nora
(Nora)
#1
Betsy Half em-Amaru
Allusion Source Content
Date(s)
Indicated
Exod 12:43 Statute of the pesah dealing with
who is to eat the pesah
(3) on its day
(faTeta/rova)
Lev 23:5,37 Offerings for sacred occasions at set
times; 14th for pesah
14th (sacrifice)
(4) in accord with all
its law
Num 9:14 Pesah Sheni; participation of
resident alien in sacrifice and
eating of pesah
14th-15th
(sacrifice and
eating)
Comments
i. The two phrases access biblical commands that deal with remembering.
One, Exod 12:14 ("this day shall be one of remembrance"), immediately fol
lows a forecast of the events on the night of the plague. The second, Deut
16:3-4, associates the exodus with the eating of the pesah (as well as with the
prohibition of unleavened bread). Selectively drawing phrases from each
passage, Jubilees connects three themes — the night of the plague, the exo
dus, and the eating of the pesah — all of which occurred on the fifteenth.
2. "This statute" in Exod 13:10 is understood as referring back to the
statute in Exod 12:43 that deals with who is to eat the pesah.^22
3. The phrase, which is drawn from the Leviticus sacrificial calendar, is
frequendy used in the Jubilees legislation as an indicator for the fourteenth.
4. The phrase appears in the plural in Num 9:3. Jubilees accesses the sin
gular form in Num 9:14, a passage that involves both sacrifice and eating,
hence indicating the fourteenth-fifteenth. Note that this is one of several verses
where words borrowed from a passage involving Pesah Sheni are placed within
a command prohibiting any change to the date of the pesah commemoration.
49:8 For it is an eternal statute and it is engraved on the heavenly tablets re
garding the Israelites that they are to celebrate it each and every year on its day,
once a year, throughout all their generations (lit.). There is no temporal limit
because it is ordained forever.
22. R. Akiba makes the same connection between Exod 13:10 and Exod 12:43
(b. Menahot36b; b. Eruvin 96a). The opposing position of R. Jose relates "this statute" to the
command regarding phylacteries (b. Menahot 36b; b. Eruvin 96a; cf. Mekilta Bo 17; Targum
Pseudo-Jonathan on Exod 13:10).
