#tanakh

[sova-dozhd]

But Ruth replied, “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the LORD do to me if anything but death parts me from you.”

---

My first art centered around Judaism since I started my conversion process ahhh fuck I hope I got the Hebrew right, I'm still not too familiar with the alphabet so it moves around on me lmfao

but as a convert ofc Ruth is important and her story is fascinating to me; if anyone has recommendations on JEWISH resources about her would love to read

also ig christians can reblog this but lmfao idk what you could get out of it

Personally I like the interpretations of them being romantic but I tried to leave the art up for interpretation in general however you see them

[magnetothemagnificent]

Thinking about Al Naharot Bavel and how we as Jews have been made to entertain our oppressors since....forever

עַ֥ל נַהֲר֨וֹת ׀ בָּבֶ֗ל שָׁ֣ם יָ֭שַׁבְנוּ גַּם־בָּכִ֑ינוּ בְּ֝זׇכְרֵ֗נוּ אֶת־צִיּֽוֹן׃ On the rivers of Bavel, there we sat, and also wept, as we remembered Tziyon. עַֽל־עֲרָבִ֥ים בְּתוֹכָ֑הּ תָּ֝לִ֗ינוּ כִּנֹּרוֹתֵֽינוּ׃ On the willows, in the midst, we hung our lyres כִּ֤י שָׁ֨ם שְֽׁאֵל֪וּנוּ שׁוֹבֵ֡ינוּ דִּבְרֵי־שִׁ֭יר וְתוֹלָלֵ֣ינוּ שִׂמְחָ֑ה שִׁ֥ירוּ לָ֝֗נוּ מִשִּׁ֥יר צִיּֽוֹן׃ For there our captors asked words of song; our tormentors, amusement, "sing for us from the song of Tziyon" אֵ֗יךְ נָשִׁ֥יר אֶת־שִׁיר־יְהֹוָ֑ה עַ֝֗ל אַדְמַ֥ת נֵכָֽר׃ How can we sing the song of YHVH on foreign soil? [Tehillim 137 1-4]

Thinking about how throughout history we've been made into the jesters, the comedians, the performers, how we're only good as long as we can entertain and amuse our oppressors. Over and over and over again throughout history we weep by the rivers of every generation's Babylon while our captors jeer and order us to sing our sacred songs.

And honestly? I think it's time we hung up our lyres on the proverbial willows. Enough. We don't have to keep on this performance. We don't live for the entertainment of Babylon. We won't perform for our captors anymore.

Antisemites don't deserve to be entertained by us.

[hailruth]

tehillim 137:5-6

[sir-davey]

Demon David and Jonathan part 2 lol

/ King David and King Jonathan in Saul’s visions

I quickly drew their designsss 😈 I partly made them so I can draw their designs loll. But this is the version Saul sees David and Jonathan as in his very fun visions in the book. Btw, everyone Saul knows is some kind of twisted version of themselves whenever he’s asleep. Like for Samuel, he’s hella terrifying, appearing as a looming cloaked figure who towers over Saul, spewing rebuke after rebuke.

David doesn’t wear much except for some jewelry and a small cloth around his waist. Jonathan wears long garments with him decorated in the feathers he uses for his arrows.

I find it funny when I imagine Saul already so done with dealing with them in his reality, and in his sleep he gets his ass kicked by demonic versions of David and Jonathan and he can never catch a break 💯 I mean, that’s basically how half of the book is, just Ze’ev showing Saul a powerpoint slideshow of all his trauma one by one lmaoo /j

Anyways, when I’ve been thinking about David and Jonathan for a bit, I just now remembered their role in the Book of Saul, and I needed to draw them once more✨

[anniflamma]

Planned to make an animatic about these two for Pride Month but realized I won't be able to do one in time… So here is something cute!

+ the original

[xochunja]

evil Jonathan

The evil Jonathan is my favorite idea!!

THX @sir-davey for providing me with an idea😍

(But if you think I stole your idea, I'll apologize and delete it.)

TW: a bit of a bloody description

maybe Jonathan thought something like this before he died

: He probably wants his memory to mess with David's head even after he's gone.

It's like he's got this sick desire to stick around in David's mind forever...

