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Jubilees

About this book

Moses Returns to Egypt

Chapter 48

1 And in the sixth year of the third week of the forty-ninth jubilee [2372] you departed and lived in the land of Midian, five weeks and one year. And you returned into Egypt in the second week in the second year in the fiftieth jubilee. 2 And you yourself know what He spoke to you on Mount Sinai [2410], and what prince Mastema desired to do with you when you were returning into Egypt on the way when you met him at the place where you stayed.⁠ 3 Did he not with all his power seek to kill you and rescue the Egyptians from your power when he saw that you were sent to execute judgment and vengeance on the Egyptians?

The Ten Plagues

4 And I rescued you from his power, and you performed the signs and wonders which you were sent to perform in Egypt against Pharaoh, and against all his house, and against his servants and his people. 5 And the Lord executed a great vengeance on them for Israel's sake, and struck them through (the plagues of) blood and frogs, lice and dog-flies, and severe boils breaking out in blisters; and their cattle by death; and by hailstones, by which He destroyed everything that grew for them; and by locusts which devoured the rest which had been left by the hail, and by darkness; and by the death of the firstborn of men and animals, and on all their idols the Lord took vengeance and burned them with fire. 6 And everything was sent through your hand, so that you should declare (these things) before they were done, and you spoke with the king of Egypt before all his servants and before his people. 7 And everything took place according to your words; ten great and terrible judgments came on the land of Egypt so that you might execute vengeance on it for Israel. 8 And the Lord did everything for Israel's sake, and according to His covenant, which he had ordained with Abraham that He would take vengeance on them as they had brought them by force into slavery.

The Defeat of Mastema and Egypt

9 And the prince Mastema stood up against you, and sought to hand you over to Pharaoh, and he helped the Egyptian sorcerers,⁠ 10 and they stood up and performed before you the evils; indeed we permitted them to work, but we did not allow the remedies to be performed by their hands. 11 And the Lord struck them with severe sores, and they were not able to stand, for we destroyed them so that they could not perform a single sign. 12 And despite all (these) signs and wonders the prince Mastema was not put to shame because he took courage and cried to the Egyptians to pursue you with all the powers of the Egyptians, with their chariots, and with their horses, and with all the armies of the peoples of Egypt. 13 And I stood between the Egyptians and Israel, and we rescued Israel from his power, and out of the hand of his people, and the Lord brought them through the middle of the sea as if it were dry land. 14 And all the peoples whom he brought to pursue Israel, the Lord our God threw them into the middle of the sea, into the depths of the abyss beneath the children of Israel, even as the people of Egypt had cast their children into the river.⁠ He took vengeance on 1,000,000 of them, and one thousand strong and energetic men were destroyed on account of one nursing infant of the children of your people which they had thrown into the river.⁠ 15 And on the fourteenth day and on the fifteenth and on the sixteenth and on the seventeenth and on the eighteenth the prince Mastema was bound and imprisoned behind the children of Israel so that he might not accuse them.⁠ 16 And on the nineteenth we let them loose so that they might help the Egyptians and pursue the children of Israel. 17 And he hardened their hearts and made them stubborn, and the plan was devised by the Lord our God so that He might strike the Egyptians and cast them into the sea. 18 And on the fourteenth we bound him so that he might not accuse the children of Israel on the day when they asked the Egyptians for containers and clothes, containers of silver, and containers of gold, and containers of bronze, in order to strip the possessions of the Egyptians in return for the slavery in which they had forced them to serve. 19 And we did not lead out the children of Israel from Egypt empty-handed.

Texts in conversation

Compare Exagoge 203 and Jubilees 48:14

Pseudepigrapha, Wisdom and Poetry · Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions

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Summary

In the Exagoge, a retelling of the Exodus as a Greek tragedy, an Egyptian survivor says Pharaoh's army numbered a million men. In Jubilees, the same number of Egyptians drown at the sea, a thousand men for each Israelite baby thrown into the Nile.

Passages

Exagoge 203

Pseudepigrapha, Wisdom and Poetry · Ezekiel the Tragedian
193 When King Pharaoh set out from his palace 194 with this vast crowd of countless soldiers, 195 with cavalry and four-horse chariots, 196 in tight ranks in front and on each flank, 197 the army in battle array was terrifying to see. 198 The infantry held the center in a deep phalanx, 199 with gaps for the chariots to drive through. 200 On the right wing and on the left were stationed 201 the best of all the Egyptian cavalry. 202 When I asked how many men were in our army, 203 there were a million brave, well-armed men. 204 The Hebrews, when our army overtook them, 205 were lying in groups along the shore 206 beside the Red Sea, worn out from their labor; 207 others, with their wives, 208 were busy feeding their little children, 209 loaded down with flocks and herds and household goods.
200–101 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Exagoge

Jubilees 48:14

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
13 And I stood between the Egyptians and Israel, and we rescued Israel from his power, and out of the hand of his people, and the Lord brought them through the middle of the sea as if it were dry land. 14 And all the peoples whom he brought to pursue Israel, the Lord our God threw them into the middle of the sea, into the depths of the abyss beneath the children of Israel, even as the people of Egypt had cast their children into the river. He took vengeance on 1,000,000 of them, and one thousand strong and energetic men were destroyed on account of one nursing infant of the children of your people which they had thrown into the river.
170–125 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jubilees

References

“... The Jubilees passage even supplies numbers: one million Egyptian men suffered a watery death in repayment for one thousand Israelite infants drowned in the Nile. The rate was one thousand to one. A similar notion appears in Wis 18:5 but without the specificity of Jubilees: “When they had resolved to kill the infants of your holy ones, / and one child had been abandoned and rescued, / you in punishment took away a multitude of their children; / and you destroyed them altogether by a mighty flood.” ...”
James C. VanderKam, Jubilees 2: A Commentary on the Book of Jubilees Chapters 22-50 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018), 1161.
“... 193–242 The drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea and all the attendant events involved a degree of spectacle that Ezekiel could not have begun to think of representing on the stage. But it was common in Greek drama for scenes of warfare to be reported in messenger speeches. Ezekiel’s is heavily influenced by the messenger speech in Aeschylus’s Persians (353–432), reporting the great defeat of the Persians by the Greeks. [...] 203. it came to one million men This looks like a large round number to make a point. But in fact Jub. 48:14 also reports that the Egyptian host was one million. ...”
Howard Jacobson, “Ezekiel, the Tragedian,” in Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture, ed. Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2013), 739–740.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Exagoge 203 and Jubilees 48:14

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