Latest Essays

Ezekiel pictures Eden as a garden filled with precious stones—the same stones that adorn the high priest’s breastpiece. Across the ancient Near East, gods inhabit a world of jewel-bearing trees, gemstone mountains, and temples of lapis and gold. By wearing these stones when he enters YHWH’s sanctuary, the high priest dresses for the divine realm.

Was sacrifice centralized in the Tabernacle in the wilderness, or were the people permitted to sacrifice wherever they pleased? This straightforward question defies a simple answer.

To consume meat, Exodus (20:24) requires that the animal be sacrificed at a local altar, i.e., in any place where YHWH proclaims His name. When Deuteronomy centralized the cult to “the place,” it had to permit secular slaughter for those who lived far away, and it did so by presenting this innovation as an interpretation of the older law.

Is the Torah concerned with compassionate treatment of animals? The command to send away a mother bird before taking her eggs or chicks is one of four animal family laws that highlight the bonds between animals and their offspring. But these laws are not about preventing emotional pain for the animals—they ask us to recognize their familial bonds, even when humans ultimately override them.

Samson’s adventures begin with a marriage to a Philistine bride that goes awry, leading him to burn the Philistines’ grain fields. Later, he sleeps with a Gazan prostitute and tears out the city’s gates. Finally, he leads Delilah, a courtesan, to believe that his hair is the source of his strength, and the Philistines capture him. Facing execution, Samson turns to God to help avenge him—only then does he fulfill his foretold role that he would begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines

The promised land is described in Deuteronomy (12:9) by the hendiadys מְנוּחָה, menuchah, and נַחֲלָה, nachalah—a resting-place and heritage-land—and both terms are used several times in the Bible to refer to the land of Israel. Millennia later, these terms are given an afterlife in Jewish liturgy in reference to Shabbat; sacred space is anchored in time.

Josephus, an eyewitness to the Temple, defends its splendor and its laws to the Greco-Roman world. He takes the reader on a tour of the building in its heyday, explaining details such as how far Non-Jews and women were permitted to proceed and what lay inside, while also countering Apion’s slanderous depictions of donkey worship and human sacrifice within its walls. By opening the Mosaic constitution with the Temple and grounding its rituals in Torah law, Josephus presents it as an enduring foundation of Jewish tradition, whose significance outlives the building itself.

Can translators improve texts like Shakespeare? Or the Bible? Christians, drawing on the Greek Septuagint, claimed that the voice in the wilderness (Isaiah 40:3) refers to John the Baptist. Jews, relying instead on the Aramaic Targum, viewed this verse as explicitly foretelling the return of Jewish exiles after the destruction of the Second Temple. But what did Isaiah actually mean?

In the early post-exilic period, the people ask the prophet Zechariah whether they should still fast to commemorate the destruction of the Temple now that it was being rebuilt. Zechariah, in a long collection of oracles, explains that the fasts will eventually be cancelled, once the people (7:9–10) “Execute true justice; deal loyally and compassionately with one another; do not defraud the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor; and do not plot evil against one another.” So, did they ever cancel the fasts?

In the 1950s, Yehezkel Kaufmann challenged the regnant Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis that the Priestly Text was the final Pentateuchal source to be written, and that it dates to the Post-Exilic Period. One pillar of his argument is that the Priestly Text seems wholly ignorant of Deuteronomy’s 7^th century B.C.E. law of centralization of worship, and thus dates to earlier in the First Temple period. And yet, a closer look at P’s laws shows that it is simply taking centralization for granted.

Biblical scholars employ many methods to interpret the text, but one perspective is often overlooked: reading the Bible as the work of writers. Attending to the authors’ literary and aesthetic choices can illuminate meanings that other approaches miss.

Standing in the Transjordan, Moses describes how the previous inhabitants had been the frightening, gigantic Rephaim (lit. “healers”). Elsewhere in the Bible, rephaim are powerless shades, living in the underworld, Sheol. Greek epic also preserves a memory of Meropes as a population of giants living on the island of Cos, and the term meropes also refers to “healers” who serve as priests of the god Asklepius. In both cases, these memories derive from the West Semitic Rapi’ūma, deified royal ancestors invoked in Ugaritic rituals to bless king and land.

Sons, and then daughters, brothers, and paternal uncles all inherit, but the Bible is silent about spouses. The Talmud, in a midrashic reading of the laws of inheritance (Numbers 27:8–11) that the sages themselves admit is not what the verses say, adds that husbands are first to inherit from wives, but wives do not inherit from their husbands. Rashi and Ibn Ezra differ on whether a biblical verse can support both midrashic and peshat interpretations.

