Emzara in Jubilees

Jubilees 4:33

Mid-2nd Century BCE

In the twenty-fifth jubilee Noah married a woman whose name was Emzara, the daughter of Barakiel, the daughter of his father’s brother—during the first year in the fifth week [1205]. In its third year [1207] she gave birth to Shem for him; in its fifth year [1209] she gave birth to Ham for him; and in the first year during the sixth week [1212] she gave birth to Japheth for him.

Translated by James C. VanderKam.

Notes

Numbers in brackets indicate the number of years from creation and appear in the original translation.

Credits

Jubilees 4:33, trans. James C. VanderKam, in James C. VanderKam, Jubilees: A Commentary in Two Volumes, vol. 1, ed. Sidnie White Crawford, Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018), p. 236. Used with permission of 1517 Media.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 2: Emerging Judaism.

Engage with this Source

Noah’s wife is not identified by name in the biblical text, leaving an opportunity for later writers to provide this information themselves. The name Emzara (or Emzera), literally “mother of seed,” is given to Noah’s wife in the book of Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon.

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