Acting in Self Defense

It is common sense that when acting in self-defense, one is justified to commit some major violations of other people's rights. In fact, if your very life is being threatened, I think most people will agree that you are entitled to kill another human, if that's what it takes to remove the threat. The question therefore is, where do we draw the line? Are we to carry a pistol and shoot to death anyone who annoys us, however minutely? Or, are we to sit idly by and do nothing while our rights, financial entitlements and sometimes our lives are being threatened, because the law says that we're not supposed to be violent?

Before I proceed, let me make it clear that the law is meaningless when it comes to these matters. Common law is vital for a successful society to exist and someone who has no regard for the law of the land will invariably not be able to survive. But does the law always act in our best interest?

My car was once parked on a Brooklyn street some two years ago on a street-cleaning day and I got a ticket, as occurred countless times prior. But there was one major thing different that day. There was no sign on that entire block posting the street cleaning rules (SCR). The ticket wasn't that much and perhaps it would have been easier for me to pay it off rather than bother fighting it but being as I am -an extremely principled person- I decided to fight it. I took several high-res 8x10 pictures of the ENTIRE block from various angles and I presented them to the judge. Those pictures clearly showed that there was no SCR sign. Yet the judge denied my appeal claiming that the pictures were inadequate.

I was playing 10-20 Holdem in Play Station once and I posted my big blind while a gypsy asshole to my left was raking in the pot. He raked my $10 big blind in together with his pot. When I tried to get my money back, he wouldn't hear it. He was insistent that it was his money and that I never posted the blind. The floorperson ultimately sided with him and I had to post again.

These are just two among many examples where I was clearly wronged. In these two cases, there wasn't much I could do to make things right and so I swallowed the bullet and moved on with life. But the real question here is: am I "supposed" to put up with these just because there is no way I can legally fight them? If there was a way to reverse these wrongs, how far am I justified to go in doing so? The answer might surprise you!

When it comes to personal decisions, "common law" is irrelevant. What matters is how to serve your best interests while imposing the minimal injury or damage upon others. And the reason we try to avoid injuring others if possible is simply because it is not economical to do so. Each and every person on this planet serves and important role in the overall welfare of the global civilization. Evolution has worked extremely hard over Billions of years to create this marvelous creature we call "human" and it is therefore imprudent to "do away" with any human we dislike. In other words: it might be in our own best long-term interest to let the gypsy asshole and the unscrupulous judge --and other people like these-- live. Even if they don't serve my immediate best interest, they might do so in the future or they might be important to people who are important to me, thus indirectly acting out a constructive role in my life. It is also important to note that people are naturally kind and cooperative. If and when they act in a hostile manner it is usually due to a perceived threat. Thus even though the gypsy thief and the inept judge are hurting me, they are not doing so in premeditated, deliberate manner. In other words, they are not going out of their way to rob me or pervert justice. In other aspects of their lives --I am sure-- they serve some very useful roles. They might have loving wives, good children, productive jobs etc... Yet, even these guys only narrowly escape the death sentence if I had to judge and act according to my "personal law" (which is admittedly non-binding).

People who Deserve the Death Sentence

Do not be afraid to mete out the death penalty to your enemies! Remember that the nurse who saved Hitler's life when he was a baby was acting "mercifully" while in fact creating the biggest monster the world had ever seen. That act was not mercy; it was an act of hatred. Mercy would have been to take the baby and smother him to death, thus saving the lives of tens of millions of innocents.

People who continuously engage in behavior that is detrimental to the average person, do not have the license to live. With their "license to live" revoked, they are walking targets and may theoretically be shot to death at the hands of any person suffering under their wicked actions. It's really a question of weighing the person's pros and cons. If he is engaged in too much negative behavior and not enough positive behavior (not just towards you), then they have no right to live.

One example that easily comes to mind are traffic cops. These people often do nothing other than lurking on the side of the road waiting to pounce upon a speeding motorist. They do this on the first of the month, on the 15th and on the 30th, in the morning, afternoon and evening; that's all they ever do. If you get caught speeding or committing any traffic infraction, it does not matter how lenient the circumstances are or whether the intent of the law was for such a particular act to be illegal, they WILL give you a hefty summons (between $180 and $300 on the Garden State Parkway, NJ), no questions asked and no pleas for forgiveness accepted.

Are they providing any benefit to the common people? Absolutely not! Speeding is not the cause of accidents or any other harm to other people (and neither is not wearing a seat belt). These cops are essentially trying to raise money for the local town by unjustly accusing speeding motorists of committing a violation of the common good. There is, in fact, no violation of the common good in speeding; there is just one thing: municipalities and their cop agents lining their pockets by robbing innocent people at gunpoint; that's essentially what it is since if you don't pay the ticket you get your driver's license and registration revoked.

This case is more severe --in my opinion-- than the previous two cases even though these cops seem extremely innocent and are supposedly acting within the framework of the law. The key incriminating factor here is that they do nothing else and they make a deliberate attempt to inflict harm on many innocent people. It's one thing if they helped some people and hurt others or if they stopped drivers who were really out of control. As it is, however, circumstances are irrelevant to them. Their mission is to "trap" speeding motorists by a fluke of the law. If you have a loaded gun in your car when you get pulled over and know that you could avoid State "retribution" for your justified cop murder in self-defense, then the correct thing for you to do is shoot him right in the head and take off. If enough people will do this, then these bandits will eventually learn to leave motorists alone. Palestinians fought Israelis for years and the Israelis finally realized that the best thing is "disengagement"; just leave your enemy alone. Hopefully, those criminal cops will disengage as well.

Some of the other outrageous tickets I received are listed below:

I was waiting in line for a toll booth at the Verrezano Bridge. The car in front of me was stopped at the booth and was not moving for a prolonged time. I noticed this from afar and so I hesitated while approaching him from behind, so as to be able to switch to another lane if he is indeed "stuck" or there is some other problem. The cop pulled me aside and cited me for "obstruction of traffic".

On Feb 12 2006 on a Saturday night while returning to Brigantine, NJ from Brooklyn, NY on a snowy and slippery night, I skidded on the GSP, I mistakenly braked in panic, spun out of control, slammed into a tree and totaled my car. Instead of sympathizing with my plight, the cop cited me for "careless driving" (a 4-point violation) and never asked if I was okay or offered me the warmth of his vehicle while I was waiting for the tow truck (40 minutes) in my cold shattered-rear-window car.

These are the kind of cops who deserve the death penalty, albeit it is unenforceable!

Feb 22 2006

In this document I will discuss passages in the Hebrew Bible where I believe the Masoretes mis-punctuated the text or there is a copyist error. This is commonly called "lower criticism". Masorete errors include:

• wrong end of verse
• wrong end of chapter
• wrong vowels
• wrong spelling - a waw is commonly confused with a yod and a daleth with a resh

Copyist errors are more difficult to identify and they usually involve mis-spelled words. I will also make note of all instances where I believe that a prefixed waw is an explanatory waw and not an appending waw. In other words, the "waw" indicates that the following verse is an explanation and elaboration of the previous phrase, NOT an addition to it.

When I want to eliminate or change a word, I will enclose it in parenthesis and the correct word will be placed in boxed parenthesis.

Article 1:
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פרשת בראשית א בְּרֵאשִׁית (בָּרָא) בְּרֹא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ (: ב) וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחשֶׁךְ עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם:

This is the first verse in the Bible and it is so unfortunate that it has been misinterpreted by most scholars. The second word in the first verse could be pronounced "bara" and be a verb "created" and it could also be pronounced "beroh" (according to masoretic pronunciation) and be a noun "creation". The Masoretes mistakenly decided that it’s a verb and most --if not all-- subsequent translations followed suit. Big mistake! the P author is saying that in the beginning of god’s creation of heaven and earth, the earth was formless and void and there was darkness upon the face of the deep thus necessitating the special godly command that there shall be light. He is not saying that in the beginning, god created heaven and earth.

There are several indicators that the masorete understanding is wrong. First, The P creation account is modeled after the J creation account (2:4-25) and in the J account this introductory statement that at first there was nothing, is articulated very clearly: "every plant of the field had yet to be on earth, and every herb of the field had yet to grow" (2:5). Second, verses 6-10 explain how god created the heaven and earth on the second and third day, respectively. This is a direct contradiction to the statement made in verse 1 according to the masorete understanding that in the beginning (that is, on the first day, even before there was light), god created heaven and earth. Third, we see from the creations in subsequent days that each day was devoted to the creation of only one major element on earth. At the very least, the P author pauses after each major creation by saying that "god saw that it was good". According to the masorete understanding, however, there are three major elements created in the first day: light, heaven and earth. Lastly, the language used in verse 1 simply does not match the style of the P author for expressing creational events. In most of the other events, god orders that objects should come into existence, they do so ("wayehi ken"), and he then names the objects and he sees that they are good. Also, P always uses a verb that begins with a waw .(וַיַּעַשֹ וַיֹּאמֶר וַיִּקְרָא וַיִּתֵּן וַיַּרְא וַיִּבְרָא וַיְבָרֶךְ)

Now before I leave this P creation story, I must caution that the first day’s events are still quite problematic. Even according to my interpretation, light is said to be created on the first day and this contradicts the story of light’s creation on the fourth day. I think there is a possibility that the original story of creation from which the P account is derived (which is --by the way-- of Babylonian origin) did not say that anything was created on the first day, or possibly god himself is said to have been born on that day. To the Jewish P audience, however, god could not be perceived as an entity that was born at a given time and did not exist previously. They had to assign some object as the creation of the first day and they therefore took the light from the fourth day and placed it in the first day. According to this understanding, verse 18 originally read:

יח וְלִמְשֹׁל בַּיּוֹם וּבַלַּיְלָה וּלְהַבְדִּיל בֵּין הָאוֹר וּבֵין הַחשֶׁךְ וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים כִּי-טוֹב וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר יוֹם רְבִיעִי:

Upon moving the creation of light to the first day, the phrase "god separated light from darkness" ended up duplicated both on the first day (verse 4) and on the fourth day (verse 18) and the phrase "god named the light day and the darkness night" was completely moved from the fourth day to the first day.

If this understanding is true, then the first day’s creation was god and this is the hidden meaning behind the phrase "the spirit of god hovered upon the water". It means that the only living creature on earth was God. All that should be contained in the first day’s story is the following:

א בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחשֶׁךְ עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם: ה וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר יוֹם אֶחָד:

And what is meant by this is that on the first day nothing but god existed. Gradually, all elements mentioned here are created. Heavens on the second day, earth on the third day, light on the fourth day, spirit/wind of water animals on the fifth day (as contrasted with the spirit of god-only being on the water) and land animals on the sixth day.
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Article 2:
פרק ג כה וַיִּֽהְיוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם עֲרוּמִּים הָֽאָדָם וְאִשְׁתּוֹ וְלֹא יִתְבּשָֽׁשׁוּ: (פרק ג) א וְהַנָּחָשׁ הָיָה עָרוּם מִכֹּל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל־הָאִשָּׁה אַף כִּֽי־אָמַר אֱלֹהִים לֹא תֹֽאכְלוּ מִכֹּל עֵץ הַגָּֽן: ב וַתֹּאמֶר הָֽאִשָּׁה אֶל־הַנָּחָשׁ מִפְּרִי עֵץ־הַגָּן נֹאכֵֽל:

What exactly the word "gharum/gharumim" means is debatable. The KJV translates gharumim as naked and gharum as "subtle". I strongly suspect that both words have a similar meaning. However, even if the two words have no connection whatsoever, we still see from the overall account of the "Fall" (as Christians like to call it) that verse 2:25 is part of the Fall narrative that follows and not part of the preceding creation narrative. J is saying that Adam and his wife were at first naked and unashamed, to contrast this with when they were ashamed of being naked after they ate from the tree of knowledge, and were forced to sew garbs from fig leaves to cover their nakedness. Thus it is clear to me that verse 2:25 ought to be 3:1. I do not have the slightest inkling as to who made this verse part of chapter 2 and why, but this is how it is in the Jewish Pentateuch and it’s wrong.
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Article 3
כא וַיָּרַח יְהוָֹה אֶת־רֵיחַ הַנִּיחֹחַ וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֶל־לִבּוֹ לֹא אֹסִף לְקַלֵּל עוֹד אֶת־הָֽאֲדָמָה בַּֽעֲבוּר הָֽאָדָם כִּי יֵצֶר לֵב הָֽאָדָם רַע מִנְּעֻרָיו וְלֹֽא־אֹסִף עוֹד לְהַכּוֹת אֶת־כָּל־חַי כַּֽאֲשֶׁר עָשִֽׂיתִי: כב (עֹד) עַד כָּל־יְמֵי הָאָרֶץ זֶרַע וְקָצִיר וְקֹר וָחֹם וְקַיִץ וָחֹרֶף וְיוֹם וָלַיְלָה לֹא יִשְׁבֹּֽתוּ:

The Hebrew word "od" (spelled ayin waw daleth) means "more" or "still" whereas the word "ad" (spelled ayin daleth) means until. The Masorete spells the first word in verse 22 with a cholem on the ayin so that it means "more": while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. This is wrong!! We see the word "od" with this meaning in the very previous verse spelled with a waw. Why is this one lacking a waw if it’s the same word?

Hence we see that the word is "ad" meaning until: Until all the days of earth (that is, forever) seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

The phrase "until all the days of the earth" as used in this context in the J account, parallels the "perpetual generations" (darath gholam) covenant god makes with Noah in the P account (9:12)
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Article 4
ד וַיֹּֽאמְרוּ הָבָה נִבְנֶה־לָּנוּ עִיר וּמִגְדָּל וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם וְנַֽעֲשֶׂה־לָּנוּ (שֵׁם) שָם פֶּן־נָפוּץ עַל־פְּנֵי כָל־הָאָֽרֶץ:

This verse should be compared to the verse in 2kings 6:2
ב נֵלְכָה-נָּא עַד-הַיַּרְדֵּן וְנִקְחָה מִשָּׁם אִישׁ קוֹרָה אֶחָת וְנַעֲשֶֹה-לָּנוּ שָׁם מָקוֹם לָשֶׁבֶת שָׁם וַיֹּאמֶר לֵכוּ:

It is the only other place in the Bible where these three consecutive words appear and clearly the word is pronounced "sham" in Kings and it means "there". Likewise, I believe that in our case it should be pronounced sham and translated as "there" and not "name" which is the translation of the Hebrew word "shem". I should also note that the expression "making a name" is not found anywhere else in the Bible and has no easily interpreted meaning.

The tower of Babel J account is very ancient and cryptic. It does not clarify precisely what prompted these people to build the city and a tower "whose top is in heaven" and what they were trying to accomplish. How would the tower prevent their dispersal and why is a dispersal bad? Furthermore, how did this plan threaten Yahweh?

Most likely, it refers to the ziggurats that the ancients built in Mesopotamia. These ziggurats were essentially terraced mounds on top of which a brick temple was built. They had a particular interest in building the temple on highly elevated ground, seemingly in order to be closer to god who presumably resides in heaven. It seems that these ziggurats were destroyed in the course of the Semitic raids (the amorites) on these ancient Sumerian cities during the early second millennium BCE. See the Wiki article on ziggurats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat.

