Latest Essays

Deuteronomy’s law of the beautiful captive woman protects the non-Israelite woman taken in war from rape and from being re-enslaved after marriage. At the same time, it discourages the man from marrying her, in order to preserve the interests of the Israelite family.

Upon a childless husband’s death, Deuteronomy states “his wife shall not marry a strange man outside.” This phrase originated as a contract clause, and the case was a practice exercise for scribes who were learning contract clauses.

Deuteronomy refers to the central cult site as the place where YHWH chooses לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ שָׁם,  an unusual phrase often translated “to cause His name to dwell there,” and interpreted to mean that an abstracted aspect or hypostasis of YHWH takes up residence in the Temple. A parallel phrase found in many Akkadian inscriptions refutes this understanding, offering us a critically important correction to our reading of Deuteronomy.

Jeremiah urges Judah to submit to Babylon while Hananiah claims that Babylon will soon fall. Both use the same prophetic tropes to convince their listeners. Maimonides reads this story as a blueprint for distinguishing true prophets from false ones.

The festival calendar in Deuteronomy 16 began as a short revision of the calendar in Exodus 23. As it was expanded to clarify and adjust its details, it merged its springtime Matzot festival with the Pesach offering, which was originally connected to the consecration of firstborn animals.

In the Bible, Tubal-cain is the inventor metallurgy, the Canaanites fight with iron chariots, and the Philistines control iron usage. What does archaeology tell us about when and how iron was introduced into the Levant?

The agrarian import of Deuteronomy 11:14‒15, found in what Jewish readers know as the second paragraph of the Shema prayer, may not be self-evident to modern readers, the majority of whom live in urban and suburban settings. The text speaks directly to both those who grew crops and those who engaged in animal husbandry.

Israelite women are conspicuously absent from the Decalogue’s Shabbat law. Three stories in the Prophets featuring female characters—Rahab the prostitute, the great woman of Shunem, and Queen Athaliah—each tie to Shabbat in some unconventional way.

By identifying biblical intertexts and parallel phrases, we can better understand the flow, the imagery, and even the core message of Eichah, Lamentations.

Tears abound in Lamentations: the poet cries, the people cry, even the city cries, but God does not. In contrast, the gods and goddesses of ancient Near Eastern city laments, cry along with their people. Midrash Eichah Rabbah, seemingly uncomfortable with such a callous depiction of God, rereads Lamentations to include God weeping.

What does this phrase, found in Numbers 32:38, mean?

An emotionally evocative window into the suffering experienced by the victims of the siege of Jerusalem.

Even before Israel receives laws at Sinai, Exodus tells how Jethro the Midianite advises Moses to establish judges, a unique origin story for the judicial system with no parallel in ancient Near Eastern law collections. Deuteronomy revises the story to credit Moses with this idea after the revelation at Horeb.

Blood has a significant role in many biblical stories and rituals, most prominently in the atonement sacrifices of Leviticus. With the destruction of the Temple and the loss of sacrifices, Judaism and Christianity took very different paths to achieving atonement.

The Torah is often used to highlight various ethical values while its many ethically problematic commandments are ignored or explained away. Is there a way to treat the Torah as a moral authority while honestly confronting the ethical issues it raises?

Amos and Zechariah mention an earthquake in the time of King Uzziah. Its effects were uncovered in the excavations at Tel Agol in the Jezreel Valley: It turned the city, fortified for centuries to defend against the Assyrian threat, into a poor squatter town that could not recover.

The Torah describes God creating through speech, midrash mores specifically understands creation through the letters of the aleph-bet, and the kabbalists envision it as a series of divine emanations, contractions, and primal pairings. What meaning can we find in these ancient creation myths in light of evolution?

Crossing Wadi Zered marks the end of Israel’s 38-year sojourn in the wilderness and their entry into the land. Why does its location differ in Numbers and Deuteronomy?

The shift in biblical exegesis from homiletic readings to literary, contextual commentaries has its roots in Charlemagne’s 9th century Carolingian Revolution. It comes to the fore only in the 11th century with Rashi’s quasi-peshat commentary, soon followed by the peshat approach of R. Joseph Kara and Rashbam.

Miriam and Aaron speak negatively about Moses for marrying a Kushite woman. Does their issue have to do with her skin color? Miriam’s punishment may hold the key.

The use of the unusual verb מִדַּבֵּר, middabber in Numbers 7:89 suggests that YHWH does not speak to Moses in the literal and simple sense.