Vol. 52:3
Deuteronomy 22:10's ban on plowing with an ox and an ass together has traditionally been read as compassion for animals, a warning against the ruminant ox provoking the non-ruminant ass, or an extension of the ban on mixed species. Surveying ancient Near Eastern and rabbinic uses of 'plowing' as a sexual metaphor — from the Sumerian Inanna hymns to Ben Sira's marital advice to the Jerusalem Talmud — this article argues that the verse may also function as a witty double-entendre warning against inappropriate sexual liaisons, fitting a broader pattern of suggestive wordplay in Deuteronomy.
The book of Esther consistently dates events using a 'compound formula' of numbered and Babylonian-named months — until Esther 9, where the numbered months abruptly disappear in favor of Babylonian names alone. Building on Aaron Koller's account of Esther's diasporic ideology, this article argues that the numbered months evoke the exodus and Israelite salvation history, while their disappearance in chapter 9 signals the triumph of a diasporic worldview in which the Jews' deliverance owes nothing to that history and everything to skillful participation in Persian imperial politics.
Providing food for the dead was a common ancient practice, rooted in the belief that the dead could help or harm the living depending on how well they were attended to. Examining Deuteronomy 26:12-14's tithe confession, Psalm 106:28's 'sacrifices to the dead' at Baal Peor, the libations of blood in Psalm 16:3-4, and the incubation rites condemned in Isaiah 65:4, this article concludes that while such offerings were practiced in the ancient Near East and occasionally penetrated Israelite society, the Bible is consistently antagonistic toward the custom of feeding or libating the dead.
Three parallel verses in Ezekiel 21 describe God's sword using near-identical pairs of phrases built on the nouns tevah ('slaughter') and baraq ('lightning'), yet the prophet sometimes uses the preposition lema'an and sometimes the synonymous le- to introduce them. Working through vv. 15a, 20b, and 33b, this article rejects the theory that the choice tracks whether an infinitive or a noun follows, and instead argues that the shift from balanced to unbalanced parallelism across the three verses is a deliberate stylistic device, one that mirrors in its structure the breakdown of order the prophecy foretells for Jerusalem.
The third in Zucker's series on Tamar (Genesis 38), this article surveys contemporary and feminist scholarship on Judah's deception of Tamar and Tamar's deception of Judah. Drawing on Westermann, Schneider, Bal, Cotter, Speiser, Claassens, Niditch, and others, it traces Tamar's arc from a passive object handed from son to son to an agent who, through disguise and the demand 'Examine, please' at the moment of her exposure, claims recognition as an individual with rights — while noting that even sympathetic feminist readings tend to define her, and the other women of Genesis, primarily through the men around them.
Shulamit Valler has argued that the late Midrash Eshet Hayil, which assigns each verse of Proverbs 31:10-31 to a biblical woman, reflects a liberal rabbinic conception of women as spiritual and political leaders. Close-reading the midrash's intertextual connections to Yocheved, Miriam, Yael, Batya, and Ruth, this article amends Valler's conclusion: the women of Midrash Eshet Hayil are consistently portrayed as auxiliary to the men around them, their boundary-crossing acts of courage undertaken and then relinquished in service of male-centered, national deliverance — making the midrash's ideal woman not liberal but a more strikingly idealized, and ultimately unattainable, version of the biblical Eshet Hayil.
Against R. Yoel Bin-Nun's influential theory that Joseph withheld word of his survival because he believed Jacob complicit in the brothers' plot, this article argues that such a reading cannot be squared with two well-evidenced facts: Joseph's demonstrated righteousness and the deep mutual love between father and son. Proposing instead that Joseph's own analytical instincts led him to the false but reasonable conclusion that Jacob had died without ever mounting a search for him, the article reframes the absence of any message as a tragedy of mutual, mirrored misapprehension rather than betrayal on either side.
A report on the 61st International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth, held in Jerusalem on Israel's Independence Day and sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Education, the Jewish Agency, and Keren Kayemet, with the Jewish Bible Association as an affiliate sponsor. Sixteen contestants from Israel and the Diaspora competed in the finals, with Evyatar Bar-Gil and David Shasha tying for first place; the report also notes Prime Minister Netanyahu's remarks linking the contest, held against the backdrop of the ongoing war, to the biblical themes of resilience running from Abraham through Nehemiah.