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Exodus describes how animals, especially dogs, are a part of the household, and in the final plague, Egyptian animals suffer with their owners while Israelite animals do not. Jubilees follows this tradition and expands the list of affected animals.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 11:7
Hebrew Bible
6 There will be a great cry throughout the whole land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. 7 But against any of the Israelites not even a dog will bark against either people or animals, so that you may know that the Lord distinguishes between Egypt and Israel.’ 8 All these your servants will come down to me and bow down to me, saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you,’ and after that I will go out.” Then Moses went out from Pharaoh in great anger.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 49:4
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
3 And this is the sign which the Lord gave them: Into every house on the lintels of which they saw the blood of a lamb of the first year, into (that) house they should not enter to kill, but should pass by (it), so that all those should be saved that were in the house because the sign of the blood was on its lintels. 4 And the powers of the Lord did everything just as the Lord commanded them, and they passed by all the children of Israel, and the plague did not come upon them to destroy from among them any living being either of cattle, or man, or dog. 5 And the plague was very severe in Egypt, and there was no house in Egypt where there was not one dead, and weeping and lamentation.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Both Exodus and Jubilees consider animals to be a part of the children of Israel, as well as Egyptian households. Jubilees 48:5 notes that God brought many plagues on Egypt, including killing “their first-born of men and cattle” (compare Exodus 11:5; 12:12), but destroyed none of the Israelites, “from cattle to mankind to dogs” (Jubilees 49:4; compare Exodus 11:7). Interestingly, these and other texts suggest that companionship / solidarity between humans and animals was one of the reasons that God punished and/or blessed animals along with humans (Jubilees 20:9–10; 23:17–18; 44:3; 50:7, 12) ..."
A. Rahel Wells, “‘One Language and One Tongue’: Animal Speech in Jubilees 3:27–31,” JSP 28.4 (2019): 319–337.
* 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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