Leviticus 21:1-24:23

Redivide the Verse

 

The possibility has always struck me that our ancient sages (heresy spoiler!) may have made a mistake in the way they divided up the verses in one crucial passage of the Torah. As is well known, the Torah begins with an account of the creation of the world: on each day, God did such-and-such, “and it was evening and it was morning, the first/second/third/ etc. day.”

 

This pattern continues through the sixth day. Then the Torah says, “And the heavens and the earth were complete, along with all those in it. And on the seventh day God completed the work which He had done.”

 

This of course was troubling to interpreters, since for us humans, it is forbidden to “complete” any work on the seventh day: everything has to be completed before the seventh day starts. Why should the Torah say that God was still finishing off His work when the sixth day had ended?

 

Some ancient scholars were sufficiently bothered by this problem that they actually changed the words of the text. The author of the book of Jubilees, written around 200 BCE, thus translated, “And on the sixth day God completed the work which He had done,” and the Talmud asserts that the same sort of correction was to be found in the Septuagint (Old Greek) translation of the Torah (but it isn’t there any more).

 

Other commentators have suggested that the verb “completed” in second sentence cited above is meant to be understood as God “had (already) completed”—after all, if the preceding sentence says that the heaven and earth were complete on the sixth day, why should the next verse seem to be saying the opposite? So this seems to be the correct explanation, “God had completed…” But still, one has to wonder why two apparently contradictory assertions should be juxtaposed to each other.

 

I’m not sure that this solves the problem, but the apparent contradiction would be lessened if the verse division were slightly revised. The first five days do indeed end with the words, “and it was evening and it was morning, the first/second/third/ etc. day.” But this was never intended for the sixth day. That day concluded, “And it was evening and it was morning, the sixth day, and the heaven and the earth were complete along with all those in it.” The very break in the pattern of the previous days was emphatic: it signaled that this was indeed the end of the creation of the world. Then, the next verse (indeed, the next paragraph) could indeed be read as resumptive: “And [thus] on the seventh day, God had completed the work…”

 

A passing thought quite unrelated to Emor—unless you can find something similar there.

 

Shabbat shalom!