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About this book

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 Exodus 7:12 and Jubilees 48:9

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions

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Summary

Jubilees rewrites Exodus 7, explaining that Pharaoh’s magicians perform their wonders through help from an evil angel named Mastema. This tries to explain how they matched Aaron’s signs, showing their power as real but coming from a malevolent source.

Passages

Exodus 7:12

Hebrew Bible
10 When Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, they did so, just as the Lord had commanded them—Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a snake. 11 Then Pharaoh also summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the magicians of Egypt by their secret arts did the same thing. 12 Each man threw down his staff, and the staffs became snakes. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. 13 Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard, and he did not listen to them, just as the Lord had predicted.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

Jubilees 48:9

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
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. 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.
170–125 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jubilees

References

"... Jubilees’ author here offers further information about his own view of the world’s workings. God is supremely powerful, but the wicked angel Mastema is nonetheless allowed to some freedom to work evil in the world—unless he is specifically restrained. (He is apparently not, for all that, the origin of all bad things that happen in the world—not the full-blown Satan of later writings.) His presence is evoked here to answer a specific question that interpreters had about Pharaoh’s “wizards/magicians” and “wise men”: how was it that they seemed to have some sort of occult power, turning their staves into snakes as Moses did (Exodus 7:11-12) and apparently working other feats (Exodus 7:22; 8:3)? The answer is that the angel Mastema would help the Egyptian magicians. The angel of the presence adds that he and the other good angels permitted them to do evil things, but not to allow healings to be performed by them, that is, not to let them undo the effects of the plagues ..."
James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 196.

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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Exodus 7:12 and Jubilees 48:9

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