Accordingly, the reason why yahweh would object to such a projeact is simply that it was dedicated to another god and yahweh is jealous, fearing that a ziggurat dedicated to another deity would allow that deity to wield too much control over the earthly mortals and diminish yahweh’s control over them. The J author thus views the ziggurat destruction and the dispersal of humanity as an expression of yahweh’s anger at those who were worshipping another deity through the ziggurat built in Babel.

Regardless of what the precise purpose of this building project was and why Yahweh objected to it, one thing is clear: "making a name", as the Hebrew words in 11:4 literally mean according to the Masorete tradition, does not present any threat to yahweh and does not prevent dispersal.
Under our understanding, these words translate to "let us make there..." and it does not specify what they will make. In fact, this is probably why the Masoretes changed the meaning of the phrase. Something seemed amiss since it didn’t say what they will make and so the masorete interpreted it to mean "let us make a name". Personally, I believe that the verse should read:

ד וַיֹּֽאמְרוּ הָבָה נִבְנֶה־לָּנוּ עִיר וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם וְנַֽעֲשֶׂה־לָּנוּ שָׁם מִגְדָּל פֶּן־נָפוּץ עַל־פְּנֵי כָל־הָאָֽרֶץ:
They said, Come, let us build us a city whose top is in the heaven, and let us make a tower there lest we be scattered upon the face of the whole earth.

Note how I moved the word "tower" ("mijdal", which refers to the temple built on top of the terraced mound) from the beginning of the verse and placed it after the word "there". Now the verse reads perfectly fine and it also makes sense. By "city", the J author does not mean a traditional city; rather, what is meant is a series of receding tiers, each of which is filled with earth and enclosed by baked brick, upon which the "tower" (aka temple) may be built. If it is true that in the original text, "mijdal" followed the word "sham", then the reason it was moved is well understood in this context. The scribe could not imagine how a city’s top can reach the heaven and therefore restructured the verse so that it would be talking about the top of the tower and this ultimately caused the word shm to be mistakenly read as "shem". In our explanation, however, based on the construction of the actual ziggurats, "city" here means a mound and the intent is to build a very tall, tiered mound and so there’s no need to edit the text.

Finally, I should note that in this very J account (Genesis 11:1-9) the word "sham" meaning there is mentioned five times, which is a lot. "Shem" meaning name is mentioned once and that is the word "shemah" (her name) in verse 11:9 when referring to the name of the city Babel. And so we see contextually that this particular J author was fond of the word "sham".
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Article 5
טז וְשַׂמְתִּי אֶת־זַֽרְעֲךָ כַּֽעֲפַר הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אִם־יוּכַל אִישׁ לִמְנוֹת אֶת־עֲפַר הָאָרֶץ גַּם־זַֽרְעֲךָ (יִמָּנֶֽה) יִמְּנֶה :

This is but one out of many instances where the Masorete prefers to use a passive verb than an active one. The word ימנה in modern Hebrew could mean "he will count" or it could mean "will be counted" depending on the pronunciation. This reflects a relatively advanced vocabulary used in later generations and at the masoretic times. The problem is that in ancient Hebrew, the one spoken during much of the first temple, there was no clear distinction between past tense, present tense and future tense. The same exact word could be understood as referring to the past, present or future depending on the context, while the spelling AND pronunciation are identical. Likewise, I don’t see any definitive evidence that ancient Hebrew had such passive words as "will be seen" or "will be counted". Thus, the spelling of the word ימּנה as "yim’maneh" rather than "yimneh" is a projection of contemporary Hebrew grammar upon an ancient generation who didn’t have such complex grammatical structures.

But even if the J author did have the capacity to express himself in a passive way, it is quite clear that the author is talking here about a specific person who is counting either dust particles or the seed of Abram. He is not talking about whether the dust or seed can "be" counted. Rather, he is saying that whoever can count the dust of the earth can count the seed of Abram.
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[רביעי] א וַיְהִי בִּימֵי (אַמְרָפֶל) אַמַרְפָל מֶֽלֶךְ־שִׁנְעָר אַרְיוֹךְ מֶלֶךְ אֶלָּסָר: (כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר) כַּדְלַעֹמֶר מֶלֶךְ עֵילָם (וְתִדְעָל) וְתַרְעָל מֶלֶךְ גּוֹיִֽם (: ב) עָשׂוּ מִלְחָמָה אֶת־(בֶּרַע) בֶּלַע מֶלֶךְ סְדֹם וְאֶת־(בִּרְשַׁע) בַּרְשַּׂע מֶלֶךְ (עֲמֹרָה) עֲמֹרְהָה (שִׁנְאָב) שִׁנְאָר מֶלֶךְ אַדְמָה וְשֶׁמְאֵבֶר מֶלֶךְ צְבֹיִים וּמֶלֶךְ (בֶּלַע) בֶּלַךּ הִיא־(צֹֽעַר) צְעֹר: ג כָּל־אֵלֶּה חָֽבְרוּ אֶל־עֵמֶק הַשִּׂדִּים הוּא יָם הַמֶּֽלַח: ד שְׁתֵּים עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה עָֽבְדוּ אֶת־כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר וּשְׁלשׁ־עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה מָרָֽדוּ: ה וּבְאַרְבַּע עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה בָּא כְדָרְלָעֹמֶר וְהַמְּלָכִים אֲשֶׁר אִתּוֹ וַיַּכּוּ אֶת־רְפָאִים בְּעַשְׁתְּרֹת (קַרְנַיִם) וְקַרְנַיִם וְאֶת־הַזּוּזִים (בְּהָם) בָּהֶם וְאֵת הָֽאֵימִים בְּשָׁוֵה קִרְיָתָֽיִם: ו וְאֶת־הַֽחֹרִי (בְּהַֽרֲרָם) בְּהָרֵי שֵׂעִיר עַד אֵיל פָּארָן אֲשֶׁר (עַל־הַמִּדְבָּֽר) בַּמִּדְבָּֽר: ז וַיָּשֻׁבוּ וַיָּבֹאוּ אֶל־עֵין מִשְׁפָּט הִוא קָדֵשׁ וַיַּכּוּ אֶת־כָּל־(שְׂדֵה) שָׂרֵי הָֽעֲמָֽלֵקִי וְגַם אֶת־הָאֱמֹרִי הַיּשֵׁב בְּחַֽצֲצֹן תָּמָֽר: ח וַיֵּצֵא מֶֽלֶךְ־סְדֹם וּמֶלֶךְ עֲמֹרָה וּמֶלֶךְ אַדְמָה וּמֶלֶךְ צְבֹיִים [צְבוֹיִם] וּמֶלֶךְ בֶּלַע הִוא־צֹעַר וַיַּֽעַרְכוּ אִתָּם מִלְחָמָה בְּעֵמֶק הַשִּׂדִּֽים: ט אֵת כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר מֶלֶךְ עֵילָם וְתִדְעָל מֶלֶךְ גּוֹיִם וְאַמְרָפֶל מֶלֶךְ שִׁנְעָר וְאַרְיוֹךְ מֶלֶךְ אֶלָּסָר אַרְבָּעָה מְלָכִים אֶת־הַֽחֲמִשָּֽׁה: י וְעֵמֶק הַשִּׂדִּים בֶּֽאֱרֹת בֶּֽאֱרֹת חֵמָר וַיָּנֻסוּ מֶֽלֶךְ־סְדֹם וַֽעֲמֹרָה וַיִּפְּלוּ־שָׁמָּה וְהַנִּשְׁאָרִים הֶרָה נָּֽסוּ: יא וַיִּקְחוּ אֶת־כָּל־רְכֻשׁ סְדֹם וַֽעֲמֹרָה וְאֶת־כָּל־אָכְלָם וַיֵּלֵֽכוּ: יב וַיִּקְחוּ אֶת־לוֹט וְאֶת־רְכֻשׁוֹ בֶּן־אֲחִי אַבְרָם וַיֵּלֵכוּ וְהוּא ישֵׁב בִּסְדֹֽם: יג וַיָּבֹא הַפָּלִיט וַיַּגֵּד לְאַבְרָם הָֽעִבְרִי וְהוּא (שֹׁכֵן) שָׁכַן בְּאֵֽלֹנֵי מַמְרֵא הָֽאֱמֹרִי אֲחִי אֶשְׁכֹּל וַֽאֲחִי (עָנֵר) עֻנָן וְהֵם בַּֽעֲלֵי בְרִית־אַבְרָֽם: יד וַיִּשְׁמַע אַבְרָם כִּי נִשְׁבָּה אָחִיו וַיָּרֶק אֶת־חֲנִיכָיו יְלִידֵי בֵיתוֹ שְׁמֹנָה עָשָׂר וּשְׁלֹשׁ מֵאוֹת וַיִּרְדֹּף עַד־דָּֽן: טו (וַיֵּֽחָלֵק) וַיְּחַלֵק עֲלֵיהֶם לַיְלָה הוּא וַֽעֲבָדָיו וַיַּכֵּם וַֽיִּרְדְּפֵם עַד־חוֹבָה אֲשֶׁר מִשְּׂמֹאל לְדַמָּֽשֶׂק: טז וַיָּשֶׁב אֵת כָּל־(הָֽרְכֻשׁ) רֶכֶשׁ סְדֹם וְגַם אֶת־לוֹט אָחִיו וּרְכֻשׁוֹ הֵשִׁיב וְגַם אֶת־הַנָּשִׁים וְאֶת־הָעָֽם: יז וַיֵּצֵא מֶֽלֶךְ־סְדֹם (לִקְרָאתוֹ) לְקִרְאָתוֹ אַֽחֲרֵי שׁוּבוֹ מֵֽהַכּוֹת אֶת־כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר וְאֶת־הַמְּלָכִים אֲשֶׁר אִתּוֹ אֶל־עֵמֶק (שָׁוֵה) שָּׂבִּי הוּא עֵמֶק הַמֶּֽלֶךְ: יח וּמַלְכִּי־צֶדֶק מֶלֶךְ שָׁלֵם הוֹצִיא לֶחֶם וָיָיִן וְהוּא כֹהֵן לְאֵל עֶלְיֽוֹן: יט וַֽיְבָֽרֲכֵהוּ וַיֹּאמַר בָּרוּךְ אַבְרָם לְאֵל עֶלְיוֹן (קֹנֵה) קָנָה שָׁמַיִם וָאָֽרֶץ: כ וּבָרוּךְ אֵל עֶלְיוֹן אֲשֶׁר־מִגֵּן צָרֶיךָ בְּיָדֶךָ וַיִּתֶּן־לוֹ מַֽעֲשֵׂר מִכֹּֽל: [חמישי] כא וַיֹּאמֶר מֶֽלֶךְ־סְדֹם אֶל־אַבְרָם תֶּן־לִי הַנֶּפֶשׁ( וְהָֽרְכֻשׁ) וְהָֽרֶכֶשׁ קַח־לָֽךְ: כב וַיֹּאמֶר אַבְרָם אֶל־מֶלֶךְ סְדֹם הֲרִמֹתִי יָדִי אֶל־יְהוָֹה אֵל עֶלְיוֹן קֹנֵה שָׁמַיִם וָאָֽרֶץ: כג אִם־מִחוּט וְעַד שְׂרוֹךְ־נַעַל וְאִם־אֶקַּח מִכָּל־אֲשֶׁר־לָךְ וְלֹא תֹאמַר אֲנִי הֶֽעֱשַׁרְתִּי אֶת־אַבְרָֽם: כד בִּלְעָדַי רַק אֲשֶׁר אָֽכְלוּ הַנְּעָרִים וְחֵלֶק הָֽאֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר הָֽלְכוּ אִתִּי עָנֵר אֶשְׁכֹּל וּמַמְרֵא הֵם יִקְחוּ חֶלְקָֽם: ס
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I have made many corrections to this J narrative of Abraham fighting the Sodomite kings. One of the key corrections to this account is the pause after "Arioch, king of Ellasar". He is saying that the story took place in the days of Amarphal and Arioch; Chodollogomor is already part of the actual story. As we see in verse 5, Chodollogomor was the leading king in the war against the Sodomite kings and so the narrative starts with him, saying that he and Tharghal waged war against the Sodomite kings without mentioning that the minor kings Amarphal and Arioch (probably his vassals) were allied with him. The Masorete understanding is that "in the days of..." refers to all four kings mentioned in verse 1 and not just the first one or two.
While I do not have any definitive proof that the masorete interpretation is wrong, my interpretation is based on the LXX and the LXX (Septuagint) is generally more reliable than the MT (masoretic text).

All other corrections in the pronunciation of the kings or their nations are based directly on the English translation of the Septuagint. Additionally there are some "material" changes as well, that effect a major change in meaning. For example, in verse 5 according to the MT, "Ham" is a name-place where the Zuzites were slain, whereas according to the LXX there are no "Zuzites". The Hebrew term "Zuzim bahem" means the strong amongst them and the Hebrew word for strong is "ghazuz" as in Isaiah 42:25.

Under this interpretation, verse 5 mentions only names of places; it does not name any specific people who were slain at these places. All three Hebrew words used in reference to the people slain have the connotation of "mighty ones". Rephaim are giants who reside in Astaroth. Zuzim are strong nations who reside in Qarnayim and Eimim are mighty ones who reside in the village Saweh. Note that "qarithim" is not part of the name of the village.
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Article 6
פרק כט
[שני] א וַיִּשָּׂא יַֽעֲקֹב רַגְלָיו וַיֵּלֶךְ אַרְצָה בְנֵי־קֶֽדֶם: ב וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה בְאֵר בַּשָּׂדֶה וְהִנֵּה־שָׁם שְׁלשָׁה עֶדְרֵי־צֹאן רֹֽבְצִים עָלֶיהָ כִּי מִן־הַבְּאֵר הַהִוא יַשְׁקוּ הָֽעֲדָרִים: וְהָאֶבֶן גְּדֹלָה עַל־פִּי הַבְּאֵֽר (: ג) וְנֶֽאֶסְפוּ־שָׁמָּה כָל־הָֽעֲדָרִים וְגָֽלֲלוּ אֶת־הָאֶבֶן מֵעַל פִּי הַבְּאֵר וְהִשְׁקוּ אֶת־הַצֹּאן וְהֵשִׁיבוּ אֶת־הָאֶבֶן עַל־פִּי הַבְּאֵר לִמְקֹמָֽהּ:

I don’t know why the Masorete ended verse 2 after "there was a big stone at the mouth of the well". It is quite clear to me that this clause is part of the next verse and is intended to describe the routine shephered practice of combining their efforts to roll over the stone to enable access to the water when needed. Apparently they did not want the well to be exposed when not in use, for fear of contamination. In fact, it is possible that the new verse starts even earlier at "for the flocks were to drink from that well...". The conjunction "for" explains why the flocks were lying beside the well and is therefore the beginning of the new verse that describes the routine which required that all the flocks be present before they can roll the stone off and drink from the well.
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י וַתְּהִי רֵאשִׁית מַמְלַכְתּוֹ בָּבֶל וְאֶרֶךְ וְאַכַּד (וְכַלְנֶה) וְכֻּלָנָה בְּאֶרֶץ שִׁנְעָֽר:

This is one of those instances where a major error was made in the pronunciation and thus interpretation of a word. While Erech and Akkad are known Sumerian city-states of the third Millenium BCE, there is no such place as "calneh". The word here is "kulanah" and it means "and all". The author is saying that all the aforementioned cities (Babel, Erech and Akkad) are in the land of Sina’ar, which is Sumeria. This is how the translation occurs in the NRSV.
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כ וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה זַֽעֲקַת סְדֹם וַֽעֲמֹרָה כִּי־רָבָּה וְחַטָּאתָם כִּי כָֽבְדָה מְאֹֽד: כא אֵֽרֲדָה־נָּא וְאֶרְאֶה הַכְּצַֽעֲקָתָהּ הַבָּאָה אֵלַי עָשׂוּ (כָּלָה וְאִם־לֹא אֵדָֽעָה) כֻּלָהּ אִם־לֹא וְאֵדָֽעָה:
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This is the context in which how the expression "I shall know" is elsewhere. See the following P passages in Exodus (2:23-25):

וַיֵּאָֽנְחוּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל מִן־הָֽעֲבֹדָה וַיִּזְעָקוּ וַתַּעַל שַׁוְעָתָם אֶל־הָֽאֱלֹהִים מִן־הָֽעֲבֹדָֽה: כד וַיִּשְׁמַע אֱלֹהִים אֶת־נַֽאֲקָתָם וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹהִים אֶת־בְּרִיתוֹ אֶת־אַבְרָהָם אֶת־יִצְחָק וְאֶֽת־יַֽעֲקֹֽב: כה וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֵּדַע אֱלֹהִֽים: ס

God is listening to the cries of the Israelites and he "knows" what do in response, and that is, rescure the oppressed and inflict retribution upon the oppressor. Likewise, Yahweh is saying here that he will descend from heaven and see whether all the evils purported to have been done in Sodom had actually taken place and he will then punish the oppressor.

