• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Keturah

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
In his commentary on Genesis 25:1, Richard Elliott Friedman writes:

25:1 Keturah. The most ignored person in the Torah. Rashi follows an old rabbinic idea that she is Hagar. But there is no basis for this in the text, and other traditional commentators reject it (Ibn Ezra, Rambam, Rashbam). Keturah is the mother of the tribes located along the route of incense trade, and her name is related to the word for incense. Notably, the Midianites are among the children of Abraham and Keturah, and the influence of the Midianite priest Jethro on Moses, his son-in-law, is understood to be substantial. And the line of Levites who are descended from Moses thus -- alone among the Isralites -- derive from Abraham through both Sarah and Keturah. [ source ]

It's a lovely etiological myth, and the "old rabbinic idea" is, in my opinion, an even lovelier bit of midrash that instills in the tale a story of reconciliation.
 

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai
Staff member
Premium Member
More about the descendants of Keturah - the real tragedy of the story of Yosef is when you realize that both the descendants of Yaakov, and the descendants of Yishmael, and the descendants of Keturah (Midianites and/or Medanites) all had a hand in kidnapping Yosef.
 
Top