Latest Essays

The Amalekites in most of the Bible are unremarkable; they are just one of the several tribes which Israel battles. Why then do Exodus and Deuteronomy present them as Israel’s ultimate enemy, whom YHWH has commanded to wipe out?

“Gods of masekhah you shall not make for yourself,” Exodus 34:17 - When the northerners and southerners debated the legitimacy of masks.

The Tabernacle is completed on the first of Nisan (Exodus 40) and is consecrated eight days later (Leviticus 9). And yet, the Book of Chronicles, Biblical Antiquities, and the Rabbis read these accounts as describing the same event. Indeed, the Torah’s final editor may have understood the texts as a continuous narrative, but chose to emphasize different themes of the Tabernacle by separating them.

In a joint venture, the Phoenician King Hiram and King Solomon go to Tarshish to bring back silver—the Levant has no silver deposits of its own. Where is Tarshish? Archaeological science, specifically, the ability to trace the chemical fingerprint of silver, and Phoenician inscriptions such as the Nora Stone, point us to the answer(s).

Using the metaphor of Israel as YHWH’s vineyard, three biblical texts—Isaiah 5, Psalm 80 and Isaiah 27—grapple with Judah’s destruction and the hope for its future recovery.

Northern Israel worshipped El/YHWH in the form of a golden bull. The Bible mocks this graven representation of the divinity by describing it as a calf.

To avoid accidentally showing their genitals, the Torah requires priests to wear underwear. Exodus 20, however, implies that priests don’t wear underpants, which is why they must access the altar via a ramp. Indeed, King David does expose himself when doing cartwheels before the ark, leading his wife Michal to rebuke him.

The Torah requires a man who marries his maidservant to treat her as a wife, providing her with food, clothing, and onah, a term that has been interpreted as shelter, anointing oil, or conjugal rights. The latter is the traditional understanding, which Shadal defends. Critiquing Maimonides’ philosophical attitude to sexuality, Shadal claims that the Torah here is recognizing a woman’s sexual needs.

The original biblical prohibition before it was interpreted to forbid cooking or consuming meat and milk together.

After Sinai, Moses writes down YHWH’s Laws on a scroll and reads it to the people (Exodus 24). Similarly, Moses writes down the Deuteronomic Torah, which will be read to the people every seven years (Deuteronomy 31). Using the literary mirroring technique, mise en abyme, the Torah connects its authority to these ancient scrolls on one hand, and its readers with the ancient Israelite audience on the other.

Biblical authors struggled to explain why Canaanites remained on the land after Israel settled it. Exodus (23:29–30) and Deuteronomy (7:22) suggest that Israel needed time to settle the land. The opening of Joshua reimagines the past to include an Israelite Blitzkrieg that removed the inhabitants entirely. Other approaches see the remaining Canaanites as a punishment (Judges 2) or a test of Israel's resolve (Joshua 23).

Why?