Note that the Hebrew word spelled {kapf lamed he} almost always has the meaning of completion, NOT detruction and in JE always has such meaning. In fact, this very word is mentioned by the J author in his telling of the very same Sodom story. Several verses later (Genesis 18:33) Yahweh goes (to Sofom) after completing his talk with Abraham. This word is also mentioned by J in Genesis 13:10 "Lot lifted his eyes and saw that the plain of Jordan was completely watered" and elsewhere.

The only place in the Pentateuch where calah obviously means destruction is a P passage in Numbers 16 and 17 where God is saying that he will destroy the assembly in a moment. In all other instances of this root, it denotes completion, including the verse in Genesis 41:30 translated by KJV "and the famine will consume the land". This is wrong! The correct defintion here is "the famine will encompass the complete land".

Note also that I have moved the waw from being prefixed to "calah", to being prefixed to "ed’ghah" (I shall know). The passgae reads much better this way and the Masorete version is therefore most likely the result of a copypyist error.
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פרק ב כב וַיְצַו פַּרְעֹה לְכָל־עַמּוֹ לֵאמֹר כָּל־הַבֵּן הַיִּלּוֹד הַיְאֹרָה תַּשְׁלִיכֻהוּ וְכָל־הַבַּת תְּחַיּֽוּן: (פ פרק ב) א וַיֵּלֶךְ אִישׁ מִבֵּית לֵוִי וַיִּקַּח אֶת־בַּת־לֵוִֽי: ב וַתַּהַר הָֽאִשָּׁה וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן...

Verse 22 is part of the following story and not part of the preceding story. In fact, it is not even by the same author. Exodus 1:18-21 is by the E author as evidenced by its used of "Elohim" to designate the Hebrew god. Exodus 1:22-2:23A is by the J author as evidenced by the naming of Moses’s father-in-law "reghu’el" as opposed to "Jethrau".

The accounts also tell different stories of how Pharaoh attempted to stifle Hebrew expansion by having male babies killed and how Moses came to be born. In the E account, the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Pu’ghah are told to kill male Hebrew babies immediately upon giving birth. They do not listen to Pharaoh; they "fear god" and let the babies live and as a result, Hebrew "houses" are created (1:21). By "houses" the author means huge tribal clans, which are popularly known as the house of the founder of the tribe such as "bith dawid" for the house of David and bith Omri for the house of Omri (in the Moab Stele). There is no story about the birth of Moses in E because Moses was from the J tribe of Levi and not related to E.
J has the story slighly differnet. According to J, Pharaoh instructs all his people (as opposed to just the Hebrew midwives) to throw all male newborn babies into the Nile (Ye’or is the name of the Nile in Egyptian). This probably means Hebrew newborn babies only but we still see some major differences in the details of this episode between J and E.

I should also note that according to the E story, there would have been no need to take any measures to ensure the survival of a baby once it survived the birth-giving process. We see that the midwives claim as their defense for not killing Hebrew babies "because the Hebrew women are unlike the Egyptian... they give birth before the midwife comes to them". Thus, it is only their obligation to kill the baby while aiding in the birth process. Whereas in J, all newborn babies ought to be thrown into the river even after they survive their birth, and this gives rise to the necessity of hiding the newborn infant that was to be Moses. as detailed further by J.

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כב וַיֵּט מֹשֶׁה אֶת־יָדוֹ עַל־הַשָּׁמָיִם וַיְהִי חֹֽשֶׁךְ־אֲפֵלָה בְּכָל־אֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם: שְׁלֹשֶׁת יָמִֽים (: כג) לֹֽא־רָאוּ אִישׁ אֶת־אָחִיו וְלֹא־קָמוּ אִישׁ מִתַּחְתָּיו שְׁלֹשֶׁת יָמִים וּֽלְכָל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל הָיָה אוֹר בְּמֽוֹשְׁבֹתָֽם:

"Three days" of the end of verse 22 actually belongs to verse 23 and it should read thus: Three days a man could not see his bother and no man rose from his place for three days.
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Biblical Question and Answer Feb 16 2006.

Q: What’s up with all those different names assigned to the patriarchs and other biblical figures?

A: There are some serious problems with the traditional understanding of name-switching.
Let’s take Jacob, for example. The conventional understanding is that he was first named Jacob and after his struggle with an angel was renamed Israel. There are several problems with this. First, the text does not exclusively call him Israel after this event, as is the case with Abraham vs. Abram and Sarah vs. Sarai. Second, the origin of the name Israel is obviously mythological. An angel in human form do not exist in reality. Third, even if angels in human form do exist --or if assume that he struggled with an ordinary person-- how could they "change" a person’s name. If that is the name he is known by amongst his tribe, family and friends, then why and how could it be changed? If this particular patriarch was known as "Jacob" for most of his lifetime, then there’s no need to change this name. Finally, even if such a change could be effected and it did in fact occur, why does the biblical author bother with it. Why not call him "Jacob" all the time since that was his primary name or "Israel" all the time since that was his revised and ultimate name?

This is why I believe that name variations in the bible are attributable to variations in biblical documentary sources. In the case of Jacob/Israel I am very much convinced that this is the case, since the name is so different and because the new name is not applied consistently. Furthermore, I believe that these names do not refer to the same historical person. Thus, there was a "patriarch" to the northern Israelite tribes (headed by Ephraim) by the name of Israel and there was a Judahite patriarch known as Jacob. The priestly author or some other redactor (perhaps the JE redactor) had to reconcile these two divergent traditions and accomplished this through a "name change".

Q: What is so unique about the tribe of Joseph?

A: The tribe of Joseph is subdivided between Ephraim and Manasseh. According to the Genesis account (Genesis 48) Manasseh is the older one and is therefore entitled to the birthright (double portion of the inheritance) and a special blessing, much like that Isaac should have given to his eldest son Esau and ended up giving to Jacob after he fooled him. In the case of Ephraim and Manasseh, however, Jacob himself initiated the switch placing Ephraim before Manasseh because Ephraim’s future is destined to be bigger than Manasseh’s and his seed will "fill the nations".

But there’s something even more important in Jacob’s blessing to Joseph’s sons as recorded in the E document (Genesis 48:8-22). Jacob is saying to Joseph: The angel who redeemed me from all evil shall bless the lads and he shall call in them my name and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac and they shall flourish like fish in the midst of the land. "call in them my name" means that they and only they represent the lineage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and can be called Jacobites/Israelites. All other sons of Jacob will have to be subordinate to Ephraim and Manasseh and will not be the primary representatives of the Israelite family.

This is remarkable! Jacob is taking his youngest son and he is not only giving him the birthright by splitting Joseph into two tribes thus giving him a double portion, but he is also pretending that Ephraim and Manasseh are his direct sons and constitute the primary inheritors of his name.

We believe that most if not all stories in the Bible should be interpreted as myth and their sole purpose is to explain the origin and background to the realities of life experienced by the biblical author. Accordingly, this E story of Ephraim and Manasseh was developed during the divided kingdom in an attempt to explain the realities of contemporary political life.

* Manasseh is said to be the eldest son because in the formative years of Israel’s existence Manasseh played a pivotal role in the affairs of the loose Israelite tribal federation. Gide’on the son of Yoash and Jair the Gile’adite and Jephtach the Gile’adite were from the tribe of Manasseh. In the case of Gide’on Ben Yoash, he says to the angel (Judges 6:15) "My family is the poorest in Manasseh". Gide’on Ben Yoash heeded to the angel’s voice and lead Israel against the Amalzkites and Midianites. In the case of Jair the Gile’adite (Judges 10:3), he is said to have judged Israel 22 years and fathered thirty sons who in turn founded thirty cities which were called "Havothjair" in Gile’ad. Finally, there was Jephtach the Gile’adite who was at first despised by his people but was later appointed chief in order to defend the Gileadites against the Amonites (Judges 11).

Gile’ad is synonymous with Manasseh. We see this in several places:
Jair the son of Manasseh from Gile’ad founded "Havothjair". In judges 10 it doesn’t say that Jair was from Manasseh but this is stated in Deuteronomy 3:14.

In Joshua 17 it states that Makir the firstborn of Manasseh was the father of Gile’ad. He was "a man of war and so he had Gile’ad and Bashan" (Joshua 17:1).

* Ephraim is said to be the younger son of Joseph because Ephraim’s power emerged in later years. After the united kingdom was established by Saul and then continued by David and Solomon, Jeroboam Ben Nebat from Ephraim was the first Israelite king to break away from the southern Davidic kingdom and establish his own, more prosperous kingdom. Ever since then, "Ephraim" became synonymous with "Israel".

* Jacob is depicted as placing the younger and weaker Ephraim before Manasseh because the weaker Ephraim eventually becomes the stronger of the two. The weakness of Ephraim compared to Manasseh in the days of the judges is illustrated by the story in Judges (12:1-6) wherein the Manassites pursue the Ephraimites, conquer the passages of the Jordan and slay any Ephraimite attempting to escape. 42,000 Ephraimites are said to have died in this battle. By contrast, in the days of the monarchy, not only was Ephraim the royal tribe (as pointed out earlier that Jeroboam was an Ephraimite), but Manasseh didn’t seem to play any significant role in the monarchy. Like the other tribes who settled east of the Jordan (Reuben and Gad), it seems that they gradually assimilated into the neighboring nations of Amon, Moab and Edom. At the time of the monarchy, no mention is ever made in the book of kings or chronicles that any Israelite tribes lived east of the Jordan and inhabited such huge tracts of land as the Bashan and Gile’ad.

* Joshua, the servant of Moses is an Ephraimite in the E tradition. He followed Moses’ leadership of the Israelites into Canaan.

Are the biblical stories about Joseph true?

As I pointed out earlier, we believe that biblical stories of Israel’s ancestral past are reconstructed based on current realities. In the case of Joseph, consider the following parallels between the story of Joseph and later Israelite history.

* According to J, Le’ah had four sons (Genesis 29:31-35) Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah. Note that these tribes later (after 922 BCE) constituted the Southern "Davidic" Kingdom. Judah was the core of the Davidic kingdom, Levi provided the priesthood for the Jerusalem temple, Simeon first inherited land bordering the "Negev" in southern Judah. During monarchic times, however, Simeon had become assimilated into Judah. Reuben never inhabited any land west of the Jordan but they did live close to Judah east of the Jordan at one point in early history. By monarchic times we no longer hear from Reuben; it seems that they had assimilated into Moab or Edom. If they assimilated into Edom then Judah actually ruled Reubenites while they ruled Edom (until the days of Jehoshaphat) and Reubenites thus constituted part of the southern kingdom. At any rate, Reuben is certainly not associated with the northern kingdom like all other tribes are. They lived quite far from the northwestern territory of Israel and were never ruled by Jeroboam or subsequent Israelite dynasties.

* According to E, Rachel was the matriarch of the three tribes that later constituted the core of the northern kingdom: Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin. Banjamin lies to the immediate north of Judah, then comes Ephraim and then Manasseh. Manasseh’s northern border was Beth she’an and the valley of Jezreel.

To the north of Manasseh we have Issachar and Zebulon and then Dan and Naphtali to the far north. These four tribes were not always part of Israel; much of the land in their territory was never completely under tribal control. Even at monarchic times, their land was not always under the monarchy’s rule, especially the northernmost territories. Asher was part of the Phoenician coast and Gad occupied land east of the Jordan.

A clear picture of projected patriarchal affiliations based on later history now emerges. Rachel is the mother of the northern kingdom and Leah is the mother of the southern kingdom (Issachar and Zebulun are attributed to Le’ah by the E writer; they are NOT Leah’s sons in the J document). The E story, written in the north, portrays the six Le’ah brothers representing the southern tribes as antagonistic to the Rachel brothers representing the northern tribes and in the process created the story that even though Reuben and Judah were the older sons of Jacob (reflecting Judahite seniority during the united monarchy), they were not the most beloved of his sons. In fact, E claims that Israel loved Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh) more than any of his other sons. The six Leah brothers envied him for this and ganged up to do something about it. The Le’ah brothers’ subjugation and humiliation of Joseph reprsents Solomon’s and Rehoboam’s heavy taxation and exploitation of the north. Solomon divided his kingdom into twelve districts and each district had to furnish provisions to the king on a different month; they also had to provide manpower to the Judahite king ("Mas obed"). The Le’ah borthers are going to find pasture in Shechem and then in Dothan, both of which are in Manasseh territory. This further illustrates how the south is attempting to unrightfully exploit the north.
Consequently, the northern tribes are forced to secede and form their own kingdom. Rehoboam declares war on the house of Israel and gathers 180 thousand soldiers to fight the Israelites (1kings 12:21). This is represented by the E expression: "they could not talk in peace with him" (Genesis 37:4), which means that it was the Le’ah brothers who initiated the schism. According to E, Jacob sends Joseph to Shechem to ensure the peace of his brothers and the peace of the sheep. This represents Israel’s willingness to make peace even under the heavy taxation by Judah but Judah is not willing to compromise and alleviate some of the taxation. It comes to a point where continued taxation by Judah is seen by E as synonymous with Israel’s annihilation and E therefore represents this event with the Le’ah brothers’ attempt to kill Joseph.

