Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

This article engages with a video game retelling of the biblical Aqedah and particularly focuses on the interactive nature of video games. In the game The Binding of Isaac, Isaac runs away from his parent, ‘Mom’, and fights back, which contrasts significantly with the passive and silent Isaac of the biblical text. The interactivity and immersion created by a video game medium has a significant impact on a player’s interpretation of the biblical story. This article argues that the video game depicts the Aqedah as horrific as a means to critique corporal punishment as used in some conservative Christian child-rearing strategies. Unfortunately, the game’s misogynistic portrayal of Isaac’s mother is deeply problematic, which this article also addresses.

This article examines passages in Sirach which posit that travel fosters understanding (Sir. 34.9–13) and that the sage knows how to travel in foreign lands (Sir. 39.4). The references are discussed in the context of two ancient Mediterranean corpora, that is, biblical and Greek literature. Although the evidence in Sirach is insufficient for demonstrating the existence of a specific social practice, the text at least attests to an attitude of mental openness, imagining travel as a professional enterprise with positive outcomes. This article argues that the closest parallels to Sir. 34.9–13 and Sir. 39.4 are not to be found in the Hebrew Bible or Hellenistic Jewish literature but in (non-Jewish) Greek writings which refer to travels undertaken by the sages who roam around for the sake of learning. The shared travel motif helps to demonstrate that Sirach belongs to a wider Hellenistic Mediterranean context than just that of biblical literature.

Alviero Niccacci proposed a Biblical Hebrew syntax based on Harald Weinrich’s text-linguistic framework. I argue Niccacci’s methodology deviates substantially from Weinrich’s proposition. This article critiques Niccacci’s theoretical assumptions about the oppositions between foreground and background and that of comment and narrative. While considering these issues in view of Weinrich’s method, I also suggest that the alternative source of inspiration for Niccacci was the work of Hans J. Polotsky.

Discussion of Exile in the book of Chronicles is generally limited to questions regarding its duration, scope, and comparisons of its portrayal in Chronicles with that in parallel books (Kings and Jeremiah). The prevalent approach to these questions in scholarship is that the Chronicler does not perceive this exile as a permanent state and usually downplays its duration or the number of people exiled. This is not the case, however, in regard to the two and a half tribes in 1 Chr. 5. Their exile is mentioned no fewer than three times in the genealogical lists of these tribes. I will attempt to explore why the exile of these tribes is relatively prominent in the text and how this contributes to the Chronicler’s perception of ‘all of Israel’.

Rashi is well recognized for his exegetical innovation of the peshat approach. He appears to claim to focus on peshat, but his reliance on the midrash is undeniable. In an attempt to better understand this problem, rather than focus simply on his definition of peshat, I suggest directing attention to the readerly involvement in constructing what is plain. Among the elements that are commonly thought to construct plain sense, I stress the variables inherent in the notion of context. To set the scope of a text constitutes a basis for what feels plain. If so, the disparity between Rashi’s peshat and the modern plain sense may be put in terms of the divergent scope of text set in action. I also suggest the gradual development of peshat can be situated in the broader cultural movement in 11th- and 12th-century Europe in which literate culture began to emerge.

Scholars typically describe the book of Judges as encompassing a cyclical transgress–suffer–prosper–transgress–again trope. Although Israelite peace and autonomy are maintained at various moments throughout the text, hardship inevitably ensues, leading exegetes to focus on the Israelites’ repeated demise as opposed to their continual triumphs. As David Gunn notes, ‘reward and punishment is often viewed as the book’s dominant theme’. Or, in the words of Danna Nolan Fewell, the stories within Judges are frequently read as a collective ‘downward spiral for Israel and its leaders’. I question, however, whether such thematic analysis might prove insufficient when engaging a hermeneutic of trauma and survival—or queer survivance, as we will see. Interestingly, of the 400-year period covered in the book of Judges, only 111 of them are spent in subjugation. Nearly three-fourths of the time period covered by the book, in other words, recounts times of judgeship and autonomy. Might this story be less about cultural transgression and more about the creative ways in which the Israelites managed to endure? In this article, I will provide an intertextual comparison of the Judges cycle with the memoir of Holocaust survivor, Gad Beck. In doing so, I will suggest that Judges offers us a literary representation of an ancient culture’s fight to persist. Rather than guide readers through the entirety of the Judges narrative, however, I will focus on Judges 3 and 4, as the stories of and events surrounding Ehud and Jael offer a more concentrated instance of the aforementioned cyclical trope. From a stance of hetero-suspicion and with a theoretical view to intertextuality and queer survivance, I will argue that, like Beck, Ehud and Jael subvert oppressive power structures through gender-bending performances and the embodiment of ambivalent, and even comedic, identity markers. Taking such similarities into consideration, I will then suggest that Ehud’s and Jael’s queer-comic consciousness becomes another thematic trope within the book of Judges as a whole. Yet instead of focusing on the repetition of the Israelites’ self-fulfilling demise, this trope spotlights the creative ways in which the Judges narrative becomes one of survival and reflects an ancient culture’s will to resist, persist, and indeed, live.

