Language Studies

Aramaic Thoughts

Aramaic Literature - Part 3 - The Talmud on the Sabbath

“The basic purpose of the Talmud was to provide the Jewish people with a body of teaching which should be more than a creed, but also a guide of life in every phase.” F1

Given the status of the Sabbath in Judaism, it makes perfect sense that the first tractate of the Talmud should concern the Sabbath. Furthermore, given that the intent of the Talmud is to provide “a guide of life in every phase,” it makes sense that the Talmudic judgments concerning the Sabbath should be so detailed.

The Scripture text itself is relatively vague in its Sabbath statements. The two iterations of the Sabbath commandment (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5) simply prohibit “work” and extend the prohibition to servants, animals, and sojourners. In Exodus 31, there is some expansion of the idea, in that “profaning” the Sabbath earns the death penalty (vs 14), and the following clause seems to equate work on the Sabbath with profaning the Sabbath. There is a further expansion, or perhaps clarification, in Numbers 15:32-36, where a man is deemed to have violated the Sabbath by gathering sticks on that day (presumably for building a fire). The greatest extension of the Sabbath idea comes in Isaiah 58:13-14. In that passage, “doing your pleasure,” “doing your own ways,” “finding your own pleasure,” and “speaking your own words” all seem to constitute violations of the Sabbath principle. They are contrasted with “calling the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable.” These, then, are the principles laid don in the Jewish scriptures regarding the observance of the Sabbath.

The question then becomes how these principles are to be worked out in details of behavior on the Sabbath day, in cultures and in situations differing radically from those in which the Israelites of the biblical period found themselves. Before getting into the details of the Talmudic requirements, it might be asked what is meant by the word “work” that is prohibited on the Sabbath by the Ten Words (Commandments). The word most commonly refers to one’s occupation. Hence, in general a person is not to engage in his regular occupation on the Sabbath day. In the Talmudic discussions, this idea of occupational labor is further subdivided into the possible sorts of labors in which a man might be tempted to engage on the Sabbath. Since these would be considered occupational labors, engaging in them would thus be considered desecrations of the Sabbath. These types of labors are divided under thirty-nine distinct, but related headings. They include such fairly obvious things as sowing, plowing, and reaping, but they also include more esoteric things, such as “writing two letters of the alphabet” or “erasing for the purpose of writing two letters.” F2 Prohibited acts also included the transferal of an item from one domain to another. This is actually the subject with which the Talmud begins, and it makes good sense to devote a single column to that issue.

F1: Abraham Cohen, Everyman’s Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages (New York: Schocken Books, 1949), 149.
F2: Ibid, 154.

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