But, this is just me overthinking stuff :)))

[nonsensical-raw-material]

I started painting on my TaNaKh. I tried to make them as even as possible obviously but ya know. They're based off the ring neck dove which is native to Israel. I figured I'd share. Also open to ideas on what else I should paint :]

[shiurkoma]

David, accessories inspired by the art works of @eleheba

[arri-vixx]

I know this is gonna sound crazy, but I think he might be just a little jealous of his brother

[chamberofthespirit]

Asherah aesthetic 🌱🌾🌤

[sova-dozhd]

And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh,” continuing, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’

Apparently I lied LMFAO the one with Ruth and Naomi wasn't my first art for Judaism, I forgot I had done this one like two years ago during Rosh Hashanah

Once again, I hope my Hebrew is right LMFAO this one was digitally done but

[magnetothemagnificent]

Various Purim memes for ya'll:

[id in alt text]

[entanglingbriars]

My friend @apenitentialprayer (who you should be following if you're interested in Catholicism) asked me to expand on my belief that Genesis 3 is an etiological myth for puberty. The following understanding is emphatically not my own, but it comes from my rabbi and I'm not sure whether he published it so I don't have a citation.

Anyway, the basic argument is that we should read the phrase "knowledge of good and bad" (הדעת טוב ורע) ha-da'at tov v'ra (Genesis 2:17) in parallel with "[he] learns to reject the bad and choose good" (לדעתו מאוס ברע ובחור בטוב) l'dato ma'os bara u'vahol batov (Isaiah 7:15). In Isaiah, learning the difference between good and bad (more literally knowing the difference; da'at in Gen 2:17 has the same root as dato in Is 7:15 (dato is a conjugation of yada)) is a metaphor for maturing. If we read the phrase "knowledge of good and bad" in Genesis 2 in the same way, then we can reasonably infer that the consequence of eating the fruit of the Tree is maturation as such rather than the acquisition of forbidden knowledge.

So, what happens when we do that? Human beings in the Garden of Eden have two things in common with God: immortality and the image in which they are made. When they eat from the Tree they gain "knowledge of good and bad" which we've inferred means aging and (specifically) going through puberty. After puberty humans acquire a third divine characteristic: the ability to create life.

The curses that follow for the man and woman then describe the inevitable consequences that they will face by going from childhood and adulthood. The woman will carry babies and have pain in giving birth. She will desire (תשוקה) t'shukah (the verb is used for non-sexual desire in Gen 4:7 and for sexual desire in Song 7:11) her husband. The man will have to labor to bring for the food previously provided by his Parent (i.e. God). And of course both will die (which does happen to children, but is not an inevitable part of childhood the way it is for adulthood).

(Note that the interpretation that the Serpent is Satan comes from later Christian eisegesis is not actually a part of the myth as presented in Genesis 3.)

[sir-davey]

Need to take a moment to talk about these books I have lol.

These books about David/Jonathan, I love and hate. Idk, like, I just can’t point out exactly, it’s probably the way David/Jonathan are depicted, but it really does frustrate me a little while reading this David/Jonathan trilogy.

It’s genuinely written well, like the writing isn’t corny or overly detailed lol. But it’s written with a Christian perspective, so David and Jonathan aren’t gay in this (sigh). 😞 But in these books, usually each chapter goes back and forth from Jonathan and David’s pov, and I love that.

The first two books are in David and Jonathan’s pov, but in the third book “My Father the King”, it’s in David and Mephibosheth’s pov. I get a lot of inspo for Mephi’s story from this book, but I actually have yet to finish the book because I’m too scared to finish 😭 (it’s literally just like my situation with the Prince’s Psalm atm lmaoo)

But just from reading the first two books, it’s so obviously written for them to be in love. The books are literally about their relationship. David and Jonathan meets, they connect, they share their deepest secrets and feelings, they fight side by side, and David even saves Jonathan from dying in battle!! Jonathan gets shot by arrows, and David wouldn’t stop visiting him. And you know what, Jonathan also saves David from dying in battle! And there’s a moment where David and Jonathan finds a waterfall, and Jonathan would playfully shove David into the water, and they would swim together on a cool night, just like the Simba and Nala water scene from The Lion King with “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” playing in the background if you know what I mean 😭 like AAAABABBAAAKSK, and throughout the books, even in the third book, David won’t stop yapping about how he constantly sees Jonathan in his dreams, as well as Jonathan who can’t get David out of his mind 😭 LIKE- NAHHH ☠️ hello??? Yeah, they’re definitely not in love or something… 🤔

But you know what, reading these books frustrated me so much.. The author made sure to constantly pull out the “we’re just friends!” card, so often 💀 it honestly doesn’t make sense to me ngl, from they way wanted to depict David and Jonathan’s relationship. Let me just say- if you’re going to dedicate an entire trilogy about David and Jonathan’s relationship only… there’s no fucking way you can pull it off as them just being “friends”, idk, it’s just not possible to me. The author would do this by, of course, “giving them a wife tactic”, but literally in the book, they cared more about each other than their wives LOL.