Reuben comes to the rescue and suggests that Joseph be lowered into a pit that does not contain water (so that he does not drown and die immediately) so that he dies of starvation and thirst and not in their hands. Reuben’s real plan is to eventually "rescue" Joseph and return him to his father but when he returns after having eaten a meal with his brothers elsewhere, it is found that Joseph is no longer there. He had been pulled out by Midianites and is on his way to Egypt.
In J’s version of this episode, it is Judah who comes to Joseph’s rescue but Judah only intends to save Joseph’s life, not to return him to his father. Judah suggests that Joseph be sold to Ismaelite merchants traveling from Gile’ad towards Egypt.

What accounts for the JE variation between Judah and Reuben?

In E, Reuben --as the eldest son of Israel-- is seen as the most important of the Le’ah brothers. Of course, Joseph is even more important even though he is the youngest but Joseph does not belong to the Le’ah family. Therefore, whenever E is about to describe a responsible role, it naturally confers that role upon the eldest Le’ah son, Reuben. E assumes this approach when it comes to the identitiy of Joseph’s savior and the one pledging to return Benjamin to his father.
J has a different approach. In J, Reuben is not important; the tribe of Reuben does not worship in the Jerusalem temple and has no cultural affiliation with Judah. Reuben, the eponymous forefather, has "lost" his birthright, as Jacob says in the Blessing of Jacob "You shall not excel!" (Genesis 49:4). In J, Judah has taken over as the most preeminent tribal patriarch among the Le’ah brothers and the roles played by Reuben in E are therefore played by Judah in J. In addition, J adds the role of Judah of pleading with Joseph to return Benjamin after he is arrested for stealing the silver cup. Moreover, the insistence that Reuben was the one objecting to the conspiracy to slay Joseph is a grave insult to the tribe of Judah as it implies that their eponymous ancestor stood there quietly as the eponymous ancestor of Joseph, the core of Israel, was about to be irreversably annihilated. Naturally, therefore, J’s version of the episode insisted that it was Judah who intervened on Joseph’s behalf.

Why are Dan and Naphtali viewed as sons of Rachel’s concubine, Bilhah while Gad and Asher are viewed as sons of Leah’s concubine?

Dan and Naphtali are naturally considered allies of the northern kingdom. However, as pointed out earlier, the Israelite grip over their territory was not that firm. Besides, these tribes were not considered as "elite" as the Ephraim and Manasseh tribes who constituted the core of Israel. Accordingly, they are represented as allied with the Rachel tribes but not related closely enough to belong to Israel proper.

Asher inhabited the phoenician coast which was never directly controlled by the northern kingdom. Likewise, Gad settled to the east of the Jordan in Amorite territoy (Sihon, king of the Amorites) and were never ruled or affiliated with the northern kingdom. What remains unclear, though, is how they came to be associated with the Le’ah tribes. It is possible that since Solomon maintained extremely good relations with the Phoenician kingdom of Tyre, Asher came to be viewed as part of that alliance. Gad, was also seen as seen as subordinate to the southern kingdom since the south presumably led some military campaigns in that area at some point in time. Gad and Asher thus came to be seen as vassals of Judah (in addition to their presumed ethnic ties) and were therefore depicted as descendant from a Le’ah concubine.

E source
J source
יח וַיִּרְאוּ אֹתוֹ מֵֽרָחֹק וּבְטֶרֶם יִקְרַב אֲלֵיהֶם וַיִּתְנַכְּלוּ אֹתוֹ לַֽהֲמִיתֽוֹ: כא וַיִּשְׁמַע רְאוּבֵן וַיַּצִּלֵהוּ מִיָּדָם וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא נַכֶּנּוּ נָֽפֶשׁ: כב וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם רְאוּבֵן אַל־תִּשְׁפְּכוּ־דָם הַשְׁלִיכוּ אֹתוֹ אֶל־הַבּוֹר הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר בַּמִּדְבָּר וְיָד אַל־תִּשְׁלְחוּ־בוֹ לְמַעַן הַצִּיל אֹתוֹ מִיָּדָם לַֽהֲשִׁיבוֹ אֶל־אָבִֽיו: כד וַיִּקָּחֻהוּ וַיַּשְׁלִכוּ אֹתוֹ הַבֹּרָה וְהַבּוֹר רֵק אֵין בּוֹ מָֽיִם: כה וַיֵּֽשְׁבוּ לֶֽאֱכָל־לֶחֶם: כח וַיַּֽעַבְרוּ אֲנָשִׁים מִדְיָנִים סֹֽחֲרִים וַֽיִּמְשְׁכוּ וַיַּֽעֲלוּ אֶת־יוֹסֵף מִן־הַבּוֹר: כט וַיָּשָׁב רְאוּבֵן אֶל־הַבּוֹר וְהִנֵּה אֵין־יוֹסֵף בַּבּוֹר וַיִּקְרַע אֶת־בְּגָדָֽיו: ל וַיָּשָׁב אֶל־אֶחָיו וַיֹּאמַר הַיֶּלֶד אֵינֶנּוּ וַֽאֲנִי אָנָה אֲנִי־בָֽא: לו וְהַמְּדָנִים מָֽכְרוּ אֹתוֹ אֶל־מִצְרָיִם לְפֽוֹטִיפַר סְרִיס פַּרְעֹה שַׂר הַטַּבָּחִֽים:
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יט וַיֹּֽאמְרוּ אִישׁ אֶל־אָחִיו הִנֵּה בַּעַל הַֽחֲלֹמוֹת הַלָּזֶה בָּֽא: כ וְעַתָּה לְכוּ וְנַֽהַרְגֵהוּ וְנַשְׁלִכֵהוּ בְּאַחַד הַבֹּרוֹת וְאָמַרְנוּ חַיָּה רָעָה אֲכָלָתְהוּ וְנִרְאֶה מַה־יִּֽהְיוּ חֲלֹֽמֹתָֽיו: [שלישי] כג וַיְהִי כַּֽאֲשֶׁר־בָּא יוֹסֵף אֶל־אֶחָיו וַיַּפְשִׁיטוּ אֶת־יוֹסֵף אֶת־כֻּתָּנְתּוֹ אֶת־כְּתֹנֶת הַפַּסִּים אֲשֶׁר עָלָֽיו: כד וַיִּשְׂאוּ עֵֽינֵיהֶם וַיִּרְאוּ וְהִנֵּה אֹֽרְחַת יִשְׁמְעֵאלִים בָּאָה מִגִּלְעָד וּגְמַלֵּיהֶם נֹֽשְׂאִים נְכֹאת וּצְרִי וָלֹט הֽוֹלְכִים לְהוֹרִיד מִצְרָֽיְמָה: כו וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוּדָה אֶל־אֶחָיו מַה־בֶּצַע כִּי נַֽהֲרֹג אֶת־אָחִינוּ וְכִסִּינוּ אֶת־דָּמֽוֹ: כז לְכוּ וְנִמְכְּרֶנּוּ לַיִּשְׁמְעֵאלִים וְיָדֵנוּ אַל־תְּהִי־בוֹ כִּֽי־אָחִינוּ בְשָׂרֵנוּ הוּא וַֽיִּשְׁמְעוּ אֶחָֽיו: כח וַיִּמְכְּרוּ אֶת־יוֹסֵף לַיִּשְׁמְעֵאלִים בְּעֶשְׂרִים כָּסֶף וַיָּבִיאוּ אֶת־יוֹסֵף מִצְרָֽיְמָה: לא וַיִּקְחוּ אֶת־כְּתֹנֶת יוֹסֵף וַֽיִּשְׁחֲטוּ שְׂעִיר עִזִּים וַיִּטְבְּלוּ אֶת־הַכֻּתֹּנֶת בַּדָּֽם: לב וַֽיְשַׁלְּחוּ אֶת־כְּתֹנֶת הַפַּסִּים וַיָּבִיאוּ אֶל־אֲבִיהֶם וַיֹּֽאמְרוּ זֹאת מָצָאנוּ הַכֶּר־נָא הַכְּתֹנֶת בִּנְךָ הִוא אִם־לֹֽא: לג וַיַּכִּירָהּ וַיֹּאמֶר כְּתֹנֶת בְּנִי חַיָּה רָעָה אֲכָלָתְהוּ טָרֹף טֹרַף יוֹסֵֽף: לד וַיִּקְרַע יַֽעֲקֹב שִׂמְלֹתָיו וַיָּשֶׂם שַׂק בְּמָתְנָיו וַיִּתְאַבֵּל עַל־בְּנוֹ יָמִים רַבִּֽים: לה וַיָּקֻמוּ כָל־בָּנָיו וְכָל־בְּנֹתָיו לְנַֽחֲמוֹ וַיְמָאֵן לְהִתְנַחֵם וַיֹּאמֶר כִּֽי־אֵרֵד אֶל־בְּנִי אָבֵל שְׁאֹלָה וַיֵּבְךְּ אֹתוֹ אָבִֽיו:
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לז וַיֹּאמֶר רְאוּבֵן אֶל־אָבִיו לֵאמֹר אֶת־שְׁנֵי בָנַי תָּמִית אִם־לֹא אֲבִיאֶנּוּ אֵלֶיךָ תְּנָה אֹתוֹ עַל־יָדִי וַֽאֲנִי אֲשִׁיבֶנּוּ אֵלֶֽיךָ: לח וַיֹּאמֶר לֹֽא־יֵרֵד בְּנִי עִמָּכֶם כִּֽי־אָחִיו מֵת וְהוּא לְבַדּוֹ נִשְׁאָר וּקְרָאָהוּ אָסוֹן בַּדֶּרֶךְ אֲשֶׁר תֵּֽלְכוּ־בָהּ וְהֽוֹרַדְתֶּם אֶת־שֵֽׂיבָתִי בְּיָגוֹן שְׁאֽוֹלָה:
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ח וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוּדָה אֶל־יִשְׂרָאֵל אָבִיו שִׁלְחָה הַנַּעַר אִתִּי וְנָקוּמָה וְנֵלֵכָה וְנִֽחְיֶה וְלֹא נָמוּת גַּם־אֲנַחְנוּ גַם־אַתָּה גַּם־טַפֵּֽנוּ: ט אָֽנֹכִי אֶֽעֶרְבֶנּוּ מִיָּדִי תְּבַקְשֶׁנּוּ אִם־לֹא הֲבִֽיאֹתִיו אֵלֶיךָ וְהִצַּגְתִּיו לְפָנֶיךָ וְחָטָאתִי לְךָ כָּל־הַיָּמִֽים: י כִּי לוּלֵא הִתְמַהְמָהְנוּ כִּֽי־עַתָּה שַׁבְנוּ זֶה פַֽעֲמָֽיִם: יא וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲבִיהֶם אִם־כֵּן אֵפוֹא זֹאת עֲשׂוּ קְחוּ מִזִּמְרַת הָאָרֶץ בִּכְלֵיכֶם וְהוֹרִידוּ לָאִישׁ מִנְחָה מְעַט צֳרִי וּמְעַט דְּבַשׁ נְכֹאת וָלֹט בָּטְנִים וּשְׁקֵדִֽים: יב וְכֶסֶף מִשְׁנֶה קְחוּ בְיֶדְכֶם וְאֶת־הַכֶּסֶף הַמּוּשַׁב בְּפִי אַמְתְּחֹֽתֵיכֶם תָּשִׁיבוּ בְיֶדְכֶם אוּלַי מִשְׁגֶּה הֽוּא: יג וְאֶת־אֲחִיכֶם קָחוּ וְקוּמוּ שׁוּבוּ אֶל־הָאִֽישׁ: יד וְאֵל שַׁדַּי יִתֵּן לָכֶם רַֽחֲמִים לִפְנֵי הָאִישׁ וְשִׁלַּח לָכֶם אֶת־אֲחִיכֶם אַחֵר וְאֶת־בִּנְיָמִין וַֽאֲנִי כַּֽאֲשֶׁר שָׁכֹלְתִּי שָׁכָֽלְתִּי:
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כב וַיַּעַן רְאוּבֵן אֹתָם לֵאמֹר הֲלוֹא אָמַרְתִּי אֲלֵיכֶם לֵאמֹר אַל־תֶּֽחֶטְאוּ בַיֶּלֶד וְלֹא שְׁמַעְתֶּם וְגַם־דָּמוֹ הִנֵּה נִדְרָֽשׁ: ------------------------------------------
יד וַיָּבֹא יְהוּדָה וְאֶחָיו בֵּיתָה יוֹסֵף וְהוּא עוֹדֶנּוּ שָׁם וַיִּפְּלוּ לְפָנָיו אָֽרְצָה: טו וַיֹּאמֶר לָהֶם יוֹסֵף מָֽה־הַמַּֽעֲשֶׂה הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר עֲשִׂיתֶם הֲלוֹא יְדַעְתֶּם כִּֽי־נַחֵשׁ יְנַחֵשׁ אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר כָּמֹֽנִי: טז וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוּדָה מַה־נֹּאמַר לַֽאדֹנִי מַה־נְּדַבֵּר וּמַה־נִּצְטַדָּק הָֽאֱלֹהִים מָצָא אֶת־עֲוֹן עֲבָדֶיךָ הִנֶּנּוּ עֲבָדִים לַֽאדֹנִי גַּם־אֲנַחְנוּ גַּם אֲשֶׁר־נִמְצָא הַגָּבִיעַ בְּיָדֽוֹ: יז וַיֹּאמֶר חָלִילָה לִּי מֵֽעֲשׂוֹת זֹאת הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר נִמְצָא הַגָּבִיעַ בְּיָדוֹ הוּא יִֽהְיֶה־לִּי עָבֶד וְאַתֶּם עֲלוּ לְשָׁלוֹם אֶל־אֲבִיכֶֽם: ס ס ס [פרשת ויגש] יח וַיִּגַּשׁ אֵלָיו יְהוּדָה וַיֹּאמֶר בִּי אֲדֹנִי יְדַבֶּר־נָא עַבְדְּךָ דָבָר בְּאָזְנֵי אֲדֹנִי וְאַל־יִחַר אַפְּךָ בְּעַבְדֶּךָ כִּי כָמוֹךָ כְּפַרְעֹֽה: יט אֲדֹנִי שָׁאַל אֶת־עֲבָדָיו לֵאמֹר הֲיֵשׁ־לָכֶם אָב אוֹ־אָֽח: כ וַנֹּאמֶר אֶל־אֲדֹנִי יֶשׁ־לָנוּ אָב זָקֵן וְיֶלֶד זְקֻנִים קָטָן וְאָחִיו מֵת וַיִּוָּתֵר הוּא לְבַדּוֹ לְאִמּוֹ וְאָבִיו אֲהֵבֽוֹ: כא וַתֹּאמֶר אֶל־עֲבָדֶיךָ הֽוֹרִדֻהוּ אֵלָי וְאָשִׂימָה עֵינִי עָלָֽיו: כב וַנֹּאמֶר אֶל־אֲדֹנִי לֹֽא־יוּכַל הַנַּעַר לַֽעֲזֹב אֶת־אָבִיו וְעָזַב אֶת־אָבִיו וָמֵֽת: כג וַתֹּאמֶר אֶל־עֲבָדֶיךָ אִם־לֹא יֵרֵד אֲחִיכֶם הַקָּטֹן אִתְּכֶם לֹא תֹֽסִפוּן לִרְאוֹת פָּנָֽי: כד וַֽיְהִי כִּי עָלִינוּ אֶֽל־עַבְדְּךָ אָבִי וַנַּגֶּד־לוֹ אֵת דִּבְרֵי אֲדֹנִֽי: כה וַיֹּאמֶר אָבִינוּ שֻׁבוּ שִׁבְרוּ־לָנוּ מְעַט־אֹֽכֶל: כו וַנֹּאמֶר לֹא נוּכַל לָרֶדֶת אִם־יֵשׁ אָחִינוּ הַקָּטֹן אִתָּנוּ וְיָרַדְנוּ כִּי־לֹא נוּכַל לִרְאוֹת פְּנֵי הָאִישׁ וְאָחִינוּ הַקָּטֹן אֵינֶנּוּ אִתָּֽנוּ: כז וַיֹּאמֶר עַבְדְּךָ אָבִי אֵלֵינוּ אַתֶּם יְדַעְתֶּם כִּי שְׁנַיִם יָֽלְדָה־לִּי אִשְׁתִּֽי: כח וַיֵּצֵא הָֽאֶחָד מֵֽאִתִּי וָֽאֹמַר אַךְ טָרֹף טֹרָף וְלֹא רְאִיתִיו עַד־הֵֽנָּה: כט וּלְקַחְתֶּם גַּם־אֶת־זֶה מֵעִם פָּנַי וְקָרָהוּ אָסוֹן וְהֽוֹרַדְתֶּם אֶת־שֵֽׂיבָתִי בְּרָעָה שְׁאֹֽלָה: ל וְעַתָּה כְּבֹאִי אֶל־עַבְדְּךָ אָבִי וְהַנַּעַר אֵינֶנּוּ אִתָּנוּ וְנַפְשׁוֹ קְשׁוּרָה בְנַפְשֽׁוֹ: [שני] לא וְהָיָה כִּרְאוֹתוֹ כִּי־אֵין הַנַּעַר וָמֵת וְהוֹרִידוּ עֲבָדֶיךָ אֶת־שֵׂיבַת עַבְדְּךָ אָבִינוּ בְּיָגוֹן שְׁאֹֽלָה: לב כִּי עַבְדְּךָ עָרַב אֶת־הַנַּעַר מֵעִם אָבִי לֵאמֹר אִם־לֹא אֲבִיאֶנּוּ אֵלֶיךָ וְחָטָאתִי לְאָבִי כָּל־הַיָּמִֽים: לג וְעַתָּה יֵֽשֶׁב־נָא עַבְדְּךָ תַּחַת הַנַּעַר עֶבֶד לַֽאדֹנִי וְהַנַּעַר יַעַל עִם־אֶחָֽיו: לד כִּי־אֵיךְ אֶֽעֱלֶה אֶל־אָבִי וְהַנַּעַר אֵינֶנּוּ אִתִּי פֶּן אֶרְאֶה בָרָע אֲשֶׁר יִמְצָא אֶת־אָבִֽי:
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Ancient Hebrew Questions and Answers

