Sidrah
Parashah of the week: Tetzaveh
“And they shall know that I the Eternal am their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them — I, the Eternal, their God” Exodus 29:44
March 7, 2025 09:06
“And they shall know that I the Eternal am their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them — I, the Eternal, their God” Exodus 29:44
March 7, 2025 09:06Biblical Hebrew famously doesn’t waste words. Grammatical forms tell hidden stories, God lives between the consonants, and with each tiny dot or dash we give voice to the text.
In the Book of Genesis, the universe is created and the stories of our patriarchs and matriarchs are told. In Exodus we have travelled from Egypt to Mount Sinai and wandered in the wilderness. Now five chapters give detailed instructions of the construction of a portable tent and all its furnishings, a dwelling place (mishkan) for God’s Presence to accompany the Israelites on their journey.
The Mishkan is also known as the Ohel Mo’ed (Tent of Meeting) but God’s Presence is perhaps more “present” in the word mishkan, whose root letters shin-chaf-nun mean “dwelling”. Indeed, in the preceding verse, God says, using the verb from the same root letters, “V’shachanti” –“ I will dwell (among the Israelites)”.
The Divine is in the detail here, with the stress marked (with a cantillation mark) on the last syllable pointing to the future. Much like God’s Presence, grammatical meaning is subtle, and v’shachanti (with the stress on the penultimate syllable) would mean “I did dwell”, making God’s Presence a thing of the past!
Our one verse, concluding this chapter towards the end of the Mishkan construction manual, almost encapsulates the whole book of Exodus: that God brought the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 1-24) and then the people built the Mishkan so that God’s presence would continue to be with them, to dwell with them, in the future as they continue on their journey (Exodus 25-40).
And yet the word “dwelling” in this verse is not v’shachanti at all; it is l’shochni. Still from the same sh-ch-n root, neither past tense nor future, perhaps always present, it is an infinitive construct, meaning something like “for in My dwelling (among them)”. God’s Presence isn’t contained by time or even place – perhaps everywhere can be a Mishkan so that God’s “ever-dwelling” might be among us.
One name of God also comes from this same three-letter “dwelling” root, although not used in the Bible: Shechinah. As a name of God it is based on references to God’s dwelling (v’shachanti, l’shochni) in the Mishkan, but it is really with Jewish mysticism that the Shechinah becomes associated with not just the Divine Presence but a feminine aspect or conception of God, dwelling within and among us.
Reading the JC’s Parashah of the Week column with someone else can bring God’s Presence into the world. “When two people sit together and share words of Torah, the Shechinah dwells among them” (Mishnah Avot 3:2).