No Fire = Shabbos?
After the Exodus from Egypt, after the Ten Commandments are handed down, and after the instructions for the building of the Tabernacle are given, G-d issues an odd commandment:
You shall kindle no fire throughout your settlements on the Sabbath day. (Ex. 35:3)
Why, of all commandments that involve Shabbos, is this one given?
Perhaps the answer can be found in the words themselves? The text does not really say “kindle a fire” – it says לֹא־תְבַעֲר֣וּ אֵ֔שׁ: the verb form of the word “flame” and the word for “fire”.
These two words are found paired only one other place in the Torah: the burning bush: בֹּעֵ֣ר בָּאֵ֔שׁ.
Is this a coincidence?
Could it be that we can use the bush to understand why the commandments for the Sabbath day are somehow summarized using the single “do not kindle a fire” injunction?
Might the answer be that, if we consider that the bush was G-d’s way of showing mastery over and control of nature, then we can understand that when we emulate G-d by building fire then we are doing, in our own way, what G-d did when He worked for 6 days to create the world?
So when we use fire, we, too, are showing mastery over the natural world, right? Which surely is acceptable, or even commendable. But only six days out of seven.
But on Shabbos, didn’t G-d refrain from doing any of the things symbolically connected with the burning bush? Is it thus plausible that “do not kindle a fire” is shorthand for “do not show mastery over nature?”
If so, then six days we are to work – to improve the natural world, to create and destroy, to emulate G-d in the six days of creation? And on the 7th day we are supposed to rest as G-d rested – to refrain from any further manipulation of the natural world?
Would forbidding “kindling fire” on the Sabbath day tell us that this one commandment symbolically applies to ALL the commandments for Shabbos?
Chur?
And Moshe said to the children of Yisra᾽el, See, the Lord has called by name Beżal᾽el the son of Uri, the son of Chur, of the tribe of Yehuda;
It is rare to name two generations back. And the name “Chur” certainly is meaningful (Chur and Aharon held up Moses’ arms during the battle against Amalek). But could there be another meaning?
When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was good, he said to Yosef, I also in my dream, behold, I had three baskets of white bread (chur) on my head.
The word for “bread” in this verse is chur. Isn’t that odd? The word does not appear for bread anywhere else in the text. And we have words for bread! Yet the word used in this verse is chur.
The baker has made something fit for a king – for Pharoah. Is it possible that one of the reasons Betzalel is connected to chur is the idea that he also had the craftsman skills for making something fit for the king of kings?
Why are the Keruvim “Brothers”?
And the keruvim spread out their wings on high, and spread with their wings over the covering, with their faces each man to his brother.
Why use the language of “each man to his brother”?
The first mention of achiv, brother, is Hevel, Cain’s brother. And we know that Cain killed Hevel.
Might the linguistic link suggest that the keruvim are to show how brothers should seek to love each other? That mankind is really meant to emulate the love of the keruvim as opposed to Cain’s treatment of Hevel?
The phrase אִ֣ישׁ אֶל־אָחִ֑יו is found earliest with Joseph’s brothers: plotting to kill Joseph (Gen 37:19), regretting their treatment of Joseph (42:21), and in anguish when their money is found in the sacks (42:28). Might these specific verses suggest a progression from Cain’s violence to the brothers’ plots, regret, and then fear – and ended with reconciliation with the keruvim on the ark?
Keruvim on the Curtains?
Moreover thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with keruvim of artistic work shalt thou make them.
Why are there keruvim on the curtains? What symbolism might they contain?
The first mention of keruvim is back near the beginning:
So He drove out the man; and He placed (וַיַּשְׁכֵּן֩) the keruvim eternally at the Garden of Eden, and the bright blade of a revolving sword to guard the way to the tree of life.
Are the keruvim in the Mishkan there to remind us of the keruvim at Eden?
If so, is there a suggestion of a tree of life, of sorts, in the Mishkan? A path, perhaps, to a spiritual immortality in place of the physical immortality that was barred to us at Eden?
If this is true, what other lessons might we learn?
Why, for example, are the keruvim plural? Does it suggest anything about the importance of relationships in achieving holiness?
Is there a similar coincidence that וַיַּשְׁכֵּן֩ is used to describe the first keruvim, and the root word is the same as mishkan? Does this suggest that the mishkan is deeply linked to the ideal (if not the specific location) of Eden?