Tags
39 melachot, boneh, hamotzi meRshut leRshut, hotza'ah, kotev, ma'avir, makeh bePatish, mechabeh, mochek, order of construction, soter
There are 39 forbidden melachot (types of work) on Shabat listed in Mishna Shabat 7,2. We already discussed the "order of bread", the "order of garments" and the "order of making hides", now it’s time for the last one, the "order of construction". Most of its 8 melachot deal with building respectively assembling the mishkan (tabernacle), although some melachot just seem to be in there because nobody wanted to define a fifth order in my opinion. So here the last list (unfortunately this order is not discussed in the Pathways course):
- The mishkan had boards, to know which one belonged next to which, the people used to write (kotev, כּוֹתֵב) the same letter on two adjacent boards.
- In case of error, they needed to erase (mochek, מּוֹחֵק) the two letters in order to write new ones.
- Once you know what belongs where, you want to actually join together the pieces of the mishkan, this is basically building (boneh, בּוֹנֶה) a permanent structure.
- Similarily to erasing, sometimes you need to demolish (soter, סּוֹתֵר) in order to build.
- Extinguishing (mechabeh, מְּכַבֶּה) …
- … or kindling (ma’avir, מַּבְעִיר) a fire needed to be done in order to prepare sacrifices [the relation to construction is not very clear to me].
- The mishkan had beams where nails had to be hammered in, the beam was completed by striking the final blow (makeh bePatish, מַּכֶּה בְּפַטִּישׁ) with a hammer.
- In order to build, you typically need to carry (hotza’ah, הוֹצִאה) things from one place to the other, or better said you transfer things from one domain to the other (hamotzi meRshut leRshut, הַמּוֹצִיא מֵרְשׁוּת לִרְשׁוּת).