Betsy Halpern-Amaru
celebration in 2 Chron 30 takes place in the second month, not the prescribed first month
(2 Chron 30:2-3), it does not constitute a celebration of Pesah Sheni. See S. Japhet, 1 and
2 Chronicles: A Commentary (London: SCM, 1993), 939.
- Abraham receives the directive on the twelfth, leaves Beersheba in the morning,
and arrives at the mountain "on the third day." On recent scholarly calculations of the dates
of the journey, see J. C. VanderKam, "The Aqedah, Jubilees, and Pseudojubilees," in The
Quest for Context and Meaning: Studies in Biblical Intertextuality in Honor of James A.
Sanders, ed. C. Evans and S. Talmon, Biblical Interpretation Series 28 (Leiden: Brill, 1997),
241-61 (here 247), and B. Halpern-Amaru, "A Note on Isaac as First-Born in Jubilees and
Only Son in 4Q225," DSD 13, no. 2 (2006): 127-33 (here 130-31). - On the readings in the parallel passages of MT, LXX, OL, EthGen, see Halpern-
Amaru, "A Note," 128; on the variants in the jubilees manuscripts, see VanderKam's notes on
Jub 18:11, 15 (The Book of Jubilees, v. 1, 104; v. 2, 108).
Facets of the Akedah narrative intimate that Abraham's festival is asso
ciated with Pesah and Massot. The travel schedule in the narrative suggests
that the binding of Isaac takes place on the fourteenth day of the first month
(17:15; i8:3).^4 The restraining angel refers to the rescued Isaac as bakwraka
(the Ge'ez equivalent of "]T1D3) (18:11), a designation that God repeats when
he renews the covenant promises (Jub 18:15; Gen 22:16).^5 The seven-day festi
val that commemorates Abraham's journey is named "festival to the Lord,"
resonating Xl^1? Jrl in Exod 12:14. However, the character of Abraham's "festi
val of the Lord" is fully disclosed only through a close reading of the Jubilees
treatment of Pesah and Massot in their historical biblical settings (Jub 49).
In that chapter Jubilees connects Abraham's "festival of the Lord" to both
Pesah and Massot and, at the same time, provides the prescriptive com
mands for future commemoration that are so glaringly absent in its account
of the protofestival.
Jub 49 is composed of three sections: (a) a prescriptive, narrative rec
ollection of the Pesah celebration in Egypt (w. 1-6), (b) a statute for future
commemorations of Pesah (nOBM T)pT) (w. 7-2ia), and (c) a prescriptive,
narrative recollection of the first Israelite celebration of Massot (w. 22b-23).
In each section there is engagement with biblical material and intricate
intertextual exegesis. At the same time, each also conducts an internal "con
versation" with other passages in Jubilees. In the two prescriptive narrative
recollections the intratextual conversation is with the account of the
protofestival in Jub 18; in the Pesah statute the intratextual engagement in
volves elaboration of the day/time legislation prescribed in Jub 49:1.