Q: which document was authored first between P and D?

A: clearly P and D are distinct documents. Upon critical analysis, one notices differences in language as well as theology. D emphasizes centrality of worship and talks about the "levite priests". D is not concerned with exact dates and numbers or the details of priests and sacrifices like P is. It is almost impossible to believe that they are contemporary documents.

Take, for example the festival of "shavuoth". According to P we must count seven weeks from the morrow of the Sabbath and then bring a new grain offering to God. According to D we count seven weeks from the time that the sickle is first applied to the standing grain. These two counting systems are not compatible and it is therefore very unlikely that both documents
existed simultaneously.

Thus, the only question remains which one was authored first and in what generation they did apply. After extensive research and careful deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that the traditional belief that D was a product of the Josiah days is correct. But I have also found that P is a product of the post-exilic period. As said earlier, it could not have been authored in the waning days of the first temple because that was the D period. It doesn't seem to have been authored during the exile because it is too much concerned with practices that were not executable during the exile. I understand that the exiled people of Judaea undoubtedly had a great concern for preserving their laws traditions and the P document could theoretically be part of that effort. But I see in P more than mere preservation of tradition. The P author was very creative; he attempted to create new formulas of worship and clarify ritual ambiguities. Such an effort seems to be related to actual worship, not just to preserve the memories of bygone days. The laws of the Leviticus are nowhere to be found in the D document, and so P would not be inventing these laws unless it could be applied in real life and that is post-exilic.
What remains a bit more difficult to prove is that P is not a product of the pre-Josiah days, perhaps the days of his grand-grandfather Hezekiah who is also known to have been a yawhist. Against this possibility, you should take note of the following:

* P is an extremely extensive code. It covers virtually everything contained in the ancient JE documents, most of the material covered by D and a host of new priestly material not found in any other document. If these codes already existed in the Deutoronomistic days, they should have been at least partially incorporated in D. For example, the different ways of performing the sacrificial rites for the "Olah", "Shelamim" and "Asham" are elaborated in detail in Leviticus but not mentioned at all in deuteronomy.

* Before Hezekiah's days the yahweh cult barely existed. Sacrifices in the temple were not practiced routinely or regulated. People typically brought their sacrifices to "high places" located in the countryside and dedicated to other gods. In Hezekiah's days, all the high places were abolished and only yahweh was to be worshipped but those revolutionary changes never took root for his son manasseh reversed all of his father's reforms. Thus, it is questionable whether the yahweh priests in Hezekiah's days had enough popular support to produce the kind of work contained in P.

* P mentions the holiday of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana, not mentioned in D and not mentioned anywhere else in the bible. There is no evidence that these holidays were ever practiced during the first temple. In fact even the holiday of Pesach and Sukkoth were only practiced during the reign of yahwist kings such as Hezekiah and Josiah.

* The language and mood of P is that of a later stage in the religious development of the ancient Judaeans. The terms of Qahal (congregation), Qodesh vs chalal (holy vs profane), ghedah (assembly/testament), zakar and neqebah (male and female), are all widespread in P but not commonly present in any other documents.

* The book recording the works of the priest Ezekial who lived during the exile shares many common characteristics with the P document. Thus it is believed that he belonged to the school that authored the P document. BTW, Jeremiah, on the other hand, contains many similarities to the D document, thus confirming that D was authored in his days.

Is the tabernacle (mishkan) of the exodus myth or fact?

The way it is described in P is -no doubt- fiction. For one, since the details of the exodus tabernacle or even its very existence is not present in any other document, how could the P author possibly know so many details about it seven centuries later (or more)? Secondly, in P the tabernacle and the tent of meeting (Ohel Moed) are the same but there is no hint in E that the tent of meeting was anything other than a simple tent where Moses convened with god. There is no mention that the ark of the covenant was housed there or that there was any sort of altar located within it (the incense altar) or about it (the olah altar). These are very important details and could not have been accidentally missed by the E author. In this case, I must conclude that E's silence about the function of the tent of meeting as a place of worship as described in P, is evidence that the tent of meeting did not serve that function according to E.

Regardless, the details of the Tabernacle such as that it was made of logs of cedarwood inserted vertically into bases (aden) and covered by multiple textile covers, are fictitious. These details were made up by the P author in an attempt to vivify and idealize the tabernacle. Just like the third temple envisioned by Ezekial never came to pass and all its details were meant to idealize a future perfect temple, so is P's depiction of the Exodus tabernacle an attempt to envision an ideal tabernacle of the past. Note that it was essential for P to depict the orthodox yahweh lifestyle as having originated in the days of Moses. P could not claim that there was a temple in the wilderness, for a temple is a permanent dwelling built in stone and that could not have existed in Moses' days. Instead, P took the Shiloh tabernacle, idealized it and placed it in the wilderness with Moses, merging it with the tent of meeting. Another example where we can see P making up a story in order to legitimize its new program is the story of the Yom Kippur sacrifice in the wilderness as told in Leviticus 16. It is designed to pin the origin of this newly invented holiday to Moses and thus establish its legitimacy.

In my opinion, there definitely is a possibility that the ancient Israelites roamed the wilderness with some sort of mobile shrine. We have no reason to doubt that the Shiloh tabernacle existed in the days of Eli and Samuel 150 years after the exodus and so it is very possible that some sort of tabernacle existed before the Israelites settled in Canaan. However, the role of this proto-tabernacle is what needs to be questioned. According to P, it was a central and vital part of Israelite life in the wilderness. In reality, if it existed it was little more than a haphazardly constructed site where people can sacrifice to some ancient Semitic god (yahweh is a late judaean god that did not exist in the formative years of the Israelite tribes) in times of stress to ensure deliverance and victory in war.

What's up with the three annual festivals?

The three annual festivals are mentioned in both ancient documents of J and E and so it is likely that even before Josiah's days, those who worshipped the god of the Jerusalem temple (whatever name he went by), made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year at each turning point in the agricultural season. These festivals were named after their respective seasons. The first one was the festival of "abib" (abib literally is a young, green seed-bearing ear of grain). This holiday is celebrated during the flax harvest, in the month of Nisan (Nisan being the Babylonian name of the month adopted by the Jews after the exile). The reason it was called the Abib month in Hebrew is that the stalks of wheat start growing in this month. It is therefore the moth of "tender, green ears of wheat".

The next holiday is celebrated in the month of sivan (the Hebrew name of the month is unknown) and is called the festival of "qatsir" (harvest). This is the month during which the wheat is finally harvested. The next holiday is celebrated in the month of Ethanim (Tishri in Babylonian) and is called the festival of "asiph" (gathering) for in this month people gather their wine and oil from the winepress and oilpress which were situated in the open field. During the summer, farmers were engaged in the process of working the winepress and the oilpress to produce wine and oil. Now that the raining season is about to kick in, the precious juices must be gathered in to the house to protect themt from the winter rain. Wheat may also have remained in the field throughout the summer and must now be brought in to the house. Thus it is called "festival of the gathering".

To summarize, we have the following:

Festival celebrated in the month of tender ears of grain (Abib), Nisan in Babylonian.
Festival celebrated in the month of wheat harvest (qatsir), Sivan in Babylonian.
Festival celebrated in the month of gathering (asiph) or ploughing (charish), Elul or Tishri in Babylonian.

Other names of these festivals, adopted in later days and mentioned in the later documents of D and P are:

festival of Pesach or festival of Matsoth for Abib
festival of shebaghoth or day of bikkurim
festival of Sukkoth or festival of the ploughing season "charish"

Some of these names seem to be mentioned in the ancient J and E documents but if you analyze these instances carefully you realize that those were not the identifying names of the festivals. For example, in the J document Exodus 34:22 its says "you shall make a septuple (consisting of seven) festival in the harvest season of the firstfruits of wheat". The Hebrew word for septuple "Shebeath" was taken to designate the name of the festival, so called because it is celebrated seven weeks after the Abib season. This is how both P and D construed the meaning of septuple, although the precise point in time from which the seven weeks ought to be counted is disputed between P and D; in P it's seven weeks from the morrow of Sabbath and in D it is seven weeks from the time when the sickle is first applied to the grain.

However, I believe that this represents an error on the part of later generations in interpreting the ancient JE documents. It is important to understand that the ancient JE documents were not widely known when they were first authored and finalized in the period of the divided kingdom (eighth century BCE). Furthermore, those documents were authored by the proponents of yahwism and advocated the worship of yahweh only, but in the eighth century BCE the yahweh cult (including the three annual festivals held in Jerusalem) was marginal even in Judah. This is why in 2kings 23:22 it says that "there was not held such a Passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah" in description of the pesach held in the time of Josiah circa 630 BCE. If this is indeed the case, then we have the deuteronomistic reformers and --later-- the priestly revivalists trying to reconstruct a dormant religion. They would be reading an ancient text that says something about a septuple festival and interpret that to mean a one day holiday held after seven weeks when in reality the text is talking about a seven day holiday tied to a specific season --that of wheat harvest-- and to nothing else.

What prompted the deuteronomists to invent this utterly erroneous interpretation of "septuple"?

This is debatable. One possibility is that they wanted to make it easier to observe yahwism by only requiring pilgrims to spend one day in Jerusalem during the busy qatsir season (recall, that in the priestly days seven day festivals were literally seven days long, unlike the J definition of a seven-day festival in which work is permitted during the first six days). Another possibility is that they sought to better define the timing of the holiday. Finally, it may have been an earnest mistake. Whatever the background for this misinterpretation of "septuple", I am convinced that the deuteronomist, and later the priestly author following his lead, made a major deviation from the real meaning of septuple.

How do I know that septuple in JE really refers to seven days and not seven weeks?

There are several clues:

* In the J document Exodus 34, it mentions the abib festival first and admonishes worshippers to bring along their firstborn animals to sacrifice to yahweh during the festival: "not to see the face of yahweh emptyhanded". Then it describes the actual festival as containing seven days, the first six days of which are work days, that is, one is not required to be in the temple but may work his field and the seventh day is the rest day. Then a new paragraph begins saying "you shall rest in the ploughing season and in the harvest season" and it goes on describing those two additional festivals saying "you shall make a septuple (consisting of seven) festival in the harvest season of the firstfruits of wheat and the (septuple) festival of the gathering season at the rounding of the year. In other words, it is saying that the same seven day holiday of abib just
described in verse 21 shall also be observed in the harvest season and in the gathering/ploughing season.

* the Hebrew letter he preceding a noun is called the "he hayediah" (he of the known) and designates a specific, known noun, a noun that has already been mentioned previously or is otherwise already known to the listener or reader. In the J document, there is a he in the mention of "festival of the Matsoth" and in the mention of "festival of the Asiph" but there is no he in the mention of "a septuple festival". This is because there is no single septuple festival; rather, all three festivals are septuple festivals. The verse is just saying that the same septuple festival observed in the Abib season should also be observed in the harvest and gathering season. In fact, in the corresponding E document (Exodus 23), there is no mention of the term septuple altogether. The second holiday, which the deuteronomist called "festival of weeks" (Deuteronomy 16:9) and the priestly writer called "day of the firstfruits" (Numbers 28:26), is called "festival of the harvest" in the E document (Exodus 23:16), a term which is mentioned by the J document as well in describing the timing of the festival (bikkurei qatsir chittim), although without the he hayediah. Thus, according to the JE tradition the second festival is a harvest festival, not a septuple festival (as distinguished from other festivals), not a weeks festival and not a firstfruits festival.

* Nowhere in J or E is there any indication that the qatsir festival might be a one-day only celebration. According to our interpretation of the J document, it is saying outright that qatsir is a septuple festival, that is, consisting of seven days. But even if we take the deuteronomist interpretation that it's talking about seven weeks, it still doesn't say that it's a one day only festival. We should therefore logically assume that qatsir is the same kind of festival as abib and
asiph, a seven day festival as described in Exodus 34:21 "six days you may work but on the seventh day you shall rest".

* The Hebrew term "shibeghath" in the J document is spelled using the four hebrew letter shin, beth, ayin, thaw. In accordance with our belief that no cholem vowel should be applied in Hebrew unless a waw is present, the correct pronunciation of this word is shibeghath (or "shibeath" if you choose to pronounce the ayin as an aleph) and not shibeghoth as the masoretes would have it. If the masoretes were right then the word would have had a waw after the ayin indicating the plural and it would therefore mean "weeks" (shebagh or shabuagh being the singular). Without the waw in the word, it simply means an entity of seven or a count of seven, not a week.

