Vol. 44:1

An examination of the obscure term bikkoret in the law of the half-freed maidservant (Leviticus 19:20), surveying Rashi's rendering as 'investigation' against Ramban's challenge and three comparative-linguistic alternatives drawn from Aramaic, Arabic, and Akkadian. The article concludes that despite the appeal of these philological parallels, Rashi's straightforward reading — that the court must investigate the woman's status and intent — remains the most defensible, a conclusion also reached by Milgrom.

Jewish tradition holds that the Tabernacle of Shiloh was destroyed by the Philistines, yet this creates three problems: no emergency campaign was needed to rebuild it in Nob, its original candelabrum and table nonetheless survived to serve in Solomon's Temple, and the Talmud maintains the original Tabernacle was later respectfully stowed away rather than lost. The article proposes that only the Tabernacle of Shiloh's stone-walled sanctuary building was destroyed by the Philistines, because all of the structure's movable components had already been evacuated to safety and reassembled at Nob before the Philistines arrived.

Hosea 2:4-7 calls on 'children' to rebuke their 'mother,' departing from the prophet's usual practice of using both wife and children imagery for the same collective Israel. After surveying and critiquing the readings of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Abrabanel, the article argues — drawing on the parallel condemnation of corrupt priests in Hosea 4:4-9, and on a midrashic wordplay on horatam ('teachers') preserved by Rashi — that the mother represents the corrupt religious leadership and the children the sinful masses who are nonetheless accountable for following them.

The Book of Judges' refrain 'there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes' is usually read as a pro-monarchy corrective to lawlessness, but the article traces an earlier anti-monarchy strand — Gideon's refusal of kingship, Jotham's anti-monarchical parable, and Samuel's objections — rooted in the ideal of exclusive divine kingship (theocracy). It argues that the Judges period's lack of centralized human government was a deliberate political-religious experiment, one that ultimately failed and gave way to a constitutional monarchy still answerable to God's law.

A comparison of the Bible's three most detailed Creation accounts — the ordered prose narrative of Genesis 1, the joyous poetic hymn of Psalm 104, and God's rhetorical display of Creation's wonders to Job in Job 38-42 — each written in a distinct style and for a distinct purpose, yet united in portraying God as both Creator and ongoing Sustainer of the world without reference to Israel's covenant. The article traces recurring images across the three texts, such as the bounding of the chaotic waters and the daily renewal of Creation, to show how Job's speeches echo and ironically invert language found in Psalm 104.

Biblical leadership is generally modeled on the king or the prophet, but Ezra fits neither mold: he holds no political or military office and, unlike Moses or Samuel, is never described as receiving direct divine communication. Instead his authority rests on Torah scholarship and teaching, making him the biblical prototype of the later rabbi. The article traces embryonic 'rabbinic' legal reasoning in Ezra's extension of the intermarriage prohibition and in the extra-Torah communal enactments — the wood offering, the annual half-shekel, the Sabbath trade ban — accepted by the people in Nehemiah 10.

Traces the transition from the non-hereditary, divinely-summoned leadership of the Judges to the institution of monarchy under Samuel, arguing that Samuel — though personally averse to relinquishing his role as chief magistrate — crafted a distinctive constitutional monarchy (mishpat ha-melukhah) in which the king is chosen by God, subject to divine authority, and confirmed by popular acclaim, rather than the autonomous 'king like all the nations' the people had requested. The article finds a later echo of this ideal in the covenant renewed by Jehoiada the priest at the coronation of the boy-king Joash.