Taruwah ~A Day of Receiving, Named for a Shout

Two passages in the Towrah establish this day. Wayiqra' 23:23-25 and Bemidbar 29:1. Everything else in the Tanakh is commentary on those two, and it is worth starting with exactly what they say - and noticing what they do not.

Wayiqra' calls the day a shabbathown, a zikrown taruwah, and a miqra' qodesh. Bemidbar calls it a yowm taruwah, a day of taruwah. Four terms in all, and each one is pointing the same direction.

Not Sending

The restriction reads kol meleketh 'abodah lo' tha'asuw. This is usually flattened into "do no servile work," which loses what the words are actually built from.

Mela'kah is not a general word for effort. It is a dispatch - a message or a mission sent out. The mem prefix nominalizes lak, to depute or send a messenger, and the same root gives us malak - a messenger, envoy, or ambassador, one authorized to carry something on another's behalf. 'Abodah then narrows it: labor performed on behalf of someone else, from 'abad, the root behind 'ebed, servant.

So the instruction is not primarily about exertion. It is about commissioning. Do not send out. Do not dispatch errands. Do not put your envoys on the road on your own account.

And notice the calibration. On the weekly Shabat and on the tenth day of this same month, the restriction is the wider one - no mela'kah at all, no sending of any kind. On this first day it is narrower: no meleketh 'abodah, no sending out on servile errands. The Towrah is not careless with the difference, and neither should we be.

Which sets up everything that follows. If you are not sending, you are available to receive.

Being Summoned

A miqra' qodesh is a set-apart calling-out. The mem prefix conceptualizes qara' - to call, to proclaim, to summon, to invite, and to read aloud - resulting in an event that requests your attendance. You do not convene a miqra'. You are convened.

And zikrown is a memorial marker - something set so a thing is brought into active remembrance. Bemidbar 10:10 fixes the term: on your moediym and the heads of your months you shall sound, and it shall be for you le'zikrown liphney 'Eloheykem, a remembrance before your Mighty Ones. The remembrance rises. Bemidbar 10:9 says the same of the alarm in war - you are remembered before YHWH, and you are delivered.

So zikrown taruwah is a commemorative reminder calling to remembrance a taruwah. Not an instruction to produce a sound. A summons to recall one.

Three terms, one posture. Stop sending. Be called. Remember a shout.

What a Taruwah Is

The root is ruwa'. The taw prefix nominalizes it so the noun expresses the product of the action - a shout is what results from shouting. And the range covers several things at once, which is exactly the point.

An alarm that moves the camp. Bemidbar 10:5-7 is the technical definition, given about the two silver chatsotseroth. A taqa' is a plain sustained blast that assembles the congregation. A taruwah is the broken, pulsing alarm - and when it sounds, the camps break camp and set out. Verse 7 is explicit: to gather the assembly you sound a taqa', but you do not sound a taruwah. It is the sound that ends the encampment. Yehowshua' 6:5 and 6:20 - the people raise a taruwah gedowlah and the wall of Yeriychow falls flat.

The shout raised for a King. Bemidbar 23:21 - Bil'am, unable to curse: YHWH his Mighty Ones is with him, and utheruw'ath melek bow, the taruwah of a King is among him. Mizmowr 47:6 uses it for the enthronement itself - 'alah 'Elohiym bitheruw'ah.

The sound of the Presence arriving. 1 Shemuw'el 4:5 - the ark comes into the camp and the taruwah is so great the earth resounds. 2 Shemuw'el 6:15 - Dowd brings the ark up to Tsiyown with taruwah.

Alarm, acclamation, arrival. One word carrying all three, because all three describe the same moment: the King comes, the camp moves, the wall goes down.

What the Towrah Does Not Name

Here is what may be the most striking thing about these two passages. Neither one names an instrument.

Not a showphar. Not a chatsotserah. Nothing. The word is taruwah standing by itself, and the day is defined by what is remembered, not by what is blown.

This is not a claim that the Tanakh is quiet about horns. It is full of them - Chowreb, Yeriychow, coronations, alarms, the prophets, the mizmowriym. Two passages are worth having in view alongside these:

Wayiqra' 25:9 gives a showphar taruwah, and it must be read from verse 8, which sets the count first: seven shabbathoth of years, seven times seven, forty-nine years. The sounding then falls on the tenth day, and verse 10 sets apart the fiftieth year and proclaims deror throughout the land. That is the Yowbel. It sounds once in fifty years, not once a year.

Mizmowr 81:4 does call for a showphar at the chodesh - tiq'uw bachodesh showphar. So there is a sounding associated with the renewal of the month, and this day sits at the head of the seventh. It is worth saying plainly that the mizmowr is there, rather than pretending otherwise.

But it is outside the Towrah's institution of the day, and the Towrah's institution is what defines the moed. Blow a horn if you have one. Just notice that when YHWH established this day, He described it by a posture and a memory, and left the instrument unmentioned.

What the Prophets Do With It

Yesha'Yahu 27:13 - a great showphar is sounded, and the perishing in Ashuwr and the scattered in Mitsrayim come and bow to YHWH at the set-apart mountain in Yerushalayim. The sounding gathers people to a place.

Yesha'Yahu 11:12 - He lifts a nes to the nations and gathers the dispersed of Yisra'el from the four corners of the earth.

Yow'el 2:1 - tiq'uw showphar beTsiyown wehariy'uw behar qodshiy - sound the showphar in Tsiyown, raise the alarm in My set-apart mountain. Verse 15 repeats it, and the stated purpose is to gather the people, assemble the elders, the children, the nursing infants.

Tsephanyah 1:14-16 - the day of YHWH is near and hastening, a day of showphar and taruwah against the fortified cities. Zekaryah 9:14 - 'Adonay YHWH will sound the showphar and go forth in the storms of the south.

