When Amnon presses his sister Tamar to sleep with him, she begs him to ask the king for her hand in marriage. Was such a marriage really an option in ancient Israel? After Amnon rapes Tamar, King David is angry, but silent. Why is it Absalom who feels compelled to avenge her?

Jonah is resentful when God is ready to forgive the wicked city of Nineveh, and his book ends with God trying to change Jonah’s perspective. Whether or not God was successful, on Yom Kippur we read the words of Micah (7:18–20) as if Jonah finally accepts God’s compassionate nature.

The primordial man and woman may believe they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, but they actually ate from the Life-Giving Tree. This causes a chain reaction leading to the emergence of sexuality, procreation, and continuity for the human species.

The simple meaning of Genesis 1–2:4 is that God created the world out of primordial elements. And yet, one important new initiative was the construction of time, embracing the day, the month, the year, and the week. The week, however, does not depend on a cosmic phenomenon but served to introduce the concept of a people holy to a creator God.

Understanding the practice of dream interpretation in the Joseph story by using the ANE interpretive traditions as background.

The haftarah for Chukkat cuts off the end of the Jephthah story, ending on a triumphant note, with the defeat of Ammon. When looking at the whole story, however, we are presented with something very different. In Judges, Jephthah is a manipulative leader, who forces everyone’s hand, including God’s. Although his tactics lead to the defeat of Ammon, they also lead him to sacrifice his own daughter and to massacre thousands of his own brethren.