145. LILITH may be her full name. See Jesus ben Sira, Alphabeta (ca.AD 700-900; tr. M. Stein-Schneider, 1858):
“When the Almighty - may His name be praised - created the first, solitary man, He said: It is not good for man to be alone. And he fashioned for man a woman from the earth, like him, and called her Lilith. Soon, they began to quarrel with each other. She said to him: I will not lie underneath, and he said: I will not lie underneath but above, for you are meant to lie underneath and I to lie above. She said to him: We are both equal, because we are both created from the earth. But they didn’t listen to each other. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced God’s avowed name and flew into the air. ...Immediately, the Almighty - may his name be praised - said to him: If she decides to return, it is good, but if not, then she must take it upon herself to ensure that a hundred of her children die each day.”
For a biblical reference to Lilith in the wilderness, see Isaiah* 34:9-14 (Darby, 1890):
“And the torrents thereof shall be turned into pitch, and its dust into brimstone; yea, the land thereof shall become burning pitch: it shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; ...And he shall stretch out upon it the line of waste, and the plummets of emptiness. ...And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in her fortresses; and it shall be a dwelling-place of wild dogs, a court for ostriches. And there shall the beasts of the desert meet with the jackals, and the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; the lilith also shall settle there, and find for herself a place of rest.”
Many other common translations interpret “lilith” more generically; the King James Version (1611) describes the lilith as a screech owl.
152. TIME: See note 141.
161. LIL’S ABORTION: To bring it off (line 159) is to have an abortion. The chemist is a pharmacist.
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* see note 0.1
