Introduction
There are some moments in time that are so powerful, so consequential, that they seem to crystallize, to become matter, to ossify. Time becomes bone.
Seven such bone-like moments (and only seven) are found in the Hebrew Bible when it is read in the Hebrew. Those moments are so consequential in human history and in the history of the Jewish people that they are described in material terms; ossified moments in time on which the miracle and promise of Israel are supported.
We know these moments as we know the bones of a living body. Not directly, but as they shape and support the flesh that surrounds them. Their power and importance are evident but we have to expose them in order to see their true structure and substance.
The First Days
The Hebrew word for day is yom. Its repetition punctuates the account of creation; as well known in English as it is in Hebrew:
“…and there was evening and there was morning, a first day”
or
“vayehi erev vayehi voker, yom echad”.
After the sixth of these days, a value judgement:
“God saw all that He had made, and found it very good”.
As Genesis proceeds the word yom is used sparingly. It is there as God instructs Adam to refrain from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and bad. And it is there describing Cain’s banishment for the murder of his brother.
But then, in Chapter 5, the account of the descendants of Adam uses the repetition of yom statements in a way that recalls the creation story:
“All the days of Seth came to…” and
“All the days of Enosh came to…” and
“All the days of Kenan came to…” etc.
These two parallel structures based on repetitive use of the word “day”, enclose the first 10 generations of human experience.
And, just as a value judgment follows the creation story: i.e. it was “very good”, so too a value judgment follows the lineage presentation in Chapter 5.
God judges that every plan devised by man is:
“nothing but evil all the time”
or
“rak ra col ha-yom”.
All that God had created was very good at the end of Chapter 1. But by the end of Chapter 6, man has become rak ra col ha-yom. And God was ready to destroy his creation.
But then there was Noah “…a righteous man; he was blameless in his age…”
The First Bone
B’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh
The days of creation. The day on which Adam ate of the forbidden fruit. The banishment of Cain. These are important days; days that still live for all who read or hear them.
But when we reach the account of Noah in Genesis Chapter 7 we find the first instance of a day that is described in a unique way. A day that was so consequential that on that day time became like matter.
The day on which “Noah and Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, went into the ark, with Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons…” is described as b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh.
The typical English translation: “That same day” (JPS) or “In the selfsame day” (KJV) loses the distinction, the power found in the Hebrew.
In Hebrew, the word etzem means “bone”.
There is a bone-like quality to the day being described. The translation can be approached from different angles but to lose the bone-like element of the phrase is, I think, to lose its critical distinction.
I read the phrase b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh as “on that bone of a day”.
This first use of the phrase b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh in the Torah is not found in the creation story. It is not found in conjunction with man’s transgressions and descent. It is found in the first salvation story.
On that first bone of a day mankind and all the creatures of the earth are saved from destruction by the great flood with which God cleansed the land that He had made. So that, once again, there would be an opportunity for it to be very good.
But the gathering into the ark to await the fate of the world must have been a time of fear and uncertainty. A hard time. A weighty time. A brittle time.
A day like a bone.
The Second Bone
The next time a day is described in the same terms is in Genesis 17:23:
“Then Abraham took his son Ishmael, and all his homeborn slaves and all those he had bought, every male in Abraham’s household, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh, as God had spoken to him.”
And in Verse 26:
“Thus, Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh.”
So, this second, double appearance of the phrase describes the character of the day on which Abraham obeys the command regarding the sign of the covenant. A day that, as I imagine it, begins with Abraham’s circumcision of Ishmael and ends with Abraham’s own circumcision. (It seems more likely that Abraham would need to maintain his own strength during the process of circumcising all of those in his household and only take the knife to himself last).
So, the two references to the difficult quality of the same day might mark the beginning and the end of the process described.
As difficult as that was, it was immediately followed by the appearance of God to Abraham at Mamre.
As Noah’s entry into the ark represented an act of faith resulting in salvation, so Abraham’s acceptance of the covenant of circumcision was an act of faith that was immediately followed by an encounter with God. An encounter that began the fulfillment of the promise to make of Abraham “a great nation”.
The Third Bone
The b‘etzem phrase does not appear again until Parashat Bo in which it is again doubled.
At Exodus 12:17 we find:
“You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh I brought your ranks out of the land of Egypt…”
And again, at Exodus 12:41:
“…at the end of the four hundred and thirtieth year, b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh, all of the ranks of the Lord departed from Egypt…”
In verse 17 a command is given. In the verses that follow Moses and the people follow the commands of God. They are spared the plague of the death of the first-born and are allowed to leave Egypt.
Again, there is peril. Again, there are difficult commands. Again, following the commands results in a salvation event, the release from bondage that is so fundamentally a part of the story of Israel.
And, again, the English translation: “on that self-same day” fails utterly to capture the hard, dry, fearful quality of the Hebrew description of that momentous event.
