How Abraham Learned Hebrew - Jubilees
By Pinchas Shir
This is an excerpt from the Book of Jubilees, which was written in Hebrew by an unknown Jewish writer sometime around the 1st century BCE. The book summarises and paraphrases many biblical stories from Genesis, interweaving them with legends and traditional commentaries which go far beyond the biblical text. This text presents Hebrew as the language of the creation which was lost at the tower of Babel. But God taught it to Abraham.
19 And he (Abram) prayed that night and said, ‘My God, God Most High, Thou alone art my God, And Thee and Thy dominion have I chosen. And Thou hast created all things, And all things that are are the work of thy hands 20 Deliver me from the hands of evil spirits who have dominion over the thoughts of men’s hearts, And let them not lead me astray from Thee, my God And establish Thou me and my seed forever That we go not astray from henceforth and forevermore.’...
22 And he made an end of speaking and praying, and behold the word of the Lord was sent to him through me, saying: ‘Get thee up from thy country, and from thy kindred and from the house of thy father unto a land which I will show thee, and I shall make thee a great and numerous nation. 23 And I will bless thee And I will make thy name great, And thou shalt be blessed in the earth, And in Thee shall all families of the earth be blessed, And I will bless them that bless thee, And curse them that curse thee. 24 And I will be a God to thee and thy son, and to thy son’s son, and to all thy seed: fear not, from henceforth and unto all generations of the earth I am thy God.’
25 And the Lord God said: ‘Open his mouth and his ears, that he may hear and speak with his mouth, with the language which has been revealed’; for it had ceased from the mouths of all the children of men from the day of the overthrow (of Babel). 26 And I opened his mouth, and his ears and his lips, and I began to speak with him in Hebrew in the tongue of the creation. 27 And he took the books of his fathers, and these were written in Hebrew, and he transcribed them, and he began from henceforth to study them, and I made known to him that which he could not (understand), and he studied them during the six rainy months. (Jubilees 12:19-27)
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