Tanach Thoughts

This is an interesting idea I came across some time last year: In Beresheet Rabbah 36:3 it says: "Instead " To plant a vineyard "; from where did he acquire it? Rabbi Abba son of Kahana said: "He gathered to him planting vine shoots and saplings of figs, and cuttings of olives" The grapevine were taken to make wine, and it seems to me pretty obvious that Noach wanted to drown out his sorrows with wine, and knew he would need this ahead of time. But why fig saplings? Rabbi Yishai Zargeri wrote in his book Bigdei Yesha (בגדי ישע), pp . 67-68 (my translation): "And it seems to me that the explanation is that we find that Noach prepared sacrifices when he exited the ark, and to light the fire he needed wood, and since all of the trees were soaked with water it wasn't relevant to light the fire from them, and so Noach needed to bring with him trees into the ark. And it says in the mishna in masechet Tamid ( p. 29a ) that wood from all the trees were fit fo...

A short idea I thought of now: Ephraim Ha'Reuveni was a famous Jewish botanist in Israel. In an essay he wrote on Tanachic names that come from plants and animals, he pointed out that both Omri and Tivni (as well as some other names) are plant names: Omri comes from Omer (עומר), which means 'sheaf of grain' and Tivni comes from Teven (תבן) which means 'hay' (see here , p. 388, n. 36). Now, Omri was a famous king of Israel. Before that he had been a general in the Israelite army, and when the Israelites heard that Zimri had killed King Elah and the House of Ba'asha, they followed Omri to do battle against Zimri, eventually killing him. After this had happened, a challenger rose: Tivni ben Ginat. This caused the splitting of the Israelites into two factions: Followers of Omri and followers of Tivni, as it says in Kings 1:16:12-13: "Then the people of Israel split into two factions: a part of the people followed Tibni son of Ginath to make him king, and the ot...