Deuteronomy 8:10 reads in Hebrew:
“v’achalta v’savata u’verachta et Adonai Elohecha al ha’aretz ha’tovah asher natan lach.”
This verse is the proof text for the commandment to offer thanks (blessing) after a meal. That blessing is known as Birkat Ha’Mazon.
It is often said that all translation is midrash and, because of its many structural ambiguities, translation from Hebrew offers continuous opportunity for interpretation.
The New Jewish Publication Society translation of Deuteronomy 8:10 is:
“When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.”
That same translation is used in the Reform movement’s Plaut commentary and the Conservative movement’s Hertz and Etz Chayim commentaries.
The Orthodox Stone edition of the Tanakh translates the verse:
“You will eat and you will be satisfied and bless Hashem, your God, for the good land that He gave you.”
The “old” Jewish Publication Society translation is:
“And thou shalt eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord thy God for the good land which He hath given thee.”
And the translation given in Art Scroll’s book on Birkat HaMazon (Mesorah Publications, Ltd.), also an Orthodox community publishing house, is:
“And you shall eat and be satisfied and you shall bless Hashem, your God, for the goodly land which He gave you.”
As we compare the various translations a subtle but critical distinction is apparent: one group of translations appears to make the obligation to give thanks conditional upon one’s being satisfied while the other places the obligation on the act of eating itself.
“When you have eaten your fill” clearly seems to establish satisfaction as the criterion for blessing.
“You shall eat and be satisfied” seems to make satisfaction itself a requirement of eating rather than a test of adequacy.
(Note: The translations found in a variety of Christian versions of the text generally follow the conditional format. The King James Bible gives: “When thou hast eaten and are full…” for example.)
If we look at the text itself, however, we will find no word in the Hebrew that would typically be translated as “when”. We find nothing, actually, that makes the requirement to bless conditional on anything but eating.
The translation of the New JPS edition and of the Torah commentaries of the Reform and Conservative movements are therefore not literal; they are midrash, interpretative readings.
They convey a point of view. And, no matter whether we agree or disagree with that point of view, we should be aware that it is a point of view that we are being presented.
Even the more literal translations of the Orthodox publications contain a subtle, if not grammatically incorrect, shading of meaning.
“You shall east and be satisfied…” is a shortened translation of words that, fully expressed, would read “(And) you shall eat and you shall be satisfied and you shall bless…”
I would argue that two things are variables in that statement:
1) what constitutes eating, and
2) what form does the required blessing take.
But “satisfaction” is not variable. It is not “satisfaction” that gives rise to the obligation to give thanks.
It is eating, I would argue, that gives rise to a requirement to be satisfied and an obligation to give thanks.
Not only is that position supported by a grammatical analysis of the verse, it is also suggested by two other points.
While we find in our verse an obligation to offer a blessing after we eat, we do not find in the Torah itself an obligation to say a blessing before we eat. Even Jews with little attachment to or participation in Jewish ritual life will be familiar with the blessings over bread commonly known by the truncated designation “HaMotzi”.
It is a simple, one-sentence formula that anyone with minimal Jewish knowledge will probably know and associate with mealtime. They might not know, though, that it is not the principal blessing offered at mealtime.
The blessing “HaMotzi Lechem Min Ha’Aretz” (The One Who brings forth bread from the earth) is a requirement determined by the rabbis of the Talmud. It is found in Tractate Berakhot 21:a where it is derived using an argument that if we are required to make a blessing after eating how much more so should we bless before?
In the Shulchan Aruch (184:6) we find a measure of the amount that one must eat to trigger the requirement to recite the blessing: a volume of bread equal to roughly the size of an olive.
I don’t think it’s quite fair to directly extrapolate from that requirement but we can at least take some guidance from it. If we are required to bless before eating such a small quantity, we must then be required to bless after eating it. And if we are required to bless before and after, our satisfaction is assumed.
To me, that says I must be satisfied with and give thanks for whatever I have to eat. My satisfaction is attached to the fact of eating not the quantity, quality or substance of what I have to eat.
I think there is additional support in our Torah portion and in this verse for that position.
The context within which our verse appears is critical.
Moses reminds the people that they are going to enter a new land: “a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains…a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates…a land where you may eat food without stint, where you will lack nothing.” And he contrasts that with the long journey they have endured through the wilderness where “He subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat…in order to teach you that man does not live by bread alone…”
It is Moses’ clear contrast of the hardship of the wilderness and the sameness of the manna with the fertility and abundance of the new land and its great variety of foods that precedes the verse requiring blessing.
Further, the blessing that is required by this verse is NOT a blessing for the food, it is a blessing for the LAND, which provides the food. It has no explicit connection to quantity or satiety.
The connection is does have, though, is to the contrast between the manna, which will no longer be the stuff of the meal, and the new abundance and variety that the people will enjoy in the new land.
I think the fact that quantity is not the issue and that the blessing is for the land as a place of abundance and variety in contrast to the wilderness supports the argument that our own satisfaction with a particular meal is not the condition triggering the requirement to bless.
Given that the Torah, itself, does not specify the content of the blessing, but only the theme, it is interesting to look at how the blessing itself has been fashioned over the centuries. Birkat HaMazon, as we now know it, is composed of four principal blessings. (There are many additions and modifications for special occasions and situations, but we won’t address those here.)
The first blessing of Birkat HaMazon is not, somewhat surprisingly, for the land. Given that the Torah verse specifically requires that we bless the land, it might have been expected that the first part of the text would deal with the land. But, no.
The first blessing, we are told in Berachot 48b, was composed by Moses and it is a blessing for the manna. It concludes with a formula of blessing for God as the One “Who nourishes all.”
It is in the second blessing, which IS for the land and which we are told was composed by Joshua after entry into the land that we conclude with a formula blessing God “for the land and for the food”.
The third blessing is said to have been composed by David and Solomon and in it we bless God “Who in His Mercy (will) (re)build Jerusalem” with specific language in the body of the text referring to the House or Temple. (Note that this would have been roughly five centuries after the time of Joshua.)
The last of the four principal elements of the Grace After Meals is the blessing known as HaTov v’HaMetiv, or the blessing of God as “The One Who is Good and Who Does Good”.
This blessing, we are told, was composed by Rabban Gamliel the Elder in Yavneh after the Roman massacre at Beitar, which occurred over a thousand years after the time David and Solomon would have composed the third blessing.
So, the evolution of the principle blessings that comprise our current text of Birkat HaMazon took place over a period of about 1,600 years. And, as has been typical of Jewish ritual practice, the accretions of evolution are not balanced by deletions.
The result is a prayer that, in many liberal communities, is so long that it is seldom recited in its entirety. In many liberal synagogues and in many liberal homes, a mealtime blessing of HaMotzi is probably all that will be heard.
There are shorter versions of the Grace After Meals that have been created for use when time is short but those are not well known and I suspect they are infrequently used.
This one example brings up two issues that I think are quite important:
a) Our translations of certain important issues in our sacred texts, whether wittingly or not, express and convey viewpoints or opinions of the translators that sometimes change the sense of the original text in important ways. The responsible approach would be to acknowledge those cases and explain the reasoning for them. The reader deserves that much respect.
b) Century upon century of accretion has created a liturgy (not just in this case but in most of our traditional prayer services) that is long, difficult and tremendously redundant. We say the same thing over and over again to the point where we can become desensitized by repetition to the power, the beauty and even the content of our prayers.
The message of Deuteronomy 8:10 is, I believe, a message of humility.
When my satisfaction becomes the determining criterion of the obligation to give thanks, that fundamental message is lost.
©Charles R. Lightner