What is the book of Jasher mentioned in Joshua and 2 Samuel?

Question 1185

Twice the Old Testament pauses to point outside itself. When the sun stood still over Gibeon, the writer of Joshua adds that this is written in the book of Jashar. When David sang his lament over Saul and Jonathan, the writer of 2 Samuel notes that the song is recorded in the book of Jashar. A book named in Scripture yet absent from it naturally raises a question, and the question has a clear answer.

The book of Jasher, more accurately spelled Jashar, was an ancient Hebrew collection that the biblical writers knew and could refer their readers to. It was not Scripture, it has been lost for thousands of years, and the works sold under its name today are not it.

What the Name Means and What It Held

The Hebrew phrase sepher hayashar means the book of the upright or the book of the just. From the two passages that mention it we can tell something of its character, because both quotations are poetry. The standing still of the sun is given in poetic lines, and David’s lament is one of the finest poems in the Old Testament. This suggests that Jashar was an anthology of Hebrew songs and poems celebrating the LORD’s dealings with his people and the deeds of Israel’s heroes.

Such collections were common in the ancient world, and the Old Testament mentions others like them, including the book of the Wars of the LORD named in Numbers. These were national songbooks and chronicles, treasured records of what God had done, the sort of material a poet or historian would draw on. The biblical writers, under the guidance of the Spirit, sometimes quoted from them and pointed their first readers to the fuller account.

The mention of Jashar also tells us something about how the inspired writers worked. They did not compose in a vacuum but lived among the songs, records and memories of their people, and the Spirit who guided them was content to weave genuine sources into the account he was producing. When Luke says he investigated everything carefully and drew on those who were eyewitnesses, he describes the same kind of work in the New Testament. Inspiration did not bypass ordinary records, it governed how they were used so that the result was the trustworthy word of God.

Why It Is Not in the Bible

That a book is mentioned in Scripture does not make it Scripture. The inspired writers refer to many sources, just as Luke tells us he consulted those who were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word before writing his Gospel. The Spirit guided the biblical authors in what they selected and recorded, so that what stands in our Bible is the word of God, while the sources they drew from remain human documents.

The book of Jashar was a genuine and valuable record, but it carried no claim to be the breathed-out word of God. It belonged to Israel’s literature rather than to Israel’s Scripture. Its loss takes nothing from the completeness of the Bible, because everything God intended his people to have he preserved in the canon. The reference in Joshua and 2 Samuel is a footnote to the events, not a missing chapter of revelation.

It is worth pausing on the difference this draws between a source and Scripture, because the distinction protects us from a good deal of confusion. A source is material an author consults. Scripture is the finished, God-breathed text the author produced under the Spirit. Paul could read the Greek poets, Luke could interview eyewitnesses, and the historian of Joshua could cite a national songbook, and in every case the inspired result was the word of God while the source remained the work of men. To recognise Jashar as a source is to honour both the human craft and the divine authorship of the Bible we hold.

Why God Let It Be Lost

Some readers feel a pang at the thought of a lost book and wonder whether part of the Bible has slipped through our fingers. That worry rests on a misunderstanding of how God gave and kept his word. The Lord did not merely inspire the Scriptures, he preserved them, watching over the books he intended his people to possess so that they came down through the centuries intact. If the book of Jashar had been part of that body, it would have been preserved with the rest.

Its disappearance is therefore a quiet testimony to the difference between Scripture and the wider literature of Israel. The songbook served its purpose in its day, was drawn upon by the inspired writers where the Spirit chose, and then passed away, while the word of the LORD stands for ever. We hold a complete Bible, not a damaged one, because what God meant us to have he kept, and what he allowed to perish was never part of the deposit he committed to his church.

The Modern Forgeries

Anyone searching online will quickly find a volume titled the book of Jasher offered for sale, and it must be handled with care. The version most commonly sold is a Hebrew work of the medieval period, a retelling of Genesis and Exodus stories with legendary additions, which was given the famous name to lend it weight. It is a piece of Jewish folklore, sometimes interesting, but it is in no sense the ancient songbook quoted in the Old Testament. A separate eighteenth-century English fabrication also circulates and is an outright forgery.

Neither of these is the lost book of Jashar, and neither carries any authority. They illustrate a recurring pattern, the attaching of a respected biblical name to a later writing in order to borrow its credibility. The faithful reader simply notes that the real book of Jashar is lost, that its loss costs us nothing, and that the substitutes on the market are not what they claim to be.

The same caution applies to a whole shelf of writings sold today as suppressed or lost books of the Bible. The book of Jashar, the book of Enoch, the various so-called lost gospels, all of them trade on curiosity and on the suggestion that the church has kept something from ordinary believers. A reader grounded in how the canon was actually recognised will not be shaken by the marketing, because he knows that God gave his church the books he breathed out and that no genuine Scripture was ever quietly mislaid.

So, now what?

When you read of the book of Jashar in Joshua and 2 Samuel, understand it as a glimpse of Israel’s wider literature, a national collection of songs that the inspired writers could cite. It is a sign of how rooted the Bible is in real history and real records.

Do not be drawn in by sellers offering the lost book of Jasher as though a piece of the Bible had been recovered. The genuine work is gone, and the volumes bearing its name are later writings that borrowed it.

Rest in the sufficiency of the Scripture you already hold. God has given his people all they need in the books he preserved, and nothing essential lies buried in a lost songbook of the upright.

“And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar?” Joshua 10:13