The Jewish Studies Blog

The Sealed and the Unsealed Let’s start with the beautiful words from Revelation 5:1-9, where all three components of our title are present: 1 And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals. 2 Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who […]

Have you ever found yourself skipping over a biblical genealogy and thinking, “Why do we need all these dry lists?” The Bible is full of genealogies, and even the most diligent readers sometimes skip them.  These lists might, indeed, seem dry to us, but in fact, they are very important because they prove the historical […]

Worthy is the Lamb! “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!”[1] What believer in Jesus doesn’t know these words from the Book of Revelation? Indeed, the image of the Lamb is not only one of the central images in this […]

If you’ve found yourself drawn to the rich tapestry of the Old Testament or felt a desire to explore the roots of ancient texts, you will never regret your choice to learn biblical Hebrew. The journey into deciphering the original language of the Bible opens doors to a deeper understanding of its profound meanings and […]

My dear readers, another month has passed, and we are still in this war; as a dear friend of mine wrote a couple of months ago – and unfortunately, these words are still relevant today, with no end in sight. I think it is now time to go back to the regular themes of this […]

Dear friends, as this horrible war continues, bringing so much grief and suffering on both sides, so does continue my journey through the Bible, in an attempt to find there the eternal answers to today’s questions.  We will begin today with a Psalm. Psalm 69 says: “O God, You know my foolishness; And my sins […]

The Torah very often uses a beautiful literary structure. The basic idea is that words, phrases, or other elements can be arranged to mirror each other, so that the text lays out a given set of meanings and then goes back through their parallels in the reverse order. Analyzing the use of chiasm (the formal name of […]

After eating the forbidden fruit, it’s not only Adam who feels the effects of his transgression when he’s expelled from the garden of Eden; God curses the land, saying, “Cursed is the ground (אדמה; adamah) because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:17). Similarly, after Cain murders […]

According to most English translations, Genesis 2:15 says that God took “the human” (האדם; ha’adam) and “put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it (לעבדה ולשמרה; le’avdah u’leshamrah). On this rendering, the first human being is put into the garden to work the soil and care for its produce. However, an alternative translation of the Hebrew words for […]

Joseph, the son of Jacob and Rachel (Gen 35:24), is a vibrant character in the Hebrew Bible. We know that God is with Joseph through the ups and downs of his life, but we do not always notice the significance that the Bible assigns to his name. We identify with Jacob’s love for Joseph as we imagine […]