all come round, eat with him, comfort him, and bring him gifts of money and gold. We know they had stayed away from Job during his afflictions, because he complained that his friends abandoned him. The only people who visited at that time were Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and Elihu.
The quantity of his flocks, camels and cattle does indeed double – precisely twice the numbers mentioned in chapter one.
Whereas he had seven sons at the beginning,he now has fourteen, but the number of daughters is the same: three. Rabbinic comment is that they were twice as beautiful as the daughters he lost.
And he called the name of the first Jemimah, and the name of the second Keziah, and the name of the third Keren-Happuch – Jemimah, because she was like the day [yom]; Keziah, because she emitted a fragrance like cassia [keziah]; Keren-Happuch because – so it was explained in the academy of R. Shila – she had a complexion like the horn of a keresh (antelope).
The pseudepigraphical ‘Testament of Job’ develops the theme of the inheritance Job gave his daughters. The daughters protested that Job had distributed his goods only among his sons, but Job reassured them that he had not forgotten them. He had three golden boxes brought to his daughters and in each box was a beautiful, multicoloured cord – possibly a phylactery. These cords enabled the daughters to speak charismatically, in the dialect of angels, as well as having curative powers, from which Job had benefited during his illness.
There is a masonic order of women called The Order of Job’s Daughters, founded in Omaha, Nebraska in 1920.
There are six extant manuscripts of the Testament of Job, dating from no earlier than the eleventh century, four in Greek, one Slavonic and one Coptic. No Hebrew or Aramaic version is known.
The Septuagint version of Job has an additional paragraph not found in the Masoretic Text:
And it is written that he will rise up again with those whom the Lord raises up.
This man is described in the Syriac book as dwelling in the land of Ausis, on the borders of Idumea and Arabia; and his name before was Jobab; and having taken an Arabian wife, he begat a son whose name was Ennon. He himself was the son of his father Zara, a son of the sons of Esau, and of his mother Bosorrha, so that he was the fifth (*1) from Abraham. And these were the kings who reigned in Edom, which country he also ruled over. First Balak the son of Beor, (*2) and the name of his city was Dennaba. After Balak, Jobab, who is called Job: and after him, Asom, who was governor out of the country of Thaeman; and after him Adad, the son of Barad, that destroyed Madiam in the plain of Moab; and the name of his city was Gethaim. And the friends that came to him were Eliphaz of the sons of Esau, king of the Thaemanites, Baldad sovereign of the Sauchaens, Sophar, king of the Minaeans.
Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus 
Mixed Doubles: some dual narratives and recurring phrases in Tanakh
Posted by: Gillian Gould Lazarus on: January 29, 2012
The Joseph Cycle and the Tamar story in 2 Samuel
‘Have every man go out from me.’
Genesis 45:1
Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried , Cause every man to go out from me.
הוציאו כל־איש מעלי
2 Samuel 13:9
Amnon said, “Send every man out from me.”
ויאמר אמנון הוציאו כל־איש מעלי
The recurrence of this phrase alerts us to the possibility of a single authorial hand, in the Joseph narrative and in the narrative of David’s declining years. It is therefore interesting to find that a coat of many colours, mentioned only twice in Tanakh, occurs within these stories.
Genesis 37:3
Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.
ועשה לו כּתנת פּסּים
2 Samuel 13:18
[Tamar] had a garment of diverse colours upon her: for with such robes were the king’s daughters that were virgins apparelled.
ועליה כּתנת פּסּים
In the case of Tamar, as in the case of Joseph, the tunic is ruined, in a way which represents the harm done to them by one or more siblings.
Genesis 37:23
And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stripped Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colours that was on him.
2 Samuel 13:19
Tamar put ashes on her head, and rent her garment of diverse colours that was on her.
Avenging brothers and emasculated fathers
Staying with late Genesis and 2 Samuel, there are further similarities.
Genesis 34:25
And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore , that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brethren, took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males.
2 Samuel 13:28
Now Absalom had commanded his servants, saying , Mark ye now when Amnon’s heart is merry with wine, and when I say unto you, Smite Amnon; then kill him.
Genesis 35:22
Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine: and Israel heard it.
2 Samuel 16:22
Absalom went in unto his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.
The latter part of the David narrative discredits and dispatches the sons of David one by one, Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah, so that the last man standing is the youngest, Solomon, who succeeds to the throne and perhaps commissions a court history.
Solomon had good relations with Egypt, the evidence being that he traded with Egypt and had an Egyptian wife. The Joseph story is sympathetic to Egypt, to the extent that the author of Exodus, hostile to Egypt, explains that trouble ensued when there arose a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.
Daughters deceiving their fathers to protect their husbands
Genesis 31:19-20
Laban went to shear his sheep: and Rachel had stolen the images that were her father’s. And Jacob stole away unawares to Laban the Syrian, in that he told him not that he fled.
ותּגנב רחל את התּרפים אשר לאביה
1 Samuel 19:12-13
Michal let David down through a window: and he went , and fled , and escaped . And Michal took an image, and laid it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats’ hair for his bolster, and covered it with a cloth.
ותּקּח מיכל את־התּרפים ותּשם אל־המּטּה
Other correspondences between these two stories are that Michal has an elder sister Merab, whom Saul offers in marriage to David but Merab is then married to another – perhaps Saul reneges on his offer. However David marries the younger sister, Michal, who loves him. Obviously Jacob loves and is loved by the younger sister Rachel, and although he does indeed marry the older sister Leah, he is tricked by a slippery, untrustworthy father-in-law.
