Texts in Conversation
Genesis describes one brief moment where Abram drives birds of prey off his covenant offering. Jubilees expands that gesture into an entire childhood story, with young Abram chasing ravens from the seed of Chaldea long before the covenant scene.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 15:11
Hebrew Bible
10 So Abram took all these for him and then cut them in two and placed each half opposite the other, but he did not cut the birds in half. 11 When birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. 12 When the sun went down, Abram fell sound asleep, and great terror overwhelmed him.
Jubilees 11:19
Pseudepigrapha
18 When the time for planting seeds in the ground arrived, all of them went out together to guard the seed from the ravens. Abram — a child of 14 years — went out with those who were going out. 19 As a cloud of ravens came to eat the seed, Abram would run at them before they could settle on the ground. He would shout at them before they could settle on the ground to eat the seed and would say: 'Do not come down; return to the place from which you came!' And they returned. 20 That day he did this to the cloud of ravens 70 times. Not a single raven remained in any of the fields where Abram was.
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Notes and References
... and 'when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away' (Genesis 15:11). In Jubilees' rendering of Genesis 15:11 (14:12), the birds repeatedly attack the carcasses and Abram repeatedly drives them away, as he does here in Jubilees 11:19-20. His approach in Jubilees is to shout at the flock of ravens that descended to devour the potential crop. His shouting or screaming at the birds may also be influenced by Genesis 15:11 because the term rendered 'birds of prey' is related to a verb meaning 'scream, shriek, shout at' ...
* 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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