How was the ancient festival of Pesach (Abib) observed according to the JE tradition?

As soon as the new moon appeared in the season of abib, the "matsoth festival" commenced. Noone was allowed to eat leavened bread for seven days. However, there was no requirement to refrain from work and be at the temple until the seventh day; during the first six days one may work his field (Exodus 34:21). All male firstborn cattle and sheep (born after the last
annual festival) were dedicated to yahweh, the cattle may not be used to work the field and the wool of the sheep may not be shorn. Those animals constituted the pesach sacrifice and were taken along by the worshipper on his pilgrimage to the temple on the seventh day. Technically, firstborn male humans had to be dedicated to yahweh as well. This is openly stated in the E document (Exodus 13:2) and the priestly author went to great lengths explaining how the ancient Israelites redeemed their firstborn humans by substitution with Levites (Numbers 3:11-51). However, this concept did not have a realistic application since the practice of sacrificing humans to God was not commonly practiced even among the ancient Israelites. Only in very severe circumstances would a person offer up a child as a sacrifice like yiphtach did (Judges 11:30).

Once at the temple, the firstborn animals were slaughtered by the priests as the "Pesach" sacrifice. The blood and fats were given to yahweh (sprinkled or burned on the altar) and the meat and hide were shared between the priest and the worshipper. It is not known precisely how they divided the animal but we do know that both the priest and the worshipper had certain rights to it. In deuteronomy 18:3 it says that priests were entitled to the arm, the cheeks and the belly of all sacrifices brought to the temple. It does not differentiate between the Pesach and other voluntary peace offerings (neder or nedabah). There was probably a similar scheme in place during the J period (eighth century BCE).

While feasting on the Pesach, leavened bread (chamets) may not be eaten; this is the meaning of "you shall not slaughter the blood of my sacrifice with unleavened bread" (exodus 34:25). It means "you shall not eat the meat of my sacrifice along with unleavened bread". Note that Maror, a kind of bitter herb, is not mentioned in the JE documents. The requirement to eat Maror with the Pesach is an addition by P and it is not clear whether this is an unusual requirement or perhaps it's the usual or ritual way of eating sacrificial meat.

The meat of the Pesach had to be consumed on the evening of the seventh day and whatever was left over until the morning had to be burnt (the burning requirement is a priestly addition Leviticus 7:17 and elsewhere). The reasoning behind this bizarre law is not clear. We know, for example, that in the priestly days multiple households "enrolled" on a single Pesach animal so that no meat went to waste (Exodus 12:4) but this practice of sharing the Pesach among several households is the effect of the ancient law requiring that no meat be left over until the morning and not the cause. Perhaps this law was designed to encourage feasting like there's no tomorrow and to discourage frugality. Meat was a precious luxury in ancient Israelite days. Meat was not eaten on a daily basis or even on a weekly basis. When one wanted to eat meat in the Judah of the divided kingdom, he was expected to make a pilgrimage to the temple and share the animal with yahweh and the priests. If worshippers had any desire to salt some of the meat and preserve it for consumption back home, this law was designed to prevent such practice and encourage unbridled consumption of the Pesach meat on the festival day.

It is also possible, that the law was designed to force people to sacrifice at the temple and share the meat with the priests. If they could salt the meat and take it with them back home, then they would not be inclined to share the meat with the priests. Furthermore, the frequency of pilgrimages would decline since people would still have some meat left over at home from their previous sacrifice.

Finally, there is one more point that I should make about the J description of the Pesach. In exodus 34:23 it says "Three times in the year shall all your males see the face of the lord yahweh, the God of Israel". This has traditionally been construed to refer to male humans and "seeing the face of god" was understood simply to be synonymous with worshipping god. I strongly disagree with this, however. This would mean that all male servants and toddlers are required to make the pilgrimage, which is quite burdensome, costly and unreasonable. Rather, it means that all male animals must see the face of God in the form of being sacrificed to God. It is a recapitulation of the required dedication of firstborn animals to yahweh mentioned in verses 19-20 and the intention here is all male "firstborn" animals, not literally all male animals.

"all your males" might also include human firsborns insofar as they could be dedicated to yahweh, but --as mentioned earlier-- since the practice of sacrificing humans to god was not considered appropriate when J was authored and levite priests had already been firmly established in the temple (so that there was no need to to devote firstborn humans to God as priests), the dedication of humans to yahweh was not really practicable. This clause "all your males" might be a leftover from an extremely ancient Semitic religion in which human sacrifice was considered acceptable.

How was Pesach observed according to D and P?

You have probably noticed my description of Pesach being observed on the seventh day and not the first day of the seven day festival. This is unequivocally stated in both J and E. The deuteronomist is the one who changed the sacrificial day of Pesach from the last day to the first day and the priestly writer followed faithfully in his footsteps (somewhat similar to the way the qatsir festival was altered by both D and P). J says openly that on the first six days of the Pesach festival one may work the field and only on the seventh day one is required to rest, that is, make the pilgrimage to the temple and offer up the Pesach sacrifice. How can one possibly work on the first day while simultaneously make a pilgrimage to the temple to sacrifice the Pesach? It is therefore abundantly clear that J is designating the seventh day as the sacrificial day. The first six days are merely counting days towards the seventh day during which chamets may not be eaten.

In E this practice is even more pronounced. It says (Exodus 13:4) "sanctify every newborn human and animal among the children of Israel to me... Today you are emerging (from Egypt) on the new moon of Abib and so once yahweh brings you to the canaanite land... You shall perform those acts of worship (ban against chamets and sanctification of the newborn) on this new moon, thus: six days you shall eat unleavened bread and the seventh day shall be a festival to yahweh... and you shall tell your son on that day (=the seventh day) saying: because of this (act of worship), yahweh did (all those miracles) for me when I emerged from Egypt". The masoretic text reads seven days in Exodus 13:6 but the Septuagint, which represents an older and more reliable Hebrew text, reads six days, just like it is in the J text. Regardless, E says openly that the festival is held on the seventh day and there's no mention of any additional first-day festival like the the priestly writer would have it (Leviticus 23:7-8).

This switch from the seventh day to the first day was not initiated by the priestly author, however. The deuteronomist is the one who started it. In deuteronomy 16:1 "guard the new moon of abib and make a Pesach to yahweh your god (on that day)... and there shall not be left over until the morning from the meat that you sacrifice on the evening of the first day". Thus, the deuteronomist makes the first day celebration of Pesach as clear as JE makes the seventh day.

Ironically, all three sources agree that the seven days are counted from the new moon of abib but the priestly writer changed even that. According to the P document, the festival actually consists of eight days. First comes the day on which the Pesach is offered, in the afternoon
of the fourteenth day of the first month (Exodus 12:6 and Leviticus 23:5). Then comes a seven day holiday from the fifteenth until the twenty-first of the month (Exodus 12:18). The term "first day" which designates the first of the seven days of the Pesach festival in the P document, refers to the fifteenth day of Nisan, not the fourteenth - the day the Pesach is sacrificed. The deuteronomist, on the other hand, does not suggest such a scheme. The deuteronomist insists that the seven days are counted from the new year as mentioned earlier and he also insists that the Pesach is sacrificed on the "first day" of the seven days (Deuteronomy 16:4) and not the day before the first day as specified by P.

How were the JE festivals of Qatsir and Asiph observed?

As pointed out earlier both Qatsir and Asiph are seven-day festivals tied to an agricultural season in the solar year just like Pesach (abib) is tied to the appearance of the tender, green stalks of grain. What is not clear is whether those festivals are tied to lunar months as well. The term Chadash (Chodesh) in ancient Hebrew always means a new moon. It does not refer to a solar month, which is an artificial division of the solar year into twelve parts. We know that Pesach is tied to the solar abib season AND to the lunar new moon that appears in that season, for the text says openly "chodesh ha'abib" (the new moon that falls in the abib season). Are Qatsir and Asiph tied to a new moon in their respective solar seasons as well? in the JE document there is no such suggestion but JE only briefly mentions these festivals and so it is possible that their connection to the new moon within the appropriate agricultural season is taken for granted.

It seems logical to assume that the qatsir and asiph festivals had the same model as the Abib festival, namely, start counting seven days from the new moon day that falls in the appropriate agricultural season and designate the seventh day as the pilgrimage day.

But what about the Pesach offering and the matzah requirement? Did these practices apply to the Qatsir and Asiph festivals as well? Again, the JE document does not clarify this matter and since these traditions were not commonly practiced during the JE period (eighth century BCE or earlier) it is extremely hard to try to reconstruct the precise meaning of these ancient documents.

If we look at Exodus 34:25 "Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning" we see a parallelism between the first part and second part of this verse. According to this poetic expression, "my sacrifice" and "sacrifice of the feast of passover" are one and the same. Instead of referring to an object by the same name twice, the correct poetic way is to name it slightly differently when referring to it again in the same verse just like we say in English "John excelled in math but he was not proficient in Science"; we don't use the verb "excel" twice. Thus, all sacrifices offered to yahweh on any of the three annual festivals (and possibly all other sacrifices as well) are called Pesach sacrifices and the two cardinal Pesach rules essentially apply to all sacrifices: no leavened bread may be eaten with the meat and no meat may be left over until the following morning.

So we have established that the Pesach animal sacrifice applied to all three JE festivals. Now what about the seven-day matzah requirement? Was there a prohibition against eating chamets for seven days during the Qatsir and Asiph festivals?

According to our understanding that during the first six days of the festival, one was allowed to work their field at home and not be present at the temple, the only defining practice during those days was the abstention from chamets. Thus, the abstention from chamets for six days prior to the actual feast day is integral to any seven day festival, including Qatsir and Asiph.

However, there is a problem with this. We know that only the abib festival was called a "matsoth festival"; this is quite clear in the E document (Exodus 23:15-16) which names the festivals: festival of the unleavened bread, festival of the harvest and festival of the gathering. The question is, why isn't it called "festival of the abib", consistent with the other two festivals that are named after their respective agricultural seasons. It seems that the seven-day matzah rule was somehow unique to the abib festival and it alone was therefore called the matzah festival whereas the other festivals did not have this rule and could therefore not be called so and were therefore named after their agricultural season.

Notwithstanding the ambiguity in the way J expresses himself, I still insist that J really meant for all three festivals to contain a preceding six day ban against chamets. Here's how the document should be interpreted:

"Guard the the festival of matsoth, you shall eat matsoth for seven days, as I have (already) commanded you" - this is a preface. What he's saying here is that whenever a festival to God is celebrated, there should be a seven day ban against chamets. Now he goes on describing the three seasons during which festivals should be held. First comes "the season in the month of abib for in the month of abib you emerged from Egypt.." and then he says that two additional seasonal "matzah" festivals should be held: "In the ploughing season and in the harvest season you shall rest" and he explains "observe a septuple festival at the firstfruit-of-wheat harvest season and observe the gathering festival (which coincides with the ploughing season) at the end of the year". By "the gathering festival" J means "the matzah festival that occurs in the gathering season" (chaj hamatsoth shel asiph).

In support of my theory that all three festivals are meant to be matzah festivals, it should be noted that the priestly author expanded the ban against chamets to virtually all sacrifices brought to yahweh, not just "pesach" animal sacrifices brought on the abib or other annual festivals. In Leviticus 2:11 it states "You shall not make chamets any grain offering brought before yahweh".

In all likelihood, leavened bread was seen by these ancient peoples as contaminated and impure, unfit for a godly sacrifice and inappropriate to be eaten together with the meat of a godly sacrifice, even though they acknowledged that it tasted better. Thus, the ban against chamets originally had nothing to do with the abib festival in particular or with the Exodus. Only in later generations was the ban against chamets attributed to the fact that the Israelites did not have time to let their dough rise when leaving Egypt and thus isolated to the festival of abib since that is when the Israelites left Egypt. This connection was admittedly made by the E author and is clearly articulated in the verses Exodus 12:34-13:10. The other authors D and P followed suit and that's how abib became the only matzah festival (and the only Pesach festival).

When J gives the reason for observing a matzah festival in the Abib season "for in the month of Abib you emerged from Egypt" (Exodus 34:18), he is not giving the reason for the ban against chamets. Rather, he is explaining why the the festival is held in this season. This reasoning is also expressed in E (Exodus 13:4-5) "This day came ye out in the month Abib, and it shall be when the LORD shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites... that thou shalt keep this service in this month".

Both J and E say in connection with the prohibition against chamets "As I have commanded you" (Exodus 34:18 and 23:15). The question is: where had this command been given before?

Answer: It is in Exodus 13:7 "Matsoth shall be eaten for seven days and you shall not see chamets or sourdough in your entire border". Although this chapter is generally considered to be an E document, this particular verse does not fit in here and I believe it was inserted here from a very ancient source by a late editor of the JE manuscript. The previous verse is not only repetitive of this verse but it actually contradicts this verse if we go by the Septuagint version which reads "six days you shall eat matzah..." But even if we go by the Masorete version, it seems bizarre and repetitious:

verse 6: seven days you shall eat matzah...
verse 7: matsoth shall be eaten for seven days...

Verse 7 should be contrasted with the P document who also admonishes against having any chamets or sourdough in the house (Exodus 12:15 and 12:19). The priestly writer mentions both chamets and sourdough but he says uses the term "it shall not be found" rather than "it shall not be seen". Also, he talks about the house rather than the border. Clearly, verse 7 is a very ancient verse, thus explaining why it talks about a border and not house, since the Israelites presumably lived a nomadic lifestyle then and did not posses any houses. Also, the term seeing instead of finding in verse 7 is also suggestive of its antiquity, for the early tribes always used verbs that were intimately tied with one of the five senses.

I think that in all likelihood, this particular verse was taken from an extremely old document (or more likely stone inscription that was widely known among the contemporary tribes. Everyone knew that there was a seven-day complete ban against chamets while sacrificing to the deity. The J author came to clarify this old tradition and said that three annual festivals should be held and he added some other rules as well. This explains "as I have commanded you" very nicely, as the J author is referring back to a known command in order to provide legitimacy and a solid base for his agenda.

The Covenant Code in Exodus 21 is an E document. Its importance lies in the fact that it is the oldest law code in the Bible after the J decalog in Exodus 34. It is therefore worthwhile for us to investigate it further. One of the first things I have noticed is that their order is NOT random. The laws are --for the most part-- neatly divided into categories.