The discoveries from the caves of Qumran yielded hundreds of psalms and prayers. Some of these derived from the sectarian community known as the Yaḥad, who lived there. Others came from diverse Jewish communities, and were preserved and presumably used by the Yaḥad as part of their twice-daily “offering of the lips” as an alternative to the “defiled” sacrifices being offered in the Temple. These documents offer invaluable evidence concerning the origin of fixed communal prayer in Judaism.

How should Israel act among the nations? How does YHWH express Himself in history? Micah’s deliberately ambiguous images of שְׁאֵרִית יַעֲקֹב, “the remnant of Jacob,” as both dew and a lion (5:6–8) place the burden of interpretation on readers themselves, who must decide how divine action, human agency, and the remnant’s relationship with the nations are to be understood.

So why does YHWH instruct Moses to conquer the Transjordanian territory of King Sihon? Deuteronomy knows that Israelites lived in the Transjordan and claims that they applied the Deuteronomic law of ḥerem to Amorites living there. Thus, YHWH hardens Sihon’s heart, forcing him to fight the Israelites, giving them a reason to annihilate the local Amorites and ensuring that they would not be led astray by their idolatry.

Does the Bible prohibit intermarriage with non-Israelites? Not originally. Deuteronomy only prohibits intermarriage with the Canaanite nations. Faced with an intermarriage crisis in Persian Period Yehud, Ezra and Nehemiah reinterpret texts from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, thereby extending the prohibition of intermarriage to all the peoples of the land from their times.

The “thirteen attributes” portray YHWH as compassionate and forgiving, yet they are immediately followed by a declaration of divine justice (Exodus 34:6–7). The tension between these two aspects of YHWH’s character is visible in King David’s sin with Bathsheba: Nathan confronts him, he confesses his guilt, but the consequences remain in place. When David’s son Absalom rebels and he flees Jerusalem, David accepts this suffering as the price of his sin. Paradoxically, it is this acceptance that becomes the path to his restoration and return to the throne.

Dan, born to Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, is later described in Jacob’s blessing as “one of the tribes of Israel,” a formulation that suggests a need to affirm its place within Israel. The tribe is also portrayed in biblical texts as culturally distinct: seafarers, craftsmen, migrants, and figures who intermarry with non-Israelites, including Samson, a tribal hero with decidedly non-Israelite characteristics. Archaeological evidence from Tel Dan suggests that Dan began as a foreign group that was only later incorporated into Israel. Where were the Danites originally from?

Inscribed in silver and rolled into scrolls, the Ketef Hinnom amulets, ca. 6th century B.C.E., contain an early version of the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6:24–26). More than an important textual witness, they reveal that protective ritual practices were an integral part of Judahite religion, and show how divine blessing could be worn on the body, transforming sacred words into a tangible safeguard against danger, illness, and misfortune.

After Miriam is stricken with a skin affliction for speaking badly of Moses, Aaron begs Moses to forgive her, and Moses prays to God for her healing with five words: אֵל נָא רְפָא נָא לָהּ “O God, pray, heal her.” But the original prayer was likely different.

In 1571, a widowed woman, unable to light a fire, screams “to Satan with you” at the flint and tinder and soon finds herself possessed by an evil spirit. Notably, she also does not believe in the exodus. Only after she repents does the kabbalist Hayyim Vital exorcise the spirit through her little toe. Before doing so, Vital interrogates the spirit to learn why it has not yet entered Gehenna (hell) and how it has been wandering the earth from Hormuz to Gaza to Shechem.

A husband who suspects his wife of adultery is obligated to bring her before YHWH to undergo a unique test of innocence or guilt. The woman’s hair is provocatively disheveled, and a foul-smelling barley offering is presented on her behalf, attracting YHWH’s negative attention and prompting Him to identify—and violently punish—any concealed sexual transgression.

After seeing the divine messenger who announces Samson’s birth, Manoah, his father, fears death. Captured by the Philistines and blinded, Samson seeks death. The parallel is deliberate: where Manoah sees the divine yet fails to understand, Samson loses his sight and only then recognizes YHWH. The reversal is sharpened by the role of prayer in the narrative: Samson’s parents never pray for a child, but Samson himself prays in his final moments, crying out for strength, vengeance, and death.

The parallels between Proverbs 22:17–23:11 and the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope are well established. But how can their specific similarities—and differences—be explained? Rather than simply borrowing Egyptian wisdom traditions, the Hebrew author adopted the very scribal techniques used in Egyptian schools to study and transmit such texts, composing a wisdom teaching in Egyptian style that became part of the Book of Proverbs.