The Fourth Bone
The fourth occurrence of the b’etzem phrase is not found until we reach Leviticus 23 in another discussion of the Passover offering. Here we find another doubling, although involving a variant form.
In this section of text God is instructing Moses regarding the “set times” or “sacred occasions”: mo’adei Adonai in Hebrew; which include the Sabbath and other days and times of special observance. After the Sabbath, Passover is the first such occasion identified and so the literary bridge from the Third Bone is made.
After the instruction is given regarding the Passover offering we find a variant of our phrase in verse 14:
“Ad etzem ha’yom ha’zeh, until you have brought the offering of your God, you shall eat no bread or parched grain or fresh ears…”
The Hebrew “ad” means “until” so this is not an exact use of our phrase. But it is close. And it marks a departure point from which we do find the next exact use. It is the first day of the counting of the omer after Passover from which we are told to count seven weeks.
And at the end of that seven-week period, counting from our marker, we find the fourth bone.
At Leviticus 23:21 we read:
“B’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh you shall hold a celebration; it shall be a sacred occasion for you…”
This sacred occasion is the feast of Shavuot on which we commemorate the receipt of the Torah at Sinai.
While the receipt of the Torah clearly continues the salvation/liberation/redemption themes of the prior bone-moments in the text, here we don’t find explicit language that parallels the sense of danger or dread found accompanying the Noah story, the circumcision story or the plague of the death of the firstborn.
But that element is implicitly present. At the Sinai event itself, the people were very much afraid saying to Moses “…let God not speak to us lest we die.”
So, the peril-and-deliverance theme is maintained.
The Fifth Bone
The fifth bone is found just a few verses after the fourth and, in this case, the coincidence of peril and preservation is clear.
The verses commanding the observation of Yom Kippur begin at Leviticus 23:26:
“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Mark the tenth day of this seventh month (it) is the Day of Atonement…any person who does not practice self-denial throughout that day shall be cut off from his kin; and whoever does any work b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh, I will cause that person to perish from among his people.
If Yom Kippur were not described in the language of the bone, we might question the idea that its use represents a uniquely consequential moment. If Yom Kippur is not a day of special consequence; a day of both danger and salvation; then no other day in our calendar can be.
But our language of consequence is, in fact, found here.
Yom Kippur is, indeed, then and now, a bone of a day.
The Sixth Bone
The next b’etzem day is not found until we reach Parashat Ha’azinu at Deuteronomy 32:48:
Moses has just finished reciting the poem that begins “Give ear, O Heavens…” And after its recitation he warns the people to take the words of the poem to heart and to:
“…enjoin them upon your children, that they may observe faithfully all the terms of this Teaching. For this is not a trifling thing for you; it is your very life; through it you shall long endure on the land that you are to possess upon crossing the Jordan”
Immediately after having made it clear that the words he has spoken to them are their “very life” verse 48 reads:
“And God spoke to Moses b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh: Ascend these heights of Abarim to Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab facing Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving the Israelites as their holding. You shall die on the mountain that you are about to ascend.”
Could the departure of Moses, who had led them out of Egypt and through the desert; their protector and teacher, their judge and intermediary; not have been a dry, brittle, bone-hard parting?
The Seventh Bone
The last time the phrase b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh is found in the Bible is in the Book of Joshua. The day it describes is a fitting culmination and remembrance of the six prior appearances.
Joshua had assumed the leadership of the Israelites and had brought them across the Jordan. It was on “the tenth day of the first month”, the anniversary of the day in Egypt on which the Passover sacrifice was commanded.
There is a leadership reference here, a Passover reference and a reference to the crossing of water into a new land. We also have a reference back to Abraham as we read in Chapter 5 verse 2:
“At that time the Lord said to Joshua, ‘Make flint knives and proceed with a second circumcision of the Israelites.’”
“After the circumcising of the whole nation was completed, they remained where they were, in the camp, until they recovered”
and then, on what must have been the 14th day of the month,
“They ate of the produce of the country, unleavened bread and parched grain, b’etzem ha-yom ha-zeh”
“And on that same day, when they ate of the produce of the land, the manna ceased.”
What a day that must have been!
Finally, they crossed the Jordan into the land that had been promised, they have suffered the mark of the covenant in their flesh, they have lost their leader and prophet, they have lost their miraculous sustenance and they eat of the bread of affliction.
It was a day like no other. A very bone of a day. The last of its kind.
As Noah entered the ark and Abraham entered the covenant. As the slaves were spared the plague of the first born, offered the Passover sacrifice, and crossed the water to freedom. As they received the word of God at Sinai and saw Moses climb to his death.
The days that were like bones marked the journey of Israel from the time of Noah to the land of their promise.
Days of such moment that the moments are like bone.
© Charles R. Lightner, all rights reserved
14 Shvat 5777