Laws on worship
1 Law against making golden or silver idols
2 Law forbidding use of chiseled stone for yahwehעs altar
3 Law forbidding ascent to yahweh altar in steps

Laws on slaves
4 Law regarding treatment of Hebrew man-servants
5 Law regarding treatment of Hebrew maid-servants

Transgressions involving capital punishment
6 Law regarding someone who commits murder
7 Law regarding someone who hits his father
8 Law regarding someone who commits kidnapping
9 Law regarding someone who curses his father

Laws regarding person-to-person injury
10 Law regarding bodily injury caused in a quarrel
11 Law regarding someone who kills his servant
12 Law regarding seomone who causes injury to an unborn fetus
13 Law regarding someone who injures his servant

Laws regarding property that causes injury or damage
14 Law regarding an ox that gores a peron
15 Law regarding a pit that causes damage to animals
16 Law regarding an ox that injures another ox

Laws regarding a person who causes damage
17 Law regarding someone who steals sheep or cattle
18 Law regarding someone who causes fire damage to property
19 Law regarding a guard of silver or vessels 91
20 Law regarding a guard of livestock
21 Law regarding property damage caused by a borrower

Laws on day-to-day appropriate civil behavior (not punishable)
22 Law regarding someone who seduces a virgin
23 Law against witchcraft
24 Law forbidding sexual relations with an animal
25 Law regarding someone who offers sacrifices to other gods
26 Law against cheating or oppressing aliens, widows or orphans
27 Law regarding lending money
28 Law against cursing a prophet or chieftain
29 Law against delay of firstborn appropriation to God
30 Law against eating prey meat
31 Law against being a malicious witness
32 Law requiring return of an enemy’s stray animal
33 Law against judicial injustices

Law on resting times
34 Law of Shemitah-year field abandoment
35 Law requiring rest on Sabbath

Law on feasts and sacrifices at the temple
36 Law requiring observance of three annual festivals
37 Law forbidding eating a sacrifice with unleavened bread
38 Law against leaving over a sacrifice until the morning
39 Law requiring eating firstfruits at the temple
40 Law against eating an animal and its mother simultaneously

Law regarding deity worship
41 Law against prostration to canaanite gods
42 Law against immitating canaanite religious practices
-------------------------------------------------------------

1 Law against making golden or silver idols
פרק כא
יט וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָֹה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה כֹּה תֹאמַר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אַתֶּם רְאִיתֶם כִּי מִן־הַשָּׁמַיִם דִּבַּרְתִּי עִמָּכֶֽם:
כ לֹא תַֽעֲשׂוּן אִתִּי אֱלֹהֵי כֶסֶף וֵֽאלֹהֵי זָהָב לֹא תַֽעֲשׂוּ לָכֶֽם:

2 Law forbidding use of chiseled stone for yahweh’s altar
כא מִזְבַּח אֲדָמָה תַּֽעֲשֶׂה־לִּי וְזָֽבַחְתָּ עָלָיו אֶת־עֹֽלֹתֶיךָ וְאֶת־שְׁלָמֶיךָ אֶת־צֹֽאנְךָ וְאֶת־בְּקָרֶךָ בְּכָל־הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר אַזְכִּיר אֶת־שְׁמִי אָבוֹא אֵלֶיךָ וּבֵֽרַכְתִּֽיךָ: כב וְאִם־מִזְבַּח אֲבָנִים תַּֽעֲשֶׂה־לִּי לֹֽא־תִבְנֶה אֶתְהֶן גָּזִית כִּי חַרְבְּךָ הֵנַפְתָּ עָלֶיהָ וַֽתְּחַֽלְלֶֽהָ:

3 Law forbidding ascent to yahweh altar in steps
כג וְלֹא־תַֽעֲלֶה בְמַֽעֲלֹת עַל־מִזְבְּחִי אֲשֶׁר לֹֽא־תִגָּלֶה עֶרְוָֽתְךָ עָלָֽיו: פ פ פ
[פרשת משפטים] א וְאֵלֶּה הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר תָּשִׂים לִפְנֵיהֶֽם:

4 Law regarding treatment of Hebrew man-servants
ב כִּי תִקְנֶה עֶבֶד עִבְרִי שֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים יַֽעֲבֹד וּבַשְּׁבִעִת יֵצֵא לַֽחָפְשִׁי חִנָּֽם: ג אִם־בְּגַפּוֹ יָבֹא בְּגַפּוֹ יֵצֵא אִם־בַּעַל אִשָּׁה הוּא וְיָֽצְאָה אִשְׁתּוֹ עִמּֽוֹ: ד אִם־אֲדֹנָיו יִתֶּן־לוֹ אִשָּׁה וְיָֽלְדָה־לּוֹ בָנִים אוֹ בָנוֹת הָֽאִשָּׁה וִֽילָדֶיהָ תִּֽהְיֶה לַֽאדֹנֶיהָ וְהוּא יֵצֵא בְגַפּֽוֹ: ה וְאִם־אָמֹר יֹאמַר הָעֶבֶד אָהַבְתִּי אֶת־אֲדֹנִי אֶת־אִשְׁתִּי וְאֶת־בָּנָי לֹא אֵצֵא חָפְשִֽׁי: ו וְהִגִּישׁוֹ אֲדֹנָיו אֶל־הָאֱלֹהִים וְהִגִּישׁוֹ אֶל־הַדֶּלֶת אוֹ אֶל־הַמְּזוּזָה וְרָצַע אֲדֹנָיו אֶת־אָזְנוֹ בַּמַּרְצֵעַ וַֽעֲבָדוֹ לְעֹלָֽם: ס

5 Law regarding treatment of Hebrew maid-servants
ז וְכִֽי־יִמְכֹּר אִישׁ אֶת־בִּתּוֹ לְאָמָה לֹא תֵצֵא כְּצֵאת הָֽעֲבָדִֽים: ח אִם־רָעָה בְּעֵינֵי אֲדֹנֶיהָ אֲשֶׁר־לֹא [לוֹ] יְעָדָהּ וְהֶפְדָּהּ לְעַם נָכְרִי לֹֽא־יִמְשֹׁל לְמָכְרָהּ בְּבִגְדוֹ־בָֽהּ: ט וְאִם־לִבְנוֹ יִֽיעָדֶנָּה כְּמִשְׁפַּט הַבָּנוֹת יַֽעֲשֶׂה־לָּֽהּ: י אִם־אַחֶרֶת יִֽקַּֽח־לוֹ שְׁאֵרָהּ כְּסוּתָהּ וְעֹֽנָתָהּ לֹא יִגְרָֽע: יא וְאִם־שְׁלָשׁ־אֵלֶּה לֹא יַֽעֲשֶׂה לָהּ וְיָֽצְאָה חִנָּם אֵין כָּֽסֶף: ס

6 Law regarding someone who commits murder
יב מַכֵּה אִישׁ וָמֵת מוֹת יוּמָֽת: יג וַֽאֲשֶׁר לֹא צָדָה וְהָֽאֱלֹהִים אִנָּה לְיָדוֹ וְשַׂמְתִּי לְךָ מָקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יָנוּס שָֽׁמָּה: ס יד וְכִֽי־יָזִד אִישׁ עַל־רֵעֵהוּ לְהָרְגוֹ בְעָרְמָה מֵעִם מִזְבְּחִי תִּקָּחֶנּוּ לָמֽוּת: ס

7 Law regarding someone who hits his father
טו וּמַכֵּה אָבִיו וְאִמּוֹ מוֹת יוּמָֽת: ס

8 Law regarding someone who commits kidnapping
טז וְגֹנֵב אִישׁ וּמְכָרוֹ וְנִמְצָא בְיָדוֹ מוֹת יוּמָֽת: ס

9 Law regarding someone who curses his father
יז וּמְקַלֵּל אָבִיו וְאִמּוֹ מוֹת יוּמָֽת: ס

10 Law regarding bodily injury caused in a quarrel
יח וְכִֽי־יְרִיבֻן אֲנָשִׁים וְהִכָּה־אִישׁ אֶת־רֵעֵהוּ בְּאֶבֶן אוֹ בְאֶגְרֹף וְלֹא יָמוּת וְנָפַל לְמִשְׁכָּֽב: יט אִם־יָקוּם וְהִתְהַלֵּךְ בַּחוּץ עַל־מִשְׁעַנְתּוֹ וְנִקָּה הַמַּכֶּה רַק שִׁבְתּוֹ יִתֵּן וְרַפֹּא יְרַפֵּֽא: ס [שני
]
11 Law regarding someone who kills his servant 11
כ וְכִֽי־יַכֶּה אִישׁ אֶת־עַבְדּוֹ אוֹ אֶת־אֲמָתוֹ בַּשֵּׁבֶט וּמֵת תַּחַת יָדוֹ נָקֹם יִנָּקֵֽם: כא אַךְ אִם־יוֹם אוֹ יוֹמַיִם יַֽעֲמֹד לֹא יֻקַּם כִּי כַסְפּוֹ הֽוּא: ס

12 Law regarding seomone who causes injury to an unborn fetus
כב וְכִֽי־יִנָּצוּ אֲנָשִׁים וְנָגְפוּ אִשָּׁה הָרָה וְיָֽצְאוּ יְלָדֶיהָ וְלֹא יִֽהְיֶה אָסוֹן עָנוֹשׁ יֵֽעָנֵשׁ כַּֽאֲשֶׁר יָשִׁית עָלָיו בַּעַל הָֽאִשָּׁה וְנָתַן בִּפְלִלִֽים: כג וְאִם־אָסוֹן יִֽהְיֶה וְנָֽתַתָּה נֶפֶשׁ תַּחַת נָֽפֶשׁ: כד עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן שֵׁן תַּחַת שֵׁן יָד תַּחַת יָד רֶגֶל תַּחַת רָֽגֶל: כה כְּוִיָּה תַּחַת כְּוִיָּה פֶּצַע תַּחַת פָּצַע חַבּוּרָה תַּחַת חַבּוּרָֽה: ס

13 Law regarding someone who injures his servant
כו וְכִֽי־יַכֶּה אִישׁ אֶת־עֵין עַבְדּוֹ אֽוֹ־אֶת־עֵין אֲמָתוֹ וְשִֽׁחֲתָהּ לַֽחָפְשִׁי יְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ תַּחַת עֵינֽוֹ: כז וְאִם־שֵׁן עַבְדּוֹ אוֹ־שֵׁן אֲמָתוֹ יַפִּיל לַֽחָפְשִׁי יְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ תַּחַת שִׁנּֽוֹ: פ

14 Law regarding an ox that gores a peron
כח וְכִֽי־יִגַּח שׁוֹר אֶת־אִישׁ אוֹ אֶת־אִשָּׁה וָמֵת סָקוֹל יִסָּקֵל הַשּׁוֹר וְלֹא יֵֽאָכֵל אֶת־בְּשָׂרוֹ וּבַעַל הַשּׁוֹר נָקִֽי: כט וְאִם שׁוֹר נַגָּח הוּא מִתְּמֹל שִׁלְשֹׁם וְהוּעַד בִּבְעָלָיו וְלֹא יִשְׁמְרֶנּוּ וְהֵמִית אִישׁ אוֹ אִשָּׁה הַשּׁוֹר יִסָּקֵל וְגַם־בְּעָלָיו יוּמָֽת: ל אִם־כֹּפֶר יוּשַׁת עָלָיו וְנָתַן פִּדְיֹן נַפְשׁוֹ כְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר־יוּשַׁת עָלָֽיו: לא אוֹ־בֵן יִגָּח אוֹ־בַת יִגָּח כַּמִּשְׁפָּט הַזֶּה יֵעָשֶׂה לּֽוֹ: לב אִם־עֶבֶד יִגַּח הַשּׁוֹר אוֹ אָמָה כֶּסֶף שְׁלֹשִׁים שְׁקָלִים יִתֵּן לַֽאדֹנָיו וְהַשּׁוֹר יִסָּקֵֽל: ס

15 Law regarding a pit that causes damage to animals
לג וְכִֽי־יִפְתַּח אִישׁ בּוֹר אוֹ כִּֽי־יִכְרֶה אִישׁ בֹּר וְלֹא יְכַסֶּנּוּ וְנָֽפַל־שָׁמָּה שּׁוֹר אוֹ חֲמֽוֹר: לד בַּעַל הַבּוֹר יְשַׁלֵּם כֶּסֶף יָשִׁיב לִבְעָלָיו וְהַמֵּת יִֽהְיֶה־לּֽוֹ: ס

16 Law regarding an ox that injures another ox
לה וְכִֽי־יִגֹּף שׁוֹר־אִישׁ אֶת־שׁוֹר רֵעֵהוּ וָמֵת וּמָכְרוּ אֶת־הַשּׁוֹר הַחַי וְחָצוּ אֶת־כַּסְפּוֹ וְגַם אֶת־הַמֵּת יֶֽחֱצֽוּן: לו אוֹ נוֹדַע כִּי שׁוֹר נַגָּח הוּא מִתְּמוֹל שִׁלְשֹׁם וְלֹא יִשְׁמְרֶנּוּ בְּעָלָיו שַׁלֵּם יְשַׁלֵּם שׁוֹר תַּחַת הַשּׁוֹר וְהַמֵּת יִֽהְיֶה־לּֽוֹ: ס

17 Law regarding someone who steals sheep or cattle
לז כִּי יִגְנֹֽב־אִישׁ שׁוֹר אוֹ־שֶׂה וּטְבָחוֹ אוֹ מְכָרוֹ חֲמִשָּׁה בָקָר יְשַׁלֵּם תַּחַת הַשּׁוֹר וְאַרְבַּע־צֹאן תַּחַת הַשֶּֽׂה:
פרק כב
א אִם־בַּמַּחְתֶּרֶת יִמָּצֵא הַגַּנָּב וְהֻכָּה וָמֵת אֵין לוֹ דָּמִֽים: ב אִם־זָֽרְחָה הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ עָלָיו דָּמִים לוֹ שַׁלֵּם יְשַׁלֵּם אִם־אֵין לוֹ וְנִמְכַּר בִּגְנֵֽבָתֽוֹ: ג אִם־הִמָּצֵא תִמָּצֵא בְיָדוֹ הַגְּנֵבָה מִשּׁוֹר עַד־חֲמוֹר עַד־שֶׂה חַיִּים שְׁנַיִם יְשַׁלֵּֽם: ס [שלישי]

18 Law regarding someone who causes fire damage to property
ד כִּי יַבְעֶר־אִישׁ שָׂדֶה אוֹ־כֶרֶם וְשִׁלַּח אֶת־בְּעִירֹה וּבִעֵר בִּשְׂדֵה אַחֵר מֵיטַב שָׂדֵהוּ וּמֵיטַב כַּרְמוֹ יְשַׁלֵּֽם: ס ה כִּֽי־תֵצֵא אֵשׁ וּמָֽצְאָה קֹצִים וְנֶֽאֱכַל גָּדִישׁ אוֹ הַקָּמָה אוֹ הַשָּׂדֶה שַׁלֵּם יְשַׁלֵּם הַמַּבְעִר אֶת־הַבְּעֵרָֽה: ס

Law regarding a guard of silver or vessels 19
ו כִּֽי־יִתֵּן אִישׁ אֶל־רֵעֵהוּ כֶּסֶף אֽוֹ־כֵלִים לִשְׁמֹר וְגֻנַּב מִבֵּית הָאִישׁ אִם־יִמָּצֵא הַגַּנָּב יְשַׁלֵּם שְׁנָֽיִם: ז אִם־לֹא יִמָּצֵא הַגַּנָּב וְנִקְרַב בַּֽעַל־הַבַּיִת אֶל־הָֽאֱלֹהִים אִם־לֹא שָׁלַח יָדוֹ בִּמְלֶאכֶת רֵעֵֽהוּ: ח עַֽל־כָּל־דְּבַר־פֶּשַׁע עַל־שׁוֹר עַל־חֲמוֹר עַל־שֶׂה עַל־שַׂלְמָה עַל־כָּל־אֲבֵדָה אֲשֶׁר יֹאמַר כִּי־הוּא זֶה עַד הָֽאֱלֹהִים יָבֹא דְּבַר־שְׁנֵיהֶם אֲשֶׁר יַרְשִׁיעֻן אֱלֹהִים יְשַׁלֵּם שְׁנַיִם לְרֵעֵֽהוּ: ס

