Purity and Impurity in the Book of Jubilees- Conceptual extension: defilement of holy time. We have seen that Isra
elites must not become defiled "ritually" through sexual intercourse on ac
count of the Sabbath. This spatial construction of the Sabbath occurs again,
with typical differences, in the "moral" realm. In Jubilees, holy time itself can
be defiled by improper actions. Thus, Jub 2:25-26 parallels the transgression
of "doing any work" on the Sabbath with "defiling it" (root raVsa), and
more generally Jub 6:37 predicts the confusion of "holy" and "impure" days
(rekusa, rekwesta). Provided the translation is faithful, we thus find "defile
ment" (root where normally "profanation" (root V^rl) would be ex
pected. According to J. Milgrom, such conceptual instability occurs first in
the book of Ezekiel and has parallels in nQTa.^33 - Bloodshed defiles the earth/land. Bloodshed is twice explicitly related
to impurity in the book (but cf. also Jub 11:5). In Jub 7:27-29,32-33 it figures in
Noah's exhortation to his sons, alluding to Gen 9:6. Instead of Genesis's ap
peal to the imago Dei, Jubilees holds that the earth "is not pure" from the
blood shed on it and can only "become pure" by the blood of the one who has
shed it. But Jubilees follows Gen 9:4-6 in connecting this with the prohibition
of eating blood, so that bloodshed, the failure of covering the blood, and the
consumption of blood all contribute to the defilement of the earth/the land.
Apparently, this notion of an effect on the earth/land is informed by Num
35 : 33 _34> even more clearly alluded to in the second passage, Jub 21:19-20.
Here, the Ethiopic verb is yaxatte'a, "will spoil it," which apparently corre
sponds to rpn hifil, Num 35:33. The violence, bloodshed, and blood drinking
of the Giants have a similar effect on the earth according to 1 En 7:4-6; 9:9. - The impurity of sexual sins, particularly of intermarriage. Sexually en
coded references to impurity abound in Jubilees. Often "impurity" (rekws) and
derivates are conjoined in lengthy strings with "fornication" (zemmut), "con
tamination" (gemmane), "sin" (xati'ator 'abbasd), "corruption" (musend), "er
ror" (gegay), or "abomination" (saqorar). Such connections appear in descrip
tions of committed sexual sins (Jub 9:15; 20:5), predictions of future sexual
immorality (9:15; 23:14), warnings against such immorality (7:20; 20:3,6; 33:19),
and the announcement of its eschatological absence (50:5). Of central impor
tance is the qualification of sexual transgression as zemmut, which translates
has reVslrekus, e.g., Jub 16:5. Cf. further W. Loader, Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees on Sexuality: At
titudes towards Sexuality in the Early Enoch Literature, the Aramaic Levi Document, and the
Book of Jubilees (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 216-29. For Ethiopic Leviticus, cf. the pas
sages in n. 31.
- Cf. J. Milgrom, "The Concept of Impurity in Jubilees and the Temple Scroll? RevQ
16, no. 62 (1993): 277-84, 279-80.