The day begins in the morning.
Claim – According to the Bible, the day begins in the morning.
Sources –
1. …And David fled and slept by night. And Saul sent messengers to David’s house to watch him, and to slay him in the morning. And Michal his wife told David, saying, If thou shalt not sleep with thy soul tonight, to morrow thou shalt be dead.
2. And the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings shall be eaten on the day of his offering; he shall not leave any of it until morning.
3. “And it came to pass in the morning, that the people went out into the field, and told Abimelech.” Judges chapter 9, it must be seen with the context, the people actually went out in the morning after the battle that took place at night, so the morning is the day after the night.
4. And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath spoken, saying, To morrow is the sabbath of the LORD, a holy sabbath unto the LORD: That which ye have baked, and that which ye have boiled, and all that remaineth, lay up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up until the morning, as Moses commanded: and it was not ashamed, neither was there any deceit in it. So Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord. Today you will not find it in the field.”
5. And the man rose up to go, he and his young man and his servant. And his son-in-law, the young woman’s father, said to him, “Behold, the day is long, let us lodge together; behold, we will lodge together today, and it will be well with your heart, and you will be refreshed tomorrow on your journey, and you may go to your tents.”
6. And they said one to his neighbor, “It is not so; let us encamp together, for today is a day of good tidings. Let us encamp together, and wait until the morning light, and we will be filled with iniquity. Now go and prophesy, and tell the king’s house.”
7. And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day.
8. “And there was evening and there was morning, one day”
A. It is not written: “And there was night and there was day,” so how does the day end if only morning came? (As the Rashbam says)
B. God works during the day like we do (the chapter is made up of 6 days of work and a seventh day of rest because it parallels the human week), so it was necessary to say that evening had come and that morning had come, and thus the day was completed and a new day began.
9. Tradition cannot be relied upon because if there were a continuous tradition regarding the question of when the day begins, then the controversy of rising/setting of the stars would not have arisen (this is nothing to remember, and on a literally daily issue).
Does the Rabbi accept the claim? And assuming it is true, what should a person who wants to do God’s will do? Should he keep Shabbat from the morning?
Without going into the questionable evidence from the Bible, in Halacha the Bible does not determine. The Bible also says an eye for an eye.
The Bible contains many severe death sentences. To say that they are only under certain conditions or that they are just an expression and in fact the author's intention is different is not the same as what is at issue here. Because this is a real dispute about what the author intended. But what happens when it is known what the author intended?
In other words, the question is what happens if it is known that according to the Bible the day begins in the morning but this contradicts the opinion of the sages.
Proof number 9 refutes the reliability of the tradition, so it is
probably not a good source of halakha (at least on this subject).
In Halacha, we follow what is prescribed in the Gemara, not what is prescribed in the Tanakh.
It's not even related to the Bible, but to the Hebrew language. The language is determined by what is convenient (and predates the giving of the Torah) and there is no reason for people to use terms like "today" or "tomorrow" according to the laws of Shabbat and prayer and not according to what is more convenient for them. Therefore, sections 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 are irrelevant. Section 2 deals with the laws of the Nazarites and the observer will see that it is also irrelevant. Section 4 has no argument in the first place. Section 9 is really a strange matter ("something that is customary and comes and goes and the sages disagree about it?")
Tolginus
You admit that in biblical times, the day was considered to begin in the morning and that this was more convenient. I expect that if the Torah wants to state that in terms of Shabbat and certain laws, the day begins at night, then a. There would be a good reason for the complication.
b. That this innovation would appear explicitly in the Torah.
The problem is that Shabbat according to Genesis Chapter 1 is like the other days and we see there that they begin in the morning, and so does Shabbat (and also in section 4. Why does Moses say “today’s Shabbat” only in the morning? Why is there no reference to it beginning in the evening [such as the command to cook but only until the evening], the wording is more appropriate if Shabbat begins in the morning).
Section 2 is also relevant. Because the Sages admit that in the Korban/Yahmach the day begins in the morning, and then the claim that the halakhic day begins in the evening even more needs factual support because it is already becoming exaggerated.
You are forgetting something important, and that is that according to tradition the calendar was lunar. That is, the calendar days, all the dates, began at night. So why would a person who lives daily according to a lunar calendar that begins in the evening speak in reverse language? And why would God give this person a law that goes the opposite way from what he is used to, without writing a word about it? After all, serious revolutions in the Torah actually deserve to be written down. Sometimes many repetitions.
And it is especially difficult to accept this when you take into account the history of the Hebrew calendar and the research opinion and section 9…
A. A good reason for the complication is needed even without regard to the difficulties of the Hebrew language in biblical times. Look at what is happening nowadays: the day is formally replaced by midnight, and people also use the word "tomorrow" at night to describe the day that will come in the morning. So why are you surprised that in biblical times the language was used in exactly the same way.
B. The innovation can come through tradition or be a sermonic-interpretative innovation of the sages. There is no basis for the strange expectation that the times in halakha will correspond precisely to the terms that were convenient for use by Hebrew speakers in biblical times. Therefore, this innovation does not need to be more explicit than other innovations.
In section 2, as stated, there is no question about the wording "day" because perhaps this is simply the term in the Hebrew language. And from the point of view of the law