Tetzaveh 5786
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This week we are reading Parashat Tetzaveh (Exod 27:20–30:10), and I want to look at chapter 28. That’s where Moses is given the instructions for making the vestments for the priests. His brother Aaron, who is the high priest, gets an eight-piece set of vestments to wear; regular priests get only four.
Part of what Aaron gets to wear are two things we discussed briefly last week. One is called a breastpiece, a good English translation of the word חֹ֫שֶׁן ḥóshen. The other one, which most English versions don’t bother to translate, is an אֵפוֹד ephod. A few translations call this a “sacred vest” or something of the sort, but it seems to be more of a full body thing: a robe, or an apron, or set of overalls or something of that kind.
I’m guessing it was originally designed to protect your clothing from the blood of the sacrificial animals, although that does not seem to be its function as we have it described in the Bible. In any case, today I want to talk about those two items of the high priest’s costume. First, the breastpiece, whose description starts in 28:15.
One of the features — the most glamorous feature — of this breastpiece is that it has on it four rows of precious stones. All the Hebrew words that name them are translated into English this way in the NJPS version:
Exod 28:17 … The first row shall be a row of dcarnelian, chrysolite, and emerald; 18 the second row: a turquoise, a sapphire, and an amethyst; 19 the third row: a jacinth, an agate, and a crystal; 20 and the fourth row: a beryl, a lapis lazuli, and a jasper.
Note d informs us, as you might expect: “The identity of several of these twelve stones is uncertain.” In all honesty, I myself don’t know what half of the English words there mean, so I’m not going to try to identify those jewels. What you want to know about them is that these precious stones are engraved with the names of the Israelite tribes. Each tribe has its own precious stone, with its name inscribed on its individual precious stone.
The names are not identified here as the names of the tribes (as they probably would be if this were written in the book of Numbers, the one book of the Torah that is all about the tribes). Instead, these jewels are inscribed with “the names of the sons of Israel.” We’re not told which stone had which name inscribed on it.
I like to say that in the first paragraph of Exodus, 1:1–17, the בני ישראל b’nei yisrael morph from being “the sons of Israel” (= Jacob, in v. 1) to being “the Israelites” (in v. 7) and that that’s the last place where the phrase b’nei yisrael actually means the literal children — even more literally, the sons, the male children, of Jacob whose name was Israel, and that everywhere else that phrase means the famous biblical “children of Israel,” that is, the Israelites.
A ben can also mean a member of a group, and the banim of the Israel group are the Israelites. It’s not quite true, though, that that is the last place where b’nei yisrael means “Jacob’s sons,” since here we are in Exodus 28 and each of these stones has the name of one of the sons of “Israel.”
The commentators tell us that these names are spelled out on the stones because this breastpiece of decision is meant to convey oracles to the Israelites. There are different methods by which they think this might happen — the various letters of the names light up in the correct order to spell out the message, or something of the sort.
However, this is the second appearance in our chapter of “the names of the sons of Israel.” They have already appeared on Aaron’s garments in v. 9, on the ephod. As noted, this is a much larger garment than the breastpiece. It has two shoulder pieces — they must look something like epaulets — made out of lapis lazuli, the same stone that is in the middle of Row 4 of the breastpiece.
On these shoulder pieces are engraved “the names of the sons of Israel,” six names on one stone and six names on the other stone, in birth order (v. 10). They are “stones for remembrance of the Israelite people, whose names Aaron shall carry upon his two shoulder-pieces for remembrance before YHWH” (v. 12).
Now, these names are the exact same names that are on the 12 stones of the breastpiece, where they are also to be carried by Aaron “for remembrance before YHWH at all times” (v. 29). There, on the ḥóshen, they could plausibly have some functional significance by flashing to spell out messages, since this breastpiece is what contains the Urim and the Thummim (v. 30). These are a sort of oracle, a biblical Magic Eight-Ball. The stones on the high priest’s shoulders don’t seem to have this function, or indeed any function other than to be a “remembrance before YHWH.”
What exactly does it mean to be “remembrance before YHWH”? It’s not unusual in the Bible to speak as if YHWH needs his memory jogged from time to time, but what is he supposed to be remembering when he sees these names? If you try to picture Aaron, I think you will get the answer to that question. As I said last week, if you have the right Bible or the right prayer book you can actually find pictures of these high-priestly garments, an artist’s conception of what Aaron looked like.
Try to imagine it. There are 12 precious stones with 12 names hanging on his chest, and two blue epaulets (one on each shoulder), each one containing 6 of the 12 names. He looks like the soccer players you sometimes see pictures of, where right on their team uniform they have all kinds of advertising. Auto racers have the same thing, come to think of it — Pennzoil decals and the like.
Here is Aaron in this beautiful priestly get-up, with advertising signs that are advertising the 12 tribes of Israel, so that God should remember who Aaron is playing for. In fact, this expression שְׁמ֖וֹת בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל sh’mot b’nei yisrael ‘the names of the sons of Israel’ is found four times here in chapter 28; twice again in Exodus 39, when they tell you how they actually made the vestments for Aaron for the high priest; and just two more times anywhere else in the Bible: Exod 1:1 (which I’ve already mentioned) and Gen 46:8, which is being quoted in Exod 1:1, the genealogy of the Israelites:
Gen 46:8 These are the names of the sons of Israel, Jacob and his descendants, who came to Egypt.
Everywhere else, it is true that the phrase b’nei yisrael means “the Israelites” and not “the sons of Jacob.”
Now that we don’t have a high priest … now that Jewish priests of any rank don’t wear a uniform with a particular set of garments … we have lost our advertising contract. How is God supposed to remember us? I can only suggest that he must do it at the two times when we recite that phrase again and list the actual names: when we read from the Torah at the beginning of the book of Exodus, and also in Genesis 46, when we say out loud, “These are the names of the sons of Israel.” That’s the only advertising we have left.
So do patronize your local synagogue — especially for Parashat Vayigash and Parashat Shemot, when that commercial is on the air.
