The lost verses happen on the sixth day after Manna becomes standard food for the Israelites. While the people are told not to collect more than they need, the Israelites collect double portions as there seems to be double portions produced. The elders are puzzled and go to Moses.
23. And he said to them, This is what the Lord has said, Tomorrow is the rest of the holy sabbath to the Lord; bake that which you will bake today, and boil what you will boil today; and that which remains over lay up for you to be kept until the morning. 24. And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade; and it did not stink, neither was there any worm in it. 25. And Moses said, Eat that today; for today is a sabbath to the Lord; today you shall not find it in the field. 26. Six days you shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none. 27. And it came to pass, that some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather, and they found none. [Exodus 16]Of course the people who went looking for manna on Shabbat doesn’t go over well with God, who makes his instructions more explicit:
28. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘How long refuse you to keep my commandments and my laws? 29. See, because the Lord has given you the sabbath, therefore he gives you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide you every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.’ 30. So the people rested on the seventh day. [Exodus 16]In the Exodus 20:8-11 the Ten Commandments will make Shabbat explicitly a time to not do work. This passage,the first mitzvah of Shabbat makes different requirements. We do as God does in the Exodus 16 passage. Since God doesn’t cook on Shabbat, so too we don’t cook on Shabbat. To make sure we don’t do any gathering, we stay in our place and don’t carry anything in our out of our dwellings. Exodus 20 concerns work life while Exodus 16 concerns our home life.
What is meant by mimkomo “his place?” The text does not use the words moshavo for his habitation or beito for his house. Therefore “his home” might be the best definition. I realized the distinction between house and home about twenty years ago on my first job out of college. The job required six days on the road in a territory that covered anywhere from Pittsburgh to Omaha. I was so used to travel my apartment looked just like a suite at a Hampton Inn, down to the furniture and the sink outside the toilet room. Neither the hotel rooms I stayed at nor my apartment were home. Home was still my parents’ house, where I connected with my family. In that job, I connected nowhere else. After I left that job I did find a home not in my apartment, but in an old sports bar in a far northwestern suburb of Chicago. Here, home was having a few drinks and some munchies with other people in the pottery studio where I used to do my art. A few years later, I found Home in my synagogue life. For most of that time, Home would not be the four walls I paid rent to keep my bed and bookshelves in.
Home is more than just the shelter of a house. Home is about relationship, a place where one feels connected to others. Someone close to me was talking about being Home last week and even had given me a song by Jimmy Buffet about the subject, which made me think a lot about being Home.
I have before talked about Jimmy Buffett and how his song One Particular Harbor is my expression about Shabbat. But the harbor explains our passage as well. Boats spend their days out on the sea, freely moving with the wind, though rarely in communication with other boats. Yet every once in a while they come into harbor, and sailors talk on the docks and in the shops and bars that surround the harbor. Sailing is one thing but without being able to tell the story of your adventure, to relate with other sailors, it is an incomplete thing. So too with Shabbat. We work so hard during the rest of the week, we often forget to relate to our loved ones and friends. One day a week, we do nothing but bind those relationships closer together. Home is where those we care about are, and Home is where we spend Shabbat.
Heschel commented that Shabbat was not a place in Space but in Time. It is the time that we use for strengthening our relationships. We strengthen our relationships to God, to creation, to others in our spiritual community, our friends and our loved ones. It saddens me when those relationships break down on Shabbat, to me there can be no bigger desecration. Exodus 35:3 will command us to kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day. Not only is the fire in the hearth indicated here, but the fire in the heart. Controversy and fighting is not an appropriate activity on the Sabbath. We have six other days for such things. All too often, hurtful words are used and not only feelings but relationships are hurt. Home, whatever and wherever it is, sadly becomes a battlefield.
I try to avoid that. I think of Shabbat as that One Particular Harbor that Jimmy Buffett sings about:
And there's that one particular harbor
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within.
We are told that Shabbat is a foretaste of the world to come, one sixtieth of the messianic era. In a week full of stress controversy and strife, I like Shabbat to be that time to rest and work on building relationships. Once a week sailing into the sheltered port of Shabbat from the storm of life is a delight, an Oneg. Having a world around me peaceful enough to witness creation and enter into relationship with it is the joy of the day, if not my week. While John Lennon naively wrote of atheism in his song, Imagine, I still believe the chorus applies to the world where all celebrate Shabbat as a day of rest and building relationships:
You may say I’m a dreamer,Or as Zachariah prophesized in a passage which ends the Aleinu Prayer:
But I’m not the only one
Some day I hope you’ll join us
And the World will live as One.
On that day the Lord shall be One, and his name One [Zech 14:9]
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