First attested in the eleventh century Maḥzor Vitry, the following poem appears in most subsequent versions of the fourth benediction of the Sabbath amidah:2
attáh kiddáshta et-yom-ha-shevi’í lishmékha
takhlít ma’aséh shamáyim va-áretz
uverakhtó mikkól hayyamím
vekiddashtó mikkól hazzemaním
vekhén katúv betoratékha3
The poem consists of five lines, the first two of which contain four stresses each, and the last three of which contain three stresses each, as indicated by the accent marks in our transliteration. The metric pattern attested here is well-known from the Book of Jeremiah.4 Nevertheless, current prayerbooks print the five lines as though they were prose.5
The poem should be translated as follows:
You hallowed the seventh day for Yourself,
The end of the Creation of the heavens and the earth.
And You blessed it more than all the days,
And You hallowed it more than all the festivals.6
And so it is written in Your Torah.
As an introduction to the recitation of Genesis 2:1-3, this poem is a most ingenious interpretation of those verses. The biblical verses read as follows:
There were ended [the labors of making] the heavens and the earth and all their array.
God ended on the seventh day His work, which He had done, and He desisted on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
God blessed the seventh day, and He hallowed it, for thereon He desisted from all His work which God created for doing.
The point of this passage is that the end, i.e., the culmination and the purpose of Creation, was the blessing and hallowing of the Sabbath, which took place on the seventh day. The centrality of the Sabbath in the Creation story found in Gen. 1:1-2:3 is obscured by those who emend Gen. 2:2 to read “God ended on the sixth day His work which He had done...”7 The emended text suggests that the crowning act of Creation was not the blessing and hallowing of the Sabbath but the creation of humankind on the sixth day.
The key word in the poem Attah Kiddashta is the Hebrew word takhlit, “end,” which, like the English word “end,” means both “completion” and “purpose.”8 This noun is derived from the same root as that of the verb forms vayekhullu, “there were ended,” and vayekhal, “He ended,” in Gen. 2:1-2. By asserting that the Sabbath was “The end (takhlit) of the Creation of the heavens and the earth” in a poem used to introduce Gen. 2:1-3, the poet indicates that he interprets vayekhullu, “there were ended” in Gen. 2:1, to mean “They found their fulfillment.” He likewise indicates that he interprets vayekhal, “He ended” in Gen. 2:2, to mean “He brought to fulfillment,” and he suggests thereby that the vav in vayyishbot, “And He desisted,” be taken as a subordinate conjunction rather than as a coordinate conjunction.9 Thus Gen. 2:2 is taken to mean “God brought to fulfillment on the seventh day His work which He had done when He sabbathed on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.” The final line of the poem, “And so it is written in Your Torah,” reminds us that the poet believes that he is paraphrasing Gen. 2:1-3.
Now the verb vayekhal in Gen. 2:1-2 may be taken as a pluperfect meaning “He had completed” or as a declarative verb meaning “He declared His work completed.” In any case the verb, which the author of Attah Kiddashta took to mean “He brought to fulfillment,” must refer to God’s inauguration of the Sabbath unless “on the seventh day” is emended to “on the sixth day.”10 This emendation is to be rejected for two reasons: (1) lectio difficilior praestat; and (2) Gen. 1:1-2:3 seeks to inform us that the seven day week culminating in the Sabbath is part of the primordial scheme.11 The alternative adopted by The Torah, (second ed., Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1967), “On the seventh day God finished the work which He had been doing, and He ceased on the seventh day from all the work which He had done,” clearly implies that interrupting an uncompleted task for the sake of the Sabbath is not a divine virtue! Hence this translation is at odds with the ideology of Gen. 1:1-2:3.
In an era plagued by an ecological crisis brought about by humankind’s assumption that it is the crown of Creation, it is helpful to have the poem Attah Kiddashta remind us that Gen. 1:1-2:3 contradicts that assumption.
