Texts in Conversation
Job describes storehouses of snow and hail reserved for times of trouble, while tractate Chagigah in the Babylonian Talmud expands this imagery by placing such storehouses in the sixth heaven alongside other elemental forces. Both texts share the concept of cosmic storehouses as sources of natural phenomena.
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Job 38:22
Hebrew Bible
20 that you may take them to their borders and perceive the pathways to their homes? 21 You know, for you were born before them; and the number of your days is great! 22 Have you entered the storehouse of the snow or seen the armory of the hail, 23 which I reserve for the time of trouble, for the day of war and battle? 24 In what direction is lightning dispersed, or the east winds scattered over the earth?
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Chagigah 12b
Babylonian Talmud
Rabbinic
Makhon, dwelling place, is where there are storehouses of snow and storehouses of hail, and the upper chamber of harmful dews, and the upper chamber of drops, and the room of tempests and storms, and the cave of mist. And the doors of all these are made of fire. How do we know that there are storehouses for evil things? For it is stated: “The Lord will open for you His good storehouse, the heavens” (Deuteronomy 28:12), which indicates the existence of a storehouse that contains the opposite of good.
Date: 450-550 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... There are some obvious biblical backgrounds to this material; these have clearly contributed some of the language encountered in the texts considered above and we will note their effects on other ancient texts in due course. The language of the “good storehouse” is found in Deuteronomy 28:12 ... In bḤagigah 12b, which we will consider below, this is used as the base text for the description of the sixth heaven, Makon, in which the storehouses of the terrible elements are found; the existence of such storehouses is represented as an inference from the specific form of the good storehouse taken to imply that there must also be a storehouse of
bad things. A more developed biblical description of such storehouses is found in Job 38:22. Here, the storehouses contain, specifically, the snow and the hail, but the text also speaks of other meteorological elements that parallel, to some extent, what we saw in the Enochic texts ..."
Macaskill, Grant
Meteorology and Metrology: Evaluating Parallels in the Ethiopic Parables of Enoch and 2 (Slavonic) Enoch
(pp. 79-99) Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2019
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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