20 Law regarding a guard of livestock
ט כִּֽי־יִתֵּן אִישׁ אֶל־רֵעֵהוּ חֲמוֹר אוֹ־שׁוֹר אוֹ־שֶׂה וְכָל־בְּהֵמָה לִשְׁמֹר וּמֵת אֽוֹ־נִשְׁבַּר אֽוֹ־נִשְׁבָּה אֵין רֹאֶֽה: י שְׁבֻעַת יְהֹוָה תִּֽהְיֶה בֵּין שְׁנֵיהֶם אִם־לֹא שָׁלַח יָדוֹ בִּמְלֶאכֶת רֵעֵהוּ וְלָקַח בְּעָלָיו וְלֹא יְשַׁלֵּֽם: יא וְאִם־גָּנֹב יִגָּנֵב מֵֽעִמּוֹ יְשַׁלֵּם לִבְעָלָֽיו: יב אִם־טָרֹף יִטָּרֵף יְבִאֵהוּ עֵד הַטְּרֵפָה לֹא יְשַׁלֵּֽם: פ

Law regarding property damage caused by a borrower 21
יג וְכִֽי־יִשְׁאַל אִישׁ מֵעִם רֵעֵהוּ וְנִשְׁבַּר אוֹ־מֵת בְּעָלָיו אֵין־עִמּוֹ שַׁלֵּם יְשַׁלֵּֽם: יד אִם־בְּעָלָיו עִמּוֹ לֹא יְשַׁלֵּם אִם־שָׂכִיר הוּא בָּא בִּשְׂכָרֽוֹ: ס

22 Law regarding someone who seduces a virgin
טו וְכִֽי־יְפַתֶּה אִישׁ בְּתוּלָה אֲשֶׁר לֹֽא־אֹרָשָׂה וְשָׁכַב עִמָּהּ מָהֹר יִמְהָרֶנָּה לּוֹ לְאִשָּֽׁה: טז אִם־מָאֵן יְמָאֵן אָבִיהָ לְתִתָּהּ לוֹ כֶּסֶף יִשְׁקֹל כְּמֹהַר הַבְּתוּלֹֽת: ס

23 Law against witchcraft
יז מְכַשֵּׁפָה לֹא תְחַיֶּֽה:

24 Law firbidding sexual relations with an animal
יח כָּל־שֹׁכֵב עִם־בְּהֵמָה מוֹת יוּמָֽת: ס

25 Law regarding pagan sacrifices
יט זֹבֵחַ לָֽאֱלֹהִים יָֽחֳרָם בִּלְתִּי לַֽיהוָֹה לְבַדּֽוֹ:

Law against cheating or oppressing aliens, widows or orphans 26
כ וְגֵר לֹֽא־תוֹנֶה וְלֹא תִלְחָצֶנּוּ כִּֽי־גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם: כא כָּל־אַלְמָנָה וְיָתוֹם לֹא תְעַנּֽוּן: כב אִם־עַנֵּה תְעַנֶּה אֹתוֹ כִּי אִם־צָעֹק יִצְעַק אֵלַי שָׁמֹעַ אֶשְׁמַע צַֽעֲקָתֽוֹ: כג וְחָרָה אַפִּי וְהָֽרַגְתִּי אֶתְכֶם בֶּחָרֶב וְהָיוּ נְשֵׁיכֶם אַלְמָנוֹת וּבְנֵיכֶם יְתֹמִֽים: פ

27 Law regarding lending money
כד אִם־כֶּסֶף תַּלְוֶה אֶת־עַמִּי אֶת־הֶֽעָנִי עִמָּךְ לֹא־תִֽהְיֶה לוֹ כְּנֹשֶׁה לֹֽא־תְשִׂימוּן עָלָיו נֶֽשֶׁךְ: כה אִם־חָבֹל תַּחְבֹּל שַׂלְמַת רֵעֶךָ עַד־בֹּא הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ תְּשִׁיבֶנּוּ לֽוֹ: כו כִּי הִוא כְסוּתֹה לְבַדָּהּ הִוא שִׂמְלָתוֹ לְעֹרוֹ בַּמֶּה יִשְׁכָּב וְהָיָה כִּֽי־יִצְעַק אֵלַי וְשָֽׁמַעְתִּי כִּֽי־חַנּוּן אָֽנִי: ס חצי הספר בפסוקים [רביעי]

28 Law against cursing a prophet or chieftain
כז אֱלֹהִים לֹא תְקַלֵּל וְנָשִׂיא בְעַמְּךָ לֹא תָאֹֽר:

Law against delay of firstborn appropriation to god 29
כח מְלֵאָֽתְךָ וְדִמְעֲךָ לֹא תְאַחֵר בְּכוֹר בָּנֶיךָ תִּתֶּן־לִֽי: כט כֵּן־תַּֽעֲשֶׂה לְשֹֽׁרְךָ לְצֹאנֶךָ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים יִהְיֶה עִם־אִמּוֹ בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי תִּתְּנוֹ־לִֽי:

30 Law against eating prey meat
ל וְאַנְשֵׁי־קֹדֶשׁ תִּהְיוּן לִי וּבָשָׂר בַּשָּׂדֶה טְרֵפָה לֹא תֹאכֵלוּ לַכֶּלֶב תַּשְׁלִכוּן אֹתֽוֹ: ס
פרק כג

31 Law against being a malicious witness
א לֹא תִשָּׂא שֵׁמַע שָׁוְא אַל־תָּשֶׁת יָֽדְךָ עִם־רָשָׁע לִֽהְיֹת עֵד חָמָֽס: ב לֹא־תִֽהְיֶה אַֽחֲרֵֽי־רַבִּים לְרָעֹת וְלֹא־תַֽעֲנֶה עַל־רִב לִנְטֹת אַֽחֲרֵי רַבִּים לְהַטֹּֽת: ג וְדָל לֹא תֶהְדַּר בְּרִיבֽוֹ: ס

32 Law requiring return of an enemy’s stray animal
ד כִּי תִפְגַּע שׁוֹר אֹֽיִבְךָ אוֹ חֲמֹרוֹ תֹּעֶה הָשֵׁב תְּשִׁיבֶנּוּ לֽוֹ: ס ה כִּֽי־תִרְאֶה חֲמוֹר שֹׂנַֽאֲךָ רֹבֵץ תַּחַת מַשָּׂאוֹ וְחָֽדַלְתָּ מֵֽעֲזֹב לוֹ עָזֹב תַּֽעֲזֹב עִמּֽוֹ: ס [חמישי]

33 Law against judicial injustices
ו לֹא תַטֶּה מִשְׁפַּט אֶבְיֹֽנְךָ בְּרִיבֽוֹ: ז מִדְּבַר־שֶׁקֶר תִּרְחָק וְנָקִי וְצַדִּיק אַֽל־תַּֽהֲרֹג כִּי לֹֽא־אַצְדִּיק רָשָֽׁע: ח וְשֹׁחַד לֹא תִקָּח כִּי הַשֹּׁחַד יְעַוֵּר פִּקְחִים וִֽיסַלֵּף דִּבְרֵי צַדִּיקִֽים: ט וְגֵר לֹא תִלְחָץ וְאַתֶּם יְדַעְתֶּם אֶת־נֶפֶשׁ הַגֵּר כִּֽי־גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם:

34 Law of Shemitah-year field abandoment
י וְשֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים תִּזְרַע אֶת־אַרְצֶךָ וְאָֽסַפְתָּ אֶת־תְּבֽוּאָתָֽהּ: יא וְהַשְּׁבִיעִת תִּשְׁמְטֶנָּה וּנְטַשְׁתָּהּ וְאָֽכְלוּ אֶבְיֹנֵי עַמֶּךָ וְיִתְרָם תֹּאכַל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה כֵּן־תַּֽעֲשֶׂה לְכַרְמְךָ לְזֵיתֶֽךָ:

35 Law requiring rest on Sabbath
יב שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תַּֽעֲשֶׂה מַֽעֲשֶׂיךָ וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי תִּשְׁבֹּת לְמַעַן יָנוּחַ שֽׁוֹרְךָ וַֽחֲמֹרֶךָ וְיִנָּפֵשׁ בֶּן־אֲמָֽתְךָ וְהַגֵּֽר:
יג וּבְכֹל אֲשֶׁר־אָמַרְתִּי אֲלֵיכֶם תִּשָּׁמֵרוּ וְשֵׁם אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים לֹא תַזְכִּירוּ לֹא יִשָּׁמַע עַל־פִּֽיךָ:

36 Law requiring observance of three annual festivals
יד שָׁלֹשׁ רְגָלִים תָּחֹג לִי בַּשָּׁנָֽה: טו אֶת־חַג הַמַּצּוֹת תִּשְׁמֹר שִׁבְעַת יָמִים תֹּאכַל מַצּוֹת כַּֽאֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתִךָ לְמוֹעֵד חֹדֶשׁ הָֽאָבִיב כִּי־בוֹ יָצָאתָ מִמִּצְרָיִם וְלֹא־יֵֽרָאוּ פָנַי רֵיקָֽם: טז וְחַג הַקָּצִיר בִּכּוּרֵי מַֽעֲשֶׂיךָ אֲשֶׁר תִּזְרַע בַּשָּׂדֶה וְחַג הָֽאָסִף בְּצֵאת הַשָּׁנָה בְּאָסְפְּךָ אֶֽת־מַֽעֲשֶׂיךָ מִן־הַשָּׂדֶֽה: יז שָׁלֹשׁ פְּעָמִים בַּשָּׁנָה יֵֽרָאֶה כָּל־זְכוּרְךָ אֶל־פְּנֵי הָֽאָדֹן יְהוָֹֽה:

Law forbidding eating a sacrifice with unleavened bread 37
יח לֹֽא־תִזְבַּח עַל־חָמֵץ דַּם־זִבְחִי

38 Law against leaving over a sacrifice until the morning
וְלֹֽא־יָלִין חֵֽלֶב־חַגִּי עַד־בֹּֽקֶר:

39 Law requiring eating firstfruits at the temple
יט רֵאשִׁית בִּכּוּרֵי אַדְמָתְךָ תָּבִיא בֵּית יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהֶיךָ

40 Law against eating an animal and its mother simultaneously
לֹֽא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּֽחֲלֵב אִמּֽוֹ: פ [ששי]
כ הִנֵּה אָֽנֹכִי שֹׁלֵחַ מַלְאָךְ לְפָנֶיךָ לִשְׁמָרְךָ בַּדָּרֶךְ וְלַֽהֲבִיאֲךָ אֶל־הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר הֲכִנֹֽתִי: כא הִשָּׁמֶר מִפָּנָיו וּשְׁמַע בְּקֹלוֹ אַל־תַּמֵּר בּוֹ כִּי לֹא יִשָּׂא לְפִשְׁעֲכֶם כִּי שְׁמִי בְּקִרְבּֽוֹ: כב כִּי אִם־שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמַע בְּקֹלוֹ וְעָשִׂיתָ כֹּל אֲשֶׁר אֲדַבֵּר וְאָֽיַבְתִּי אֶת־אֹיְבֶיךָ וְצַרְתִּי אֶת־צֹֽרְרֶֽיךָ: כג כִּֽי־יֵלֵךְ מַלְאָכִי לְפָנֶיךָ וֶֽהֱבִֽיאֲךָ אֶל־הָֽאֱמֹרִי וְהַחִתִּי וְהַפְּרִזִּי וְהַֽכְּנַֽעֲנִי הַֽחִוִּי וְהַיְבוּסִי וְהִכְחַדְתִּֽיו:

Law against prostration to canaanite gods 41
כד לֹֽא־תִשְׁתַּֽחֲוֶה לֵאלֹֽהֵיהֶם וְלֹא תָֽעָבְדֵם

42 Law against immitating canaanite religious practices
וְלֹא תַֽעֲשֶׂה כְּמַֽעֲשֵׂיהֶם כִּי הָרֵס תְּהָרְסֵם וְשַׁבֵּר תְּשַׁבֵּר מַצֵּבֹֽתֵיהֶֽם:
כה וַֽעֲבַדְתֶּם אֵת יְהוָֹה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶם וּבֵרַךְ אֶֽת־לַחְמְךָ וְאֶת־מֵימֶיךָ וַֽהֲסִרֹתִי מַֽחֲלָה מִקִּרְבֶּֽךָ: ס [שביעי] כו לֹא תִֽהְיֶה מְשַׁכֵּלָה וַֽעֲקָרָה בְּאַרְצֶךָ אֶת־מִסְפַּר יָמֶיךָ אֲמַלֵּֽא: כז אֶת־אֵֽימָתִי אֲשַׁלַּח לְפָנֶיךָ וְהַמֹּתִי אֶת־כָּל־הָעָם אֲשֶׁר תָּבֹא בָּהֶם וְנָֽתַתִּי אֶת־כָּל־אֹֽיְבֶיךָ אֵלֶיךָ עֹֽרֶף: כח וְשָֽׁלַחְתִּי אֶת־הַצִּרְעָה לְפָנֶיךָ וְגֵֽרְשָׁה אֶת־הַֽחִוִּי אֶת־הַֽכְּנַֽעֲנִי וְאֶת־הַֽחִתִּי מִלְּפָנֶֽיךָ: כט לֹא אֲגָֽרְשֶׁנּוּ מִפָּנֶיךָ בְּשָׁנָה אֶחָת פֶּן־תִּֽהְיֶה הָאָרֶץ שְׁמָמָה וְרַבָּה עָלֶיךָ חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶֽה: ל מְעַט מְעַט אֲגָֽרְשֶׁנּוּ מִפָּנֶיךָ עַד אֲשֶׁר תִּפְרֶה וְנָֽחַלְתָּ אֶת־הָאָֽרֶץ: לא וְשַׁתִּי אֶת־גְּבֻֽלְךָ מִיַּם־סוּף וְעַד־יָם פְּלִשְׁתִּים וּמִמִּדְבָּר עַד־הַנָּהָר כִּי אֶתֵּן בְּיֶדְכֶם אֵת יֹֽשְׁבֵי הָאָרֶץ וְגֵֽרַשְׁתָּמוֹ מִפָּנֶֽיךָ: לב לֹֽא־תִכְרֹת לָהֶם וְלֵאלֹֽהֵיהֶם בְּרִֽית: לג לֹא יֵֽשְׁבוּ בְּאַרְצְךָ פֶּן־יַֽחֲטִיאוּ אֹֽתְךָ לִי כִּי תַֽעֲבֹד אֶת־אֱלֹהֵיהֶם כִּי־יִֽהְיֶה לְךָ לְמוֹקֵֽשׁ: פ
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