This is the Baimal podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we take a deeper dive into one of the topics we hear about from listeners the most midrush.

And we'll answer the most commonly asked question from our entire run of the podcast.

What is that question, Marty?

I have gotten this question so much. Like it's not even, it's not even close. Like if it is it really the most asked question of all the emails you get?

Yes, without question, it is the most commonly received email in my inbox.

Averaging these days, I don't know, 7 to 12 emails a day, I get it probably once a week. This is how often we see this. That's a lot. So this episode first aired or the episode that we're talking about first aired in September 2016.

Indeed, you feel like I could have saved me a whole lot of time by recording something like this in the last five years, right? Yeah, probably. 4.5 years. September 2016 to February 2021. That's a lot of emails.

Yep, well, better late than never, but yeah, I have responded. And I don't have any like cool keystroke or anything set up to just do not a response. I type out my response every time.

Like a good, beautiful teacher, the authentic Marty Solomon experience.

All right, we've held them in suspense long enough. What is the most commonly asked question in all of the Bama email inbox? It is this Marty, you said the midrush taught that Yiska and Sarah were the same person.

They were the same woman by two different names, but this talking about the same person. How can this be because when you do the math using later details in the book of Genesis, Abraham being the first born, you end up with

the math. The math just, there's no question. The math comes out. Heron would be 10 years old at the, at the, at the oldest. Heron would have to be 10 years old when, when Yiska, his daughter was born. And that's weird.

And he has two other children. Yeah. So, so, so how, how could this be Marty? And so for anybody that needs the reference point, Brent, we're talking about episode eight. Is that right? Barried in a genealogy? Correct.

Link will be in the show notes if you need it, but episode eight episode eight, you can go back and review that was for anybody that's been with us in real time, that was 2016, that was a long time ago. So, one of our first episodes and one of our first real exposures to the power of midrush.

So, a really cool episode, but definitely obviously raised a major question, but that links in the show notes if you want to go review that episode. But first, well, let me just say this, I'm, I'm amazed. I'm literally amazed at how many astute listeners we have, the biblical awareness that they, that obviously so many people have to pull details together.

I mean, Brent, you, you know me, I like Bible, I like details, I like, I like making sure that things make sense and work. I like to study. Yes, you know this about me. Of course. Okay. I, I haven't dug like, I wasn't necessarily remember the very first time I got that email.

Oh, if I would have only known back then, how many times I would see it, but I remember the very first time I got that email just a week or two after we published that episode and I went, oh, oh, oh, yeah.

Oh goodness. I had just never even thought about those details. I had assumed. And so one of the things that I would also say about this is that, and even in that moment, I was still learning, I was trusting the midrush, like I have been around the midrush enough, even at that point in 2016.

I was trusting the midrush, I know the midrush after a couple thousand years of rabbinic conversation after thousands of years of studying the Bible, the midrush doesn't make stupid mistakes.

Like I have yet to find the midrush makes some just dumb mistake because they aren't paying attention to the text like.

So, so I was just kind of trusting the midrush and hadn't really thought that part through in the moment somebody asked it. I was like, oh goodness. Yeah.

Yeah. How do you answer that question? So I'll pause here just long enough to make a point, which is that I'm constantly in learning mode as well.

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