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Jubilees uses Leviticus 26 in its introduction to emphasize that Israel’s covenant with God remains unbroken, even in exile. It presents its retelling of Genesis and Exodus to explain their exile as the result of disobedience and not divine rejection.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Leviticus 26:44
Hebrew Bible
43 The land will be abandoned by them in order that it may make up for its Sabbaths while it is made desolate without them, and they will make up for their iniquity because they have rejected my regulations and have abhorred my statutes. 44 In spite of this, however, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them and abhor them to make a complete end of them, to break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. 45 I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out from the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.’”
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 1:6
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
4 And Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights, and God showed him the past and the future and told him about all the divisions of time of the Torah and of the testimony. 5 And He said: 'Pay close attention to every word which I shall speak to you on this mountain, and write them in a book so that their descendants may know that I have not abandoned them for all the evil which they have done by breaking the covenant which I establish between Me and your children for their generations today on Mount Sinai. 6 And when all these things happen to them, they will recognize that I am more righteous than they in all their judgments and in all their curses, and they will recognize that I have been truly with them. 7 And write for yourself all these words which I declare to you today, for I know their rebellion and their stubbornness, before I bring them into the land which I promised by oath to their ancestors, to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, saying: 'To your descendants I will give a land flowing with milk and honey.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Perhaps this is meant in the sense of “despite all the evil they have done” in straying from the covenant ... If so, Jubilees’ author may be further evoking Leviticus 26:44 to imply that, despite all that Israel has done to violate its covenant, God has not dissolved this great and eternal bond. This is, in fact, one of the author’s main themes in writing Jubilees. He knew, of course, that long after the time of Moses, the Babylonians had conquered Judah, and that, thereafter, the Jews had remained a subject people until his own day. The point of Jubilees is that none of this came about because God had abandoned Israel, but because of the people’s own contrariness. At the same, he asserts, even in their sinfulness, God has not abandoned them ..."
James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 21.
* 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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