21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:2-3, Shabbat

Genesis 2:2-3

 

ב וַיְכַ֤ל אֱלֹהִים֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י מְלַאכְתּ֖וֹ אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשָׂ֑ה וַיִּשְׁבֹּת֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י מִכָּל־מְלַאכְתּ֖וֹ אֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשָֽׂה: ג וַיְבָ֤רֶךְ אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־י֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י וַיְקַדֵּ֖שׁ אֹת֑וֹ כִּ֣י ב֤וֹ שָׁבַת֙ מִכָּל־מְלַאכְתּ֔וֹ אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָ֥א אֱלֹהִ֖ים לַֽעֲשֽׂוֹת:

 

Translation:     Gd completed on the seventh day His melakhah that He did; He ceased on the seventh day from all His melakhah  that He did.

            Gd blessed the seventh day and “sanctified” it, because on it He ceased from all His melakhah that Gd created for the purpose of doing.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

שְּׁבִיעִי	seventh
מְלַאכָה	melakhah
יִּשְׁבֹּת	He rested
שָׁבַת	He rested
יְקַדֵּשׁ	He sanctified

 

I italicized melakhah just like in previous lessons I italicized raqia.  I will keep on doing this when I know that the traditional translation doesn’t capture the real meaning of the word. 

 

Melakhah has a specific meaning in Jewish law.  It means the 40 less one or 39 categories of work prohibited on Sabbath.  You can’t do these things for pay on Shabbat, and you can’t do them for free; you can’t do it for yourself, and you can’t do it for others.  What’s more, if a non-Jew does something that is melakhah specifically to benefit a Jew, the Jew has to refuse the benefit. The only exception is when there is danger to the life of any Homo sapiens. 

 

Melakhah also appears in the Ten Commandments, in the commandment to observe Sabbath.  I won’t go into it further.  A whole tractate of Mishnah is dedicated to Shabbat laws and it has gemara in both Talmuds.

 

What I will say here is that Hebrew has more than one expression for the activity of people that earns their living but it is not melakhah.  Neither is it avodah, not in Biblical Hebrew.  As I discuss on the Fact-Checking blog, this word actually means an exclusive services contract, whether between Jews and Gd or between people. 

 

Biblical Hebrew uses maasayv, “his deeds”, for work assignments.  Yosef is doing “his deeds” when he is working for the jailer.  But he is doing melakhah when Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce him for the last time and that has the connotation that he was working on a holiday; all the Egyptians were at their temples and he was the only one in the house except for her.

This is the denouement of the first narrative in Torah. This oral narrative was “about” creating a world in which Shabbat would exist. I’ll go into the other vocabulary next week and then show you how the denouement relates to the rest of the material in the narrative.