46 | MAY 4 • 2023 

observe the Sabbath day.
” (Deut. 5:11–14)
Here there is no reference to creation. 
Instead, the Torah speaks about a historical 
event: the Exodus. We keep Shabbat not 
because God rested on the seventh day but 
because He took our ancestors out of Egypt, 
from slavery to freedom. Therefore, Shabbat 
is a day of freedom even for servants, and 
even for domestic animals. One day in seven, 
no one is a slave.
Of course, both are true, and we integrate 
both accounts into the text of the Kiddush 
we make on Friday night. We call Shabbat a 
remembrance of creation (zikaron lemaaseh 
bereishit) as well as a reminder of the Exodus 
(zekher liyetziat Mitzrayim). However, once 
we set the Leviticus account in the context of 
these other two, a richer pattern emerges.
If we play close attention, we can hear 
three primary voices in the Torah: those of 
Kingship, Priesthood and Prophecy. These 
are the three fundamental leadership roles, 
and they have distinctive modes of knowl-
edge.
Priests, Prophets and the governing elite 
(the wise, the Elders, Kings and their courts) 
each have their own ways of thinking and 
speaking. Kings and courts use the language 
of chochmah, “wisdom.
” Priests teach Torah, 
the word of God for all time. Prophets have 
visions. They have “the word” of God not 
for all time but for this time. Prophecy is 
about history as the interaction between God 
and humanity.

THREE VOICES
Is it merely accidental that there happen to 
be three voices, when there could have been 
four, or two or one? The answer is no. There 
are three voices because, axiomatic to Jewish 
faith is the belief that God is encountered 
in three ways: in creation, revelation and 
redemption. 
Wisdom is the ability to see God in cre-
ation, in the intricate complexity of the nat-
ural universe and the human mind. In con-
temporary terms, chochmah is a combination 
of the sciences and humanities: all that allows 
us to see the universe as the work of God 
and human beings as the image of God. It is 
summed up in a verse from Psalms (104:24), 
“How many are Your works, O Lord; You 
have made them all in wisdom.
”
Revelation, Torah, the specialty of the 
Priest, is the ability to hear God in the form 

of the commanding voice, most character-
istically in the form of law: “
And God said,
” 
“
And God spoke,
” “
And God commanded.
” 
Revelation is a matter not of seeing but of 
listening, in the deep sense of hearing and 
heeding, attending and responding. Wisdom 
tells us how things are. Revelation tells us 
how we should live.
Prophetic consciousness is always focused 
on redemption, the long and winding road 
toward a society based on justice and com-
passion, love and forgiveness, peace and 
human dignity. The prophet knows where 
we came from and where we are going to, 
what stage we have reached in the journey 
and what dangers lie ahead. The prophetic 
word is always related to history, to the pres-
ent in relation to the past and the future: not 
history as a mere succession of events, but as 
an approach to or digression from the good 
society, the Promised Land and the Messianic 
Age.
Creation, revelation and redemption 
represent the three basic relationships with-
in which Judaism and human life are set. 
Creation is God’s relationship to the world. 
Revelation is God’s relationship with us. 
When we apply revelation to creation, the 
result is redemption: the world in which 
God’s will and ours coincide.

THREE ACCOUNTS
We now understand why the Torah con-
tains three distinct accounts of Shabbat. 
The account in the first version of the Ten 
Commandments, “For in six days the Lord 
made the heavens and the Earth,
” is the 
Shabbat of creation. 
 The account in the second version, 
“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt 
and that the Lord, your God, brought you 
out,
” is the Shabbat of redemption. The 
Parshat Emor account, spoken in the Priestly 
voice, is the Shabbat of revelation. 
 In revelation, God calls to humankind. 
That is why the middle book of the Torah 
(that more than any other represents Torat 
Kohanim, “the law of the Priests,
”) begins 
with the word Vayikra, “and He called.
” It is 
also why Shabbat is, uniquely here, included 
in the days “which you shall proclaim (tikre’u) 
as sacred convocations (mikra’ei kodesh),
” 
with the double emphasis on the verb k-r-a, 
“to call, proclaim, convoke.
” Shabbat is the 
day in which, in the stasis of rest and the 

silence of the soul, we hear the Call of God.
Hence too, the word mo’ed, which in gen-
eral means “appointed times,
” but here means 
“meeting.
” Judah Halevi, the 11th-century 
poet and philosopher, said that on Shabbat, 
it is as if God had personally invited us to 
be dinner guests at His table. The Shabbat 
of revelation does not look back to the birth 
of the universe or forwards to the future 
redemption. It celebrates the present moment 
as our private time with God. It represents 
“the power of now.
”
Not only is this threefold structure set out 
in the Torah, it is embodied in the prayers 
of Shabbat itself. Shabbat is the only day of 
the year in which the evening, morning and 
afternoon prayers are different from one 
another. In the Friday night Amidah, we 
refer to the Shabbat of creation: “You sanc-
tified the seventh day for Your name’s sake 
as the culmination of the creation of heaven 
and Earth.
” On Shabbat morning we speak 
about the supreme moment of revelation: 
“Moses rejoiced at the gift of his portion … 
He brought down in his hands two tablets of 
stone on which was engraved the observance 
of the Sabbath.
” On Shabbat afternoon, we 
look forward to the ultimate redemption, 
when all humanity will acknowledge that 
“You are One, Your name is One, and who 
is like Your people Israel, a nation one on 
Earth.
” 
Creation, revelation and redemption form 
the basic triad of the Jewish faith. They are 
also the most fundamental structuring prin-
ciple of Jewish prayer. Nowhere is this clear-
er than in the way the Torah understands 
Shabbat: one day with three dimensions, 
experienced successively in the experiences 
of evening, morning and afternoon. 
What is fragmented in secular culture into 
science, religion and political ideology is here 
united in the transforming experience of 
God who created the universe, whose 
presence fills our homes with light, and who 
will one day lead us to a world of freedom, 
justice and peace. 

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020) was a global 

religious leader, philosopher, the author of more than 

25 books, and moral voice for our time. He served as 

Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013. His series of 

essays on the weekly Torah portion, entitled “Covenant 

& Conversation”, continue to be shared and distributed 

around the world.

continued from page 45

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