This article presents a comparative reading of Micah 5.9-14 [10-15] and Isaiah 2.6-22. The article demonstrates the contribution of comparative reading to the understanding of each text. The discussion opens by outlining the clear lexical and thematic similarities between the units. While some of the similarities have been previously noted by scholars, this article expands on the range of verses analyzed and method of presenting similarities, for a more accurate picture. Based on the similarities between the units, the discussion turns to the lexical, structural, and content differences between them. Finally, this analysis of similarities and differences is a tool for uncovering essential ideological differences between the texts. The literary and ideological study in this article reveals the worldviews expressed in the units, such as the attitude toward idolatry, the God of Israel, and other gods.

The interrogative sequence אִם‎ . . . הֲ‎ in Biblical Hebrew can be employed in two forms of disjunctive question. The first offers mutually exclusive questions and the second comprises a rhetorical pair. Close examination of the extant examples reveals no difficulty in distinguishing between these two forms and, further, that, when employed to express a rhetorical question, the double rhetorical sequence אִם‎ . . . הֲ‎ anticipates the answer ‘No’. Careful study of a debated example, Jer. 31.20, confirms that a negative answer is implied here, hence the evidence strongly favours this reading in the other contentious passage, Hab. 3.8. Here, triple rhetorical questions introduced by the interrogative particles אִם‎ . . . אִם‎ . . . הֲ‎ are employed in a motivated interrogative sentence, suggesting that a negative answer is therefore expected.

The end of the first section of the whirlwind speech in Job 38.37b–38 reads, ‘who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, when the dust runs into a mass and the clods stick fast together?’ (ESV). The straightforward explanation, that this refers to rainfall, cannot explain the verses in the larger context of the chapter. This article carefully reviews the words used in v. 38, in particular עפר‎ ‘dust’ and יצק‎ ‘to pour’ (here ‘to run’), and points to a parallel for דבק‎ ‘stick together’ in Job 41.15. This newly collected evidence reinforces the hypothesis of Van Wolde, that the stanza is a reference to the creation of the earth. With the suggested interpretation, the poetic structure of chapter 38 is more coherent. However, for this to work, one must either swap vv. 36 and 37 or reorder 36–38 into two tricola instead of three bicola.

The rapid and unmarked transition from the oracle against Assyria/Nineveh in Zephaniah 2.13-15 to the condemnation of Jerusalem in 3.1-7 rhetorically underscores the deep and troubling continuity between Jerusalem and Assyria/Nineveh. This article examines this continuity in light of two important elements of the book of Zephaniah: the depiction of Assyria (and those nations aligned with it) as prideful and the scribal character of 3.1-7. The finding is that Zeph. 3.1-7 presents Jerusalem and its leaders as paralleling the arrogant Assyrians and like-minded nations in a way that spurs Zephaniah’s exilic scribal audience to adopt a fundamental attitude of humility. Such humility accepts the authority of Yahwistic teachers and instructional texts in order to avoid future judgment against Jerusalem. In a scribal context, repudiating Assyrian-style pride may also entail rejecting education (putatively) aligned with Assyria/Babylon.

The Tribe of Dan has always appeared to biblical scholars and archaeologists as something of an enigma. For decades, certain scholars, beginning with Yigael Yadin, have proposed a connection between the Denyen/Danaoi Sea People and the Danites of Ancient Israel, arguing that the former became the latter and were adopted into Israel at a later date than the other 11 tribes. Focusing on recent archaeological excavations at Tel Dan and the connections between Samson and Hercules, with special attention specifically given to Dan’s traditional paired imagery with serpents, this study seeks to present a coherent case for the possibility that Yadin’s theory may soon carry weight.

Among ancient Near Eastern societies was a widespread and particularly intriguing belief that animals were able to worship and praise deities. This study shows the Hebrew Bible evidences the idea that animals were capable of praising God too and proceeds to observe and document the presence of numerous examples of this in specific biblical texts. Through understanding the place of animals in the Hebrew Bible, and their perceived activity in the ancient Near East, this study suggests animals are distinct agents of praise in their own right in the biblical texts.