And Mizmowr 89:16, which deserves its own line: 'ashrey ha'am yowde'ey taruwah, YHWH be'owr-paneyka yehallekuwn - set apart is the people who know the taruwah; YHWH, in the light of Your presences they walk about. Yowde'ey is knowing by experience, not merely hearing. And the parallel line puts them walking in the light of paneyka, the plural forward-facing presences - Father and Mother both. Knowing the taruwah and walking in Their light are the same clause.

The One Account of the Day Being Kept

Nechemyah 8:1-12. First day of the seventh month. This is the only narrative in the Tanakh of Yisra'el actually observing this moed, and it is worth reading slowly.

The people gather ke'ish 'echad into the open square - converged to a single point of focus, of one mind. Ezra brings the Towrah and reads it aloud from first light until midday, me'ish we'ad-'ishah, from man to woman, before all who could understand. Others stand with him and give the sense, so the people understand what is read. The people weep when they hear it - because they are hearing what it actually says.

Nechemyah tells them not to mourn. The day is qodesh. Eat the rich portion, drink the sweet, and send portions to those who have nothing prepared - kiy chedwath YHWH hiy' ma'uzkem, for the joy of YHWH is your stronghold.

There is no horn anywhere in the account. Look at what is there instead. Nobody is dispatching anything of their own - the sending has stopped. They are summoned into the square. The Towrah is read aloud, which is what a miqra' is. It is explained until it is understood - understanding handed from those who have it to those who lack it. And then food is sent to those who had none.

That is the whole shape of the day, performed. Not sending, being called, receiving, and passing on what was received to whoever is short.

It is also worth noting how this rhymes with the tenth day. When the covenant family worked through Wayiqra' 23:27, the observation surfaced that the affliction commanded there is of the inward and conceptual rather than the physical - and that fasting, figuratively, is an offloading of understanding out of one's own portion and into those who need it, a transference of a beneficial ruwach.

Nechemyah 8 is that mechanism running in daylight. Ezra offloads understanding; the people send portions to the empty-handed. The first day and the tenth are doing related work.

See also Ezra 3:1-6 - same date, the seventh month, and the returned remnant re-establishes the altar on its foundations. And note the phrasing there: the people gathered ke'ish 'echad to Yerushalayim. The identical expression, on the identical day of the year, in the only two accounts we have of it. Whatever else this moed produces, it produces a people of one mind in one place.

On the Head of the Year

The Tanakh never calls this day a new year. Wayiqra' numbers it the seventh month. Bemidbar numbers it the seventh month. The head of the year was fixed elsewhere, and it was fixed deliberately.

Shemowth 12:2, spoken in Mitsrayim before the Yatsa - hachodesh hazeh lakem ro'sh chodashiym, ri'shown hu' lakem lechodshey hashanah - this month is to you the head of months; it is first to you for the months of the year.

Note the doubled lakem - to you, for you. That emphasis is not decorative. A re-designation only needs stating if something else held the position before. And after four hundred years in Mitsrayim, there is no mystery about whose reckoning they had been keeping.

So an autumn head-of-year is not a neutral alternative calendar. It is the reckoning YHWH overwrote on the way out the door, and carrying it forward carries a piece of Mitsrayim forward with it. The Yatsa was meant to be total. This is one of the places where it was not.

The seventh month is the month of completion - of the seventh-day pattern, of the shemitah and the Yowbel count. This day stands at the head of it as the alarm, not as a beginning of years.

What This Day Is Not

The reading of this day as a removal - a taking of the set-apart ones off the earth - has no anchor anywhere in the Tanakh.

Trace every sounding-and-gathering text and the direction is identical. Yesha'Yahu 27:13, they come and bow at the mountain in Yerushalayim. Yesha'Yahu 11:12, He gathers the dispersed from the four corners. Yow'el 2:15-16, gather the people, assemble the elders, the children, the nursing infants. Zekaryah 8:7-8, I will bring them and they will dwell in the midst of Yerushalayim. Bemidbar 10:5, the camps break and move out - toward.

The motion in every text is toward Tsiyown. The taruwah is the signal to march, and there is a destination.

The Letters

taw - sealed by the truth of the covenant

resh - the most important people

waw - added and established

ayin - they see and understand

heh - behold this mercy revealed

Sealed by the truth of the covenant, the most important people are added and established because they see and understand - behold, look and see this mercy being revealed.

Sealed, gathered, seeing, and shown mercy. The word carries the day inside it.

Holding It

Stop sending. Let the dispatches sit. Be summoned instead, and let the Towrah be read aloud until it is actually understood - not skimmed, understood. Hand what you understand to someone who is short of it. Send food to anyone with nothing prepared.

And remember a shout - the one that ends the encampment, welcomes the King, and brings the wall down. Mizmowr 89:16 says the people who know that sound are the ones walking in the light of Their presences. Knowing it and walking there are not two things.

Read Straight Through

The institution - Wayiqra' 23:23-25; Bemidbar 29:1-6

The sending prohibited - Wayiqra' 23:3, 23:25, 23:28

The sound defined - Bemidbar 10:1-10

The King - Bemidbar 23:21; Mizmowr 47

The Presence arriving - 1 Shemuw'el 4:5; 2 Shemuw'el 6:15

Knowing the taruwah - Mizmowr 89:16

The fiftieth-year showphar - Wayiqra' 25:8-10

A showphar at the chodesh - Mizmowr 81:4

The gathering - Yesha'Yahu 27:13; Yesha'Yahu 11:12; Yow'el 2:1, 2:15-16; Tsephanyah 1:14-16; Zekaryah 9:14

The day observed - Nechemyah 8:1-12; Ezra 3:1-6

The head of the year - Shemowth 12:2