(1) The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their multitudes. (2) On the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing, and He ceased on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. (3) And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that He had done.
1. Compare the references for blessing in the previous chapter of bereshit. What is problematic in this excerpt?
2. Think about the process. When did God really stop working?
3. Could someone work from Wednesday to Monday, call Tuesday the seventh day and not work on it, and call themselves "Shabbat observant"? Why, or why not?
Possible answers:
1. When God blesses something, God makes it proliferate: peru urevu. (see 1:22; 28; Gen. 9:1; 17:16, 20; 28:3) Why God would make a day multiply?
2. God actually stopped working on the sixth day.
3. No - since the idea inherent in the text is not just stop working, but imbuing the day itself with an special quality: blessed / sacred - and that is what the observer of Shabbat shares with God.
Commentators have tried to understand this "blessing" in many different ways: Rashi - manna // but it happened later; Saaadia Gaon - blessing on the observers // no one is observing Shabbat when God creates it; Ibn Ezra: the day has astrological properties of invigoration (cannot be accepted as Biblical concepts)
(8) Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. (9) Six days you shall labor and do all your work, (10) but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God: you shall not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. (11) For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.
This is the only other instance in the Tanach that the pair to bless/to sanctify appears. All the other times the Jews are asked to observe / to sanctify Shabbat but not to bless it. According to modern scholarship, humans do not bless time on the Tanach in general. Only living things can be blessed. Jeremiah is the only one to ask that the day of his birth NOT be blessed.
In the following sources, what we find is that the day is called "holy" but not blessed.
(19) Thus said the LORD to me: Go and stand in the People’s Gate, by which the kings of Judah enter and by which they go forth, and in all the gates of Jerusalem, (20) and say to them: Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem who enter by these gates! (21) Thus said the LORD: Guard yourselves for your own sake against carrying burdens on the sabbath day, and bringing them through the gates of Jerusalem. (22) Nor shall you carry out burdens from your houses on the sabbath day, or do any work, but you shall hallow the sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers.
The context in Nehemiah is a long and detailed oath that the people make in order to be in the land.
Possible interesting solution by David Frankel of Machon Shechter in Jerusalem is that the word ויברך is the product of a copyist error. He suggests that the original verb was ויבדל, “and he separated.” Why?
1. Making holy and separating are a common pair in the Tanach.
2. Fits in the context, where God is separating - v. 4; 7; 14; 18 and so it would make sense that God separates the seventh day.
3. Fits well with the rest of the above evidence of linguistic usage, where to bless and to sanctify do not appear as a common pair.
4. dalet and resh are a common mistake, the copyist could have been influenced by the presence of bless in the previous verses.
5. Fits well with the concept of havdalah found in the liturgy.
The pair of holiness and separation is such a natural pair in Tanach that when Moshe and Korach have a face off, Moshe asks Korach: Is it not enough that God has separated you from the rest of Israel (made you a Levi), that you want the priesthood too?
In English, the word holiness comes from the old English haylig, which means “whole,” as in the whole thing, entire, united, one. That agrees with “God is One,” which we recite in our most basic prayer, the Shema.
In Hebrew, however, kedushah – holiness – means just the opposite: separate, divided, set aside. Thus marriage is created by kiddushin; the spouses become prohibited to everyone else so that they may be permitted to each other. Likewise for the holy land, the holy tongue, and the holy nation; each is separated from everything else.
A day that is holy is a day that should be separated. This is why we do not ask for our needs on Shabbat - we are just here, in the presence of God, seeking to feel God's bounty and grace in the world. In the rest of the week we strive for finding the blessing, on Shabbat we live it.