Blood and Covenant: Interpretive Elaboration on Genesis 9.4-6 in the Book of Jubilees

Genesis 9.4-6 is the foundation for all that Jubilees has to say about the proper treatment of blood: all blood is the locus of life, and must be treated accordingly; any wrong treatment of blood violates a fundamental covenantal obligation. The author of Jubilees arrived at this understanding of blood and covenant through a reading of Gen. 9.4-6 in holistic relationship to other biblical texts, and constructed an elaborate interpretive superstructure on that base-text. This article works sequentially through the relevant passages, highlights the manner in which Jubilees’ teachings unfold for a reader, identifies the larger structural contexts within which they appear, and explicates the ways in which biblical materials are recontextualized in Jubilees.