The story of the flowering staff in its current form and context, confirms YHWH’s previous designation of the Aaronides as priests. Originally, however, the story presented YHWH’s selection of the tribe of Levi as his priestly caste.

Moses gives several instructions to the Israelites concerning manna: How it should be gathered, prepared, consumed, and preserved, and what to do with it on Shabbat. The phrasing and details of these instructions are Moses’ creative elaboration of God’s original laconic command.

Faced with a lack of water, the Israelites complain to Moses that they “have no grain or pomegranates.” This narrative discontinuity together with other textual anomalies suggest that interwoven into the Merivah story is the missing opening verses of the non-Priestly spies story.

Moses striking the Nile to kill the fish and make the water stink eventually developed into the plague of blood: a case of mythological amplification and its reverse.

A new solution to why Canaan (not Ham) was cursed.

In the 14th century, R. Nissim of Marseilles suggested that God told Moses only the general command for the Mishkan and the laws in the Torah, and Moses himself wrote the details and attributed them to God as a way of glorifying God. A close look at many passages in Deuteronomy suggests that this was an early conception of Moses’ role in commanding the mitzvot.

Leviticus 16 – ויקרא טז

In the Priestly texts, observing the divine commandments became an end in itself while the unique meaning or purpose of the particular mitzvah took on less significance. Concomitantly, P asserted the need for personal atonement through a chatat (sin offering) for even unintentionally violating God’s commandments.

After Korah’s failed rebellion, God commands Elazar to plate the altar with the bronze firepans of the two hundred and fifty tribal leaders (Num 17). But didn’t Bezalel already plate the altar in bronze as God commanded when it was first built (Exod 27 and 38)?

The Torah implores us to remember and teach the exodus, yet surprisingly, some biblical passages seem unaware of this event and describe an alternative tradition: God found Israel in the wilderness.

After commissioning Moses at the burning bush, God commissions Moses again in Midian, and then again on his way to Egypt. In this third commission, God instructs Moses to tell Pharaoh, “Let My son go, that he may worship Me, yet you refuse to let him go. Now I will slay your firstborn son” (Exod 4:22-23). How does this narrative fit into the exodus story?

Exodus versus Deuteronomy

The biblical text is unclear about why Datan and Abiram are rebelling. A careful look at their words shows that they are complaining about the land they are already living in.

The Book of Jonah depicts the animals being dressed in sackcloth and mourning along with the people. Are the Ninevites fools or repentants?

Before circumcision was a mitzvah, it was a cultural marker: Thus Joshua introduces circumcision to Israel at Gilgal (Joshua 5:2-9), Jacob’s sons insist that the Shechemites circumcise before Shechem marries their sister (Genesis 34), and the Israelites scorn the Philistines for being uncircumcised (Judges 14:3).

“There is nothing at all, nothing but this manna” (Num 11:6): How the manna tradition overtook the suffering in the wilderness tradition.

Turning the brothers’ unprovoked attack on Shechem into Simeon and Levi’s rescue of Dinah

The scribes who wrote the addendum to the laws of Sukkot (Lev 23:42-43) used inner-biblical exegesis to explain the requirement to dwell in booths as a commemoration for the miraculous booths (not clouds) that God created for the Israelites at their first stop on the way to freedom. 

A supplementary approach to the theological conundrum of Pharaoh’s heavy heart

Exploring ten aspects of the Song’s narrative and what they tell us about its origins.

A fire comes forth from God and devours Nadav and Avihu but God does not actually say anything. It is Moses who infers what God was communicating through this act and even formulates a law based on his understanding of God’s message.

A polyphonic approach to reading the Torah

A Successful Challenge to Moses’ Control Over Prophecy 

When Balaam and Balak were Independent Characters

Reactive vs. Goal oriented

Maimonides believes any story with angels is a prophetic vision while Ramban believes they are real occurrences and calls Maimonides’ position “forbidden to believe” – what is at stake in this debate?

After the two hundred and fifty tribal leaders, led by Korah, were burnt, God tells Elazar to use the fire-pans to plate the altar to remind Israel that only priests may offer incense (Num 17:5). But is this the original reason for the plating? A redaction-critical analysis shows that the story once had a different purpose in mind.

Deuteronomy has Moses receiving a revelation at Horeb, but only teaching the Israelites its contents decades later in the Land of Moab. This two-step revelatory process, which is presented as two covenants (Deut 28:69), masks an earlier form of Deuteronomy that had no record of a Horeb revelation. 

The exodus story, which is presented as the basis for many of the Torah’s rituals, is a secondary insertion in many of these contexts.

The Sinai theophany is virtually absent from the Bible outside of the Torah and the very late book of Nehemiah. This absence reflects an alternative tradition that sees Israel’s laws as deriving from multiple small revelations from prophets throughout history. 

A New Appreciation of “Adam the First” 

What are the favorable qualities of the land of Israel and what is God’s relationship to it?

Exodus narrates three distinct conceptions of God’s relationship to Pharaoh’s stubbornness: God was surprised, God knew beforehand, and God was the direct cause. This essay focuses on the development of the final conception in the Priestly redaction of the Torah, and how and why the Priestly authors did not leave the destiny of the plagues to Pharaoh’s own heart.

 Making Sense of the Opening of Vaeira

“YHWH said to Moses: ‘Come up to me on the mountain and stay there so that I might give you the tablets of stone and the teaching and the commandment that I have written to teach them.’”—Exodus 24:12

An In-Depth Study of Deuteronomy’s Polemical Revision of the Yitro/Judges Account

A New Reading of Psalm 95

“And the Lord Blessed the Seventh Day and Consecrated It” (Genesis 2:3). Can time be blessed?

On Rosh Hashanah, we pray for the future exclusive divine kingship presented in Aleinu. At the same time, the psalm of the shofar (Ps 47) offers us an alternative approach, to stop waiting for God’s eschatological intervention and start seeing kinship with other religious groups, all of whom are the “Am Elohei Avraham,” the retinue of the God of Abraham.