The biblical passage, as rightly interpreted by the poem, insists that the Sabbath, rather than humankind, is the crown of Creation.12
NOTES
1.I am grateful to my teacher, Prof. Robert Gordis, for his having read an earlier version of this article and for his having made some very valuable suggestions for its improvement. I alone am responsible for whatever faults remain.
2. A.Z. ldelsohn, Jewish Liturgy and Its Development (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1932), p. 132; see Simḥah ben Samuel of Vitry, Maḥzor Vitry, S. Hurwitz, ed. (Nuremberg: S. Bulka, 1923), p. 143. Philip Birnbaum, Daily Prayer Book (New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1949), p. 267 errs when he says that this poem “appears in the ninth century Siddur of Amram Gaon... “ While the poem is found in the Bodleian Library MS. of Seder Rav Amram, completed at Rhodes January 3, 1426, it is not found in the more reliable MSS. of Seder Rav Amram. The appearance of our poem in that MS. of Seder Rav Amram is one of the many instances where that MS reflects the influence of the French rite. See Tryggve Kronholm, Seder R. Amram Gaon, Part II: The Order of Sabbath Prayer (Lund, Sweden: CWK Gleerup, 1974), pp. xi-xii; 22-23.
3. For the Hebrew text in Hebrew characters see Philip Birnbaum, Daily Prayer Book, p. 267; Morris Silverman, ed., Sabbath and Festival Prayerbook (New York: Rabbinical Assembly of America and United Synagogue of America, 1946), p. 22; David de Sola Pool, ed. and trans., The Traditional Prayer Book for Sabbath and Festivals (New York: Behrman House, 1960), p. 65; Chaim Stern, ed., Gates of Prayer (New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1975), p. 136.
4. See John Bright, Jeremiah, Anchor Bible, Vol. 21 (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1965), pp. cxxxii-cxxxviii.
5. See the prayerbooks cited in n. 2 above.
6. The author of this poem adopts the view that “blessed” and “hallowed” in Gen. 2:3 are synonyms. For this view see A.B. Ehrlich, Mikra ki-Pheshuto, 3 vols. (Berlin: H. Itzkowski, 1899-1903), I:4 (in Hebrew). Hence the poet is able to create two parallel clauses “And You blessed it more than all the days (of the week)// And You hallowed it more than all the festivals (of the year).” The basis for determining that “days” here means “days of the week” is the fact that throughout Gen. 1:1-2:3, which is the inspiration for our poet, “day” means “day of the week.” The basis for determining that zemanim “times” means “festivals” is the use of the term zemanim in other liturgical compositions such as the fourth benediction of the festival amidah and the festival kiddush.
7. So, Septuagint, Samaritan Version, Peshitta, 1111d New English Bible. Good News Bible: The Bible in Today’s English Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1976) renders “by the seventh day,” which amounts to the same thing as emending the number.
8. Chaim Stern, Gates of Prayer, p. 136, appropriately renders “goal.”
9. For numerous examples of biblical Hebrew vav interpreted as a subordinate conjunction see Harry M. Orlinsky, Notes on the New Translation of the Torah (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1969), index, s. v., waw. Construing vayekhal as the predicate of a subordinate clause and vayyishbot as the predicate of the main clause in Gen. 2:2, Bruce Vawter, On Genesis: A New Reading (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1977), p. 61, renders “Since on the seventh day God was finished with the work he had been doing, he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken.”
10. Cf. E.A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible, Vol. I (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1964), p. 7; Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: a Commentary, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1972), p. 62; Vawter, p. 61.
11. See commentary of Samuel b. Meir (c. 1085-1174), ad loc. in the Rabbinic Bible, and see now Vawter, p. 61.
12. Contrast Mark 2:27: “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” The latter is distinct from the idea attributed to R. Jonathan b. Joseph in Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 85b: “It [the Sabbath] is handed over to you, but you are not handed over to it.” The New Testament assertion in its context challenges the Pharisaic view that the whim of humankind should be subordinated to the Sabbath. The talmudic assertion in its context means only that the saving of human life takes precedence over the Sabbath.
Mayer I. Gruber is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Bible Archaeology and Ancient Near East of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.