LILITH IN THE JEWISH HISTORY

“Night [Demon].” Now regarded in Jewish lore to be the most prominent of the four queens of demons, the nature of Lilith has undergone many reinterpretations throughout Jewish history. The origins of Lilith are probably found in the Mesopotamian lilu, or “aerial spirit.” Some features of Lilith in Jewish tradition also resemble those of Lamashtu, a Babylonian demoness who causes infant death. There is one mention of lilot (pl.) in the Bible (Isa. 34:14), but references to Lilith demons only become common in post-biblical Jewish sources. Furthermore, the characterization of Lilith as a named demonic personality really only begins late in antiquity. The Dead Sea Scrolls (Song of the Sage 4Q510–11), speak of lilot as a class of demonic beings:

"And I the Sage declare the grandeur of His radiance in order to frighten and terri[fy] all the spirits and ravaging angels and the bastard spirits, demons, liliths, owls and [jackals] and those who strike unexpectedly …" 1

This assumption of multiple lilot is replicated in amulets and magical formulae well into the medieval period. Even the gender of the creature is not fixed. incantation bowls, for example, explicitly protect against “lilot, whether male or female …”

In time, what eventually emerges from these biblical and medicinal-magical traditions is three overlapping interpretations of Lilith: the etiological Lilith, a spirit that accounts for certain common but puzzling human physical processes—Death in childbirth, sudden infant death, and male nocturnal emissions; the midrashic Lilith, a creature born out of the medieval interpretation of problematic biblical passages; and the cosmic Lilith, an entity described in esoteric texts that personifies the existence of evil in the divine order.

Jewish tradition gradually fixes on Lilith as a female demon. In Talmud and Midrash, she is described as a demon with a woman’s face, long hair, and wings (Nid. 24b; Eruv. 100b). She is a succubus , seducing men in their sleep and then collecting their nocturnal emissions in order to breed demonic offspring (Shab. 151b; Gen. R. 18:14). Later commentaries on the Talmud explain Lilith does this because her consort, Samael, has been castrated by God. She has many demonic children, the most famous being Ormuzd (B.B. 73b). In amulet incantations contemporary to the Talmud, she is addressed as a demon that preys on women in childbirth and as the spirit of infanticide, the killer of children, a theme that become more prominent in medieval sources (Zohar I:148a–b; Zohar II:267b).

The use of “Lilith” as the proper name of a specific demonic personality first gets solidified in the Midrash. The most famous legend of Lilith is the one first appearing in the medieval satirical text Alef-Bet of Ben Sira. In that document, Lilith is identified as the first woman God created along with Adam. The case for there having been two women in the Garden of Eden is based on the two disparate accounts of the creation of woman that appear in Genesis (Gen. 1:27 versus Gen. 2:18–23):

"He created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith began to fight. She said, “I will not lie below,” and he said, “I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while am to be in the superior one.” Lilith responded, “We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.” But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: “Sovereign of the universe!” he said, “The woman you gave me has run away.” At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels to bring her back".

Said the Holy One to Adam, “If she agrees to come back, fine. If not she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day.” The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God’s word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, “We shall drown you in the sea.”

“Leave me!” she said. “I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.”

When the angels heard Lilith’s words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: “Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant.” She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels’ names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.2

This account, incidentally, is a Jewish variation of a story about a demon curbed by three pursuers that also appears in Greek, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, and Slavonic legends. This midrashic version of Lilith’s origins proves to have only a minor influence of traditional Jewish thinking, eventually getting integrated into amulets as part of the etiological tradition in Sefer Raziel, but only really achieving wide-spread circulation in the modern era, with the printed re-publication of ABBS.

Lilith appears in a third and very different incarnation in the highly influential Treatise of the Left Emanation, written in the 13th century by the Kabbalist Isaac Cohen, where she is portrayed as the evil antipode to Eve, and the female personification of cosmic evil, the consort and mother of princely demons:

"[I]t is made clear that Samael and Lilith were born as one, similar to the form of Adam and Eve who were also born as one, reflecting what is above. This is the account of Lilith which was received by the Sages in the Secret Knowledge of the Palaces. The Matron Lilith is the mate of Samael. Both of them were born at the same hour in the image of Adam and Eve, intertwined in each other … You already know that evil Samael and wicked Lilith are like a sexual pair who, by means of an intermediary, receive an evil and wicked emanation from one and emanate to the other … The heavenly serpent is a blind prince, the image of an intermediary between Samael and Lilith. Its name is Tanin’iver. The masters of tradition said that just as this serpent slithers without eyes, so the supernal serpent has the image of a spiritual form without color—these are “the eyes.” The traditionalists call it an eyeless creature, therefore its name is Tanin’iver. He is the bond, the accompaniment, and the union between Samael and Lilith. If he were created whole in the fullness of his emanation he would have destroyed the world in an instant".3

