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Deuteronomy warns that disobedient Israel will work hard only to watch pests devour the crops. Jubilees applies that same curse to the world before Abram, where Mastema’s birds strip the fields until people salvage a harvest only with great effort.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Deuteronomy 28:38
Hebrew Bible
37 You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the peoples to whom the Lord will drive you. 38 “You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it. 39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees throughout your territory, but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe.
Jubilees 11:13
Pseudepigrapha
11 Then Prince Mastema sent ravens and birds to eat the seed which would be planted in the ground and to destroy the land in order to rob mankind of their labors. Before they plowed in the seed, the ravens would pick it from the surface of the ground. 12 For this reason he named him Terah: because the ravens and birds reduced them to poverty and ate their seed. 13 The years began to be unfruitful due to the birds. They would eat all the fruit of the trees from the orchards. During their time, if they were able to save a little of all the fruit of the earth, it was with great effort. 14 During the thirty-ninth jubilee, in the second week, in the first year [1870], Terah married a woman whose name was Edna, the daughter of Abram, the daughter of his father's sister.
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Notes and References
... and the misguided astrological augury of the Chaldeans (Jubilees 11:8). In all of this Mastema and the wicked spirits play prominent roles, which culminate in a strange episode seemingly linked to Genesis 15:11 wherein 'ravens and birds' were sent by Mastema to make life difficult for those planting their fields. Swooping down to eat the scattered seed before it could be plowed under the soil, the birds effected a situation recalling the curses of Deuteronomy in which 'if they were able to save a little of the fruit of the earth, it was with great effort' (Jubilees 11:13) ...
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