But yeah, my little review of this trilogy that I’ve been wanting to talk about. You can always check it out for yourself, I’d say I only recommend it if you like David retellings in general and if you want some Jonathan angst. Not kidding with the Jonathan angst 😭 he is so angsty in the books and a literal punching bag because every bad thing would happen to him. Like I would read about David going on some adventure, and when I turn to the next chapter, Jonathan is absolutely doomed by something 😭

And also, if you can handle the random preaching in the books where David breaks the forth wall and says that G-d is awesome or something and Jesus is coming, y’know, then perhaps you’ll enjoy the series 👍 (or maybe not)

[traumaticemphaticfantastic]

Here’s some of my first Masoretic paintings that I’ve done recently, Leviathan and Behemoth! An inseparable duo of primordial chaos monsters most popularly known for their appearance in the Book of Job, both are used as an example of the power of G-d and as a means to enlighten Job as to how insignificant he is. That last part might sound bad to you but I love that Job is told quite directly by G-d that G-d has more important things to attend to than but a single man. It makes me feel less scared that “G-d is constantly judging me” and let’s me take a bit of that edge off with the confirmation that G-d probably just has better things to do.

Now into the monsters: Leviathan is a mighty fire-breathing sea serpent with a double-layered armoured hide of scales that was said to have lived in the sea, it appears fleetingly in the Tanakh, like many creatures of Jewish Legend, yet it makes quite an impression with what little time is dedicated to it especially within the book of Job. In Job, G-d uses Leviathan as an example of G-d’s power, “Can you draw out Leviathan by a fishhook? Or can you press down his tongue by a rope?” and “Will he plead with you at length?” are just two lines that are used to show that only G-d has such immense power as to be able to not only create but also control such a beast. Leviathan is so powerful and so immensely large that no human weapon can kill it, the Book of Job describes in great detail how no weapon can even pierce the hide of the thing.

Truly the definition of the classical Sea Serpent, Leviathan was truly a great and terrible force to be reckoned with. However, in Psalms 14 the fate of Leviathan is described “You crushed the heads of Leviathan; You give it as food to the denizens of the desert” and so it would seem that Leviathan may have become too chaotic and that G-d decided that it must be destroyed, and in-turn, fed to the creatures of the land. It’s also worth noting that Leviathan is described as having multiple heads here, I must admit that I chose to only give it one in my painting, I couldn’t think of a way to incorporate the multiple heads into my vision for this piece. But another more obscure fact is that Leviathan isn’t the only sea serpent in the Tanakh! There is another serpent called “Rahab” who seems to be very similar to Leviathan and similarly is now long dead, this time being “Cut into pieces” by the L-rd.

As for why I included a popular illustration for the Kabbalistic concept of Ein Sof in the painting, I wanted to include a reference to G-d in the piece but I wanted it to compliment the circular pose of Leviathan (Referring to the Hebrew for Leviathan commonly being translated as “To twist” or “To coil” and I thought of the popular circular depiction often associated with Ein Sof was an interesting idea for a visual.

Now onto Behemoth! Behemoth is a very similar idea to Leviathan except it’s a mammal and dwelled on land, it is said to have very powerful muscles and similarly cannot be defeated by mere humans, it is an herbivore described as eating grass like cattle, and it “Makes its tail stand up like a ceder” and has “Limbs like iron rods” which I assume are more indicators of the beasts immense strength, it is also said of behemoth “He is the first of G-d’s works; Only his Maker can can draw the sword against him. The mountains yield him produce, where all the beasts of the field play. He lies down beneath the lotuses, in the cover of the swamp reeds. The lotuses embower him with shade; The willows of the brook surround him. He can restrain the river from its rushing; He is confident the stream will gush on his command.” Just such an amazing description I had to let it speak for itself!

For Behemoth’s design I took great inspiration from extinct mammals specifically of the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs as I think they do a good job of making the beast seem quite ancient yet still mammalian and incredibly powerful.

Anyways, that will be all for today, I hope everyone’s having a good lead-up to Hanukkah this year! I do love the holiday season, great time to get off work and be with the family and/or the friends. Be well all, and good morning, evening, afternoon, or night.