Lilith has a mount she rides, Tanin’iver, “blind dragon.” She can command hundreds of legions of demons. Intriguingly, the Treatise of the Left Emanation starts to come full circle, once again referring to multiple Liliths, as did the ancients. This tradition of there being two (or more) Liliths also appears in Pardes Rimmonim, and becomes a commonplace part of kabbalistic cosmology in 17th- and 18th-century works.

This interpretation of Lilith, as the female face of cosmic evil, also occupies a significant place in the Zohar, where she is the evil counterpart of the Shekhinah (II: 118a–b; III: 97a). There is also a tradition in the Zohar that Lilith was the Queen of Sheba who came to test Solomon.

In other, later mystic texts, she is one of the four queens, or the four mothers, of demons. She is the most prominent of the four, being queen of the forces of Sitra Achra, the impure, or left side of divine emanations, which run loose in the world. In the early modern Kabbalistic text, Emek ha-Melech, the three interpretations of Lilith put forth in earlier literatures are reconciled:

And all this ruination came about because Adam the first man coupled with Eve while she was in her menstrual impurity—this is the filth and the impure seed of the Serpent who mounted Eve before Adam mounted her … Behold, here it is before you: because of the sins of Adam the first man all the things mentioned came into being. For Evil Lilith, when she saw the greatness of his corruption, became strong in her husks, and came to Adam against his will, and became hot from him and bore him many demons and spirits and lilin (23b–d) … Samael is called the Slant Serpent, and Lilith is called the Tortuous Serpent (Isa 27:1). She seduces men to go in tortuous ways … And know that Lilith too will be killed. For the groomsman [Blind Dragon] who was between her and her husband [Samael] will swallow a lethal potion at a future time, from the hands of the Prince of Power. For then, when he rises up, Gabriel and Michael will join forces to subdue and bring low the government of evil which will be in heaven and earth. (84d) 4

Defenses against Lilith include providing amulets inscribed with the angelic names Sanoi, Sansanoi, and Samnaglof (or Sandalfon) (Sefer Raziel, Illustration) to women in childbirth and to newborns, not sleeping alone in a house, and tapping an infant on the nose if he appears to be responding to something the parent cannot see. psalms, particularly Psalms 16, 91, 121, and 126, are effective in driving off Lilith (Shimmush Tehillim, 121, 126). There is also a ritual that can be performed during and after intercourse to drive her away (Zohar III:19). German Jews of the 18th century had a more elaborate ritual, involving the new mother sleeping with a sword, dagger, or sword-shaped charm under her pillow and arising each night for the first thirty-one nights to slash the air around the bed (assuming the child slept in the bed with her) to fend off the threat.5

In modern times, inspired by the singular Ben Sira portrayal of her as a woman who stands up to male domination, Lilith has become a rallying point among feminists in critiquing the overwhelmingly male-oriented perspective of traditional Judaism, and she has been adopted as a symbol of feminist resistance to male spiritual hegemony.6

It should be pointed out, however, that modern claims that Lilith was an early Hebrew goddess later censored out of the tradition by the authors of the Scriptures has no basis whatsoever in the historical record. This claim appears to depend entirely on appealing to the Ben Sira narrative, but that story is sui generis, and there is no precedent for any belief in Lilith as either “Wife of Adam” or “Wife of YHVH” prior to the 10th century CE.7

Notes

1. Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated, 371, 373.
2. D. Stern and M. Mirsky, Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 182–183.
3. Dan, Early Kabbalah, 175, 179.
4. Patai, Gates to the Old City, 458.
5. Sperber, The Jewish Life Cycle, 26–27.
6. Aviva Cantor Zuckoff, “The Lilith Question” Lilith Magazine Online, http://www.lilith.org/about.thm.
7. G. Dennis and A. Dennis, “Vampires and Witches and Commandos, Oy Vey: Comic Book Appropriations of Lilith” Shofar, 32:3 (2014).

By Geoffrey W. Dennis in "The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism", second edition, Llewellyn Publications, USA, 2016. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.