Angels, rapists and hospitality
Genesis 19
1 The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth 2 and said, “My lords, please turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the town square.” 3 But he pressed them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. 4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. 5 And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” 6 Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, 7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. 8 Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”
Judges 19
[A Levite, his concubine and his servant] went in [to Gibeah]and sat down in the open square of the city, for no one took them into his house to spend the night. 16 And behold, an old man was coming from his work in the field at evening. The man was from the hill country of Ephraim, and he was sojourning in Gibeah. The men of the place were Benjaminites. 17 And he lifted up his eyes and saw the traveler in the open square of the city. And the old man said, “Where are you going? And where do you come from?” 18 And he said to him, “We are passing from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, from which I come. I went to Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to the house of the Lord,but no one has taken me into his house. 19 We have straw and feed for our donkeys, with bread and wine for me and your female servant and the young man with your servants. There is no lack of anything.” 20 And the old man said, “Peace be to you; I will care for all your wants. Only, do not spend the night in the square.” 21 So he brought him into his house and gave the donkeys feed. And they washed their feet, and ate and drank.
22 As they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, worthless fellows, surrounded the house, beating on the door. And they said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came into your house, that we may know him.” 23 And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly; since this man has come into my house, do not do this vile thing. 24 Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his [the man’s] concubine. Let me bring them out now. Violate them and do with them what seems good to you, but against this man do not do this outrageous thing.” 25 But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine and made her go out to them.
Annunciations and resurrections
Genesis 18:10-12
He said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.’ And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.
Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?”
Judges 13:2-3
[Manoah’s] wife was barren and had no children.
And the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.’
2 Kings 4:16-17
And [Elisha] said, “At this season, about this time next year, you shall embrace a son.” And she said, “No, my lord, O man of God; do not lie to your servant.”
But the woman conceived, and she bore a son about that time the following spring, as Elisha had said to her.
Abraham and Sarah are visited by three men, who appear to be angelic especially as God speaks directly to Abraham in verse 13. Samson’s parents are visited by an angel and we are not told the name of Samson’s mother. The Shunamite woman is visited by a prophet, not an angel; we are told neither her name nor the name of her son.
There are other barren women who become pregnant, but without the feature of supernatural annunciation. In the case of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, Eli does not prophesy but says ‘Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.’ Rebecca becomes pregnant after Isaac’s prayer is answered and is told by God that she is expecting twins when she worries about her unusual pregnancy. Rachel becomes pregnant when God remembers her and heeds her prayers.
1 Kings 17-24
After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill. And his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. And she said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!” And he said to her, “Give me your son.” And he took him from her arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged, and laid him on his own bed. And he cried to the LORD, “O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?” Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the LORD, “O LORD my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And the LORD listened to the voice of Elijah. And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother. And Elijah said, “See, your son lives.” And the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth.”
2 Kings 4:32-37
When Elisha came into the house, he saw the child lying dead on his bed. So he went in and shut the door behind the two of them and prayed to the LORD. Then he went up and lay on the child, putting his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands. And as he stretched himself upon him, the flesh of the child became warm. Then he got up again and walked once back and forth in the house, and went up and stretched himself upon him. The child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes. Then he summoned Gehazi and said, “Call this Shunammite.” So he called her. And when she came to him, he said, “Pick up your son.” She came and fell at his feet, bowing to the ground. Then she picked up her son and went out.
Like Abraham and Sarah, these mothers seem to be in danger of losing their sons, their only sons, whom they love, and like Isaac, the boys are spared.
The chariots and horsemen of Israel
2 Kings 2:8-14
Elijah took his cloak and rolled it up and struck the water, and the water was parted to the one side and to the other, till the two of them could go over on dry ground.
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you.” And Elisha said, “Please let there be a double portion of your spirit on me.”
And he said, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you, but if you do not see me, it shall not be so.”
And as they still went on and talked, behold, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.
And Elisha saw it and he cried, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And he saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.
And he took up the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan.
Then he took the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and struck the water, saying, “Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” And when he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.
2 Kings 13:14
Now when Elisha had fallen sick with the illness of which he was to die, Joash king of Israel went down to him and wept before him, crying, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!”
Someone better
1 Samuel 15:28
And Samuel said to him, “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbour of yours, who is better than you.
קרע יי את־ממלכות ישראל מעליך היום ונתנה לרעך הטּוב ממּךּ
Esther 1:19
Let the king give her royal position to another who is better than she.
ומלכותהּ יתּן המּלך לרעותהּ הטּובה ממּנּה
In Esther, royalty is restored to the tribe of Benjamin, represented by Queen Esther, while in 1 Samuel, it is torn away from Saul the Benjaminite, and given to David, of Judah. The repetition of the phrase ‘…give it to his/her neighbour who is better than him/her’ seems more than coincidence.
The relationship between Samuel and Esther, or Samuel/Kings and Chronicles perhaps resembles the relationship between scripture and midrash. The later text is a discrete narrative entity; it has its own agenda and sitz im leben and is much more than a commentary, but it yields most when read in conjunction with the text which inspired it.
Non-Hebrew traditions
David Damrosch suggests that biblical narrative fuses the genres of poetic epic and historical chronicle, applying older epic traditions to historical persons and situations. Thus the story of David includes themes from epic poetry: the giant slaying, being chosen for kingship, the rebellious son. In medieval Europe, these themes show up in Arthurian legends.
Certain themes recur in myths and legends of all cultures: the Creation, fratricide, floods, killing monsters, babies who are abandoned, rescued and go on to great things; adultery, people ascending, like Elijah, directly to heaven; James Frazer in the Golden Bough shows the ubiquity of the scapegoat, and the story of Job appears in several versions of the Ancient Near East, including the Canaanite tale of King Keret, excavated at Ras Shamra.