Category: Torah

Having arrived in Canaan with an intact, distinct household, Israel is in need of a foreign policy towards the neighbors. Now that Jacob has two full wives, two...

Jacob leaves Canaan a misfit, and returns a broken man – inheriting everything, but connected to nothing. A rival to the gods, and a stranger to his broth...

The Abrahamic epic largely complete, our attention now passes to the central figure of the next generation. Rebekah also hails from the family of Nahor, in Harr...

In the first parts of Genesis, the narrative is extremely sparse; there is little characterization. From genealogical trees, characters come into view, do one o...

After the genealogical confusion over Ham’s son Canaan is resolved, we are told more about the offspring of Noah’s three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Shem is t...

After the events of the flood, Noah and his three sons – Shem (spelt the same as the Hebrew word for “name”), Ham, and Japheth – come out of the ark...

Again, in the flood story, we have two narratives, one featuring Yahweh and another featuring Elohim. But unlike the creation stories, these narratives are not ...

The first fraud is a murder. In the first instance of white-collar crime, a human being is put through the shredder.

If you wish to write a code of laws from scratch, you must first invent the universe.