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Jubilees uses Psalm 90, which says 1000 years are like one day to explain Adam's death in Genesis. By redefining a "day" to mean 1000 years, it tries to resolve the problem of how Adam could be told he would die "that day" but still live a long life.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Psalm 90:4
Hebrew Bible
1 A prayer of Moses, the man of God. O Lord, you have been our protector through all generations. 2 Even before the mountains came into existence, or you brought the world into being, you were the eternal God. 3 You make mankind return to the dust, and say, “Return, O people.” 4 Yes, in your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday that quickly passes, or like one of the divisions of the nighttime. 5 You bring their lives to an end and they “fall asleep.” In the morning they are like the grass that sprouts up:
Date: 600–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 4:30
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
29 And at the close of the nineteenth jubilee, in the seventh week in its sixth year [930], Adam died, and all his sons buried him in the land of his creation, and he was the first to be buried in the earth. 30 And he lacked seventy years of one thousand years; for one thousand years are as one day in the testimony of the heavens and therefore it was written concerning the tree of knowledge: 'On the day that you eat of it you shall die.' For this reason he did not complete the years of this day; for he died during it.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... This verse addresses an exegetical problem in Genesis 2:17. According to that verse, God commanded the man not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and threatened him “for on the day you eat from it you shall surely die.” Soon after, the snake promised the man and the woman that they would not die if they ate from the fruits of the Garden, and accused God of deception ... Jubilees 4:30 solves this problem by a reinterpretation of the word “day” in Genesis 2:17, “for on the day you eat from it you shall surely die,” not as 24 hours, but rather as a 1000-year period. The first man, who died at the age of 930 (Genesis 5:5), therefore did indeed die on the same “day” on which he ate, during the same 1000-year period. The identification of “one day” with “1000 years” is based upon Psalm 90:4, which equates the two “in the eyes of God” ..."
Michael Segal, The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 310–311.
* 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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