Page 40 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

CHAPTER 1 THE STRUCTURE OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE
CHAPTER 1 THE STRUCTURE OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE 19 19

What is so important about this marginal fact regarding the ass, which the Bible
bothers to mention here and in other places too?
One is again hard-pressed to make sense of the importance of the fact that
Moses had an ass unless the symbolism of that ass, as expounded earlier, is being
appropriately accounted for.

Example 3: The King Messiah

All Jewish commentators, including the renowned Rashi (1040–1105), agree that
the passage by the prophet Zechariah, 9:9–10, relates to the King Messiah as the

latter is related to in Jewish scripture. The prophet Zechariah thus describes the
end of times, when the people of Israel will be back to their ancestral Promised
Land and the Messiah will come (or return, according to the Christian faith):

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem : behold, thy
king comes to thee: he is just, and victorious; humble and riding upon an ass, and
upon a colt, the foal of an ass” (Zech. 9:9).
If we accept Jewish interpreters’ assumption that this passage relates to the
Messiah, then the Bible here really transcends itself in trivializing the Messiah: his
near-divine characteristics are that he is just, victorious, humble, and … riding an
ass?
It becomes clear that the only way to read this passage in a proper context is to
adopt it as an allegory, having the same meaning as in all earlier examples. Most
importantly, this is a further demonstration of the highly consistent fabric of bib-
lical discourse.

1.3.2 “Which God had created to do” (Gen. 2:3)

The detailed story of creation ends thus: “And God blessed the seventh day, and
sanctified it: because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and

performed” (Gen. 2:3). Regrettably, this translation, like most others, is extremely
inaccurate. The ending phrase, in Hebrew, is, literally: “which God had created to
do.” This changes the whole sense of the sentence. It implies that God has created
work that needs to be done. This interpretation is consistent both with how Jewish
tradition perceives the role of the human race on this planet—namely, to com-
plete the not-yet-done work associated with creation (refer also to chapter 6)—and
with how the commandment to preserve the Sabbath is expounded in the Torah .
Referring to the latter, let us read carefully how the Second Commandment is
explained: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor,
and do all thy work: but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord thy God: in it
thou shalt not do any work … for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,