oa Het ‘Huis van JHWH’ en het ‘Verzoek van de weduwe’

Discussion of two recently published paleo-Hebrew inscriptions. The first inscription contains the commission of a king Eshyahu to give three shekels of silver to the ‘temple of Yhwh’ . Eshyahu might be identical with the Eshyahu mentioned in the 7th/6th century BCE Arad ostraca who was a local governor, or could be a non-Israelite king. The ‘temple of Yhwh’ does not necessarily refer to the Solomonic temple. The second inscription contains the plea of a widow asking a local officer, probably at Lakish, to give her a field that had been promised to her late husband, but was given to her brother-in-law instead. This inscription is of great importance for our understanding of Israelite legal practices.