Hebrew riddles

Most of these are in some sense riddlic;[9]: 39–87  the one most straightforwardly containing a riddle[9]: 55  features schoolboys asking "what is this thing: nine go out and eight are complete, and twenty-four serve, and two pour, and one drinks".

Four riddles are ascribed to her in the tenth- or eleventh-century Midrash Proverbs,[12][13] including the following: 'She said to him: "Seven exit and nine enter, two pour and one drinks".

He said to her: "Surely, seven days of menstruation exit and nine months of pregnancy enter, two breasts pour and the baby drinks".’[14] These plus another fourteen or fifteen tests of wisdom, some of which are riddles, appear in the Midrash ha-Ḥefez (1430 CE), for example:[12] The early medieval Aramaic Targum Sheni also contains three riddles posed by the Queen to Solomon.

[12] Under the influence of Arabic literature in medieval al-Andalus, there was a flourishing of literary Hebrew riddles in verse during the Middle Ages.

Dunash ben Labrat (920-990), credited with transposing Arabic metres into Hebrew, composed a number of riddles, firmly rooted, like folk-riddles, in describing everyday, physical objects.

[7][23] Judah is noted as the most prolific Hebrew riddler of his time, with a corpus of at least sixty-seven riddles,[21]: 21  some of which survive in his own hand, and even in draft form.

[22]: 104 n. 1 [27][28] The Andalusian tradition extended to Italy from the twelfth century, beginning with the work of Yerahmiel Bar Shlomo.

The genre was characterised by alluding to words in languages other than Hebrew (lo‘ez) in order to provide clues to the solution.

Poems in this genre were occasional, composed in celebration of specific high-society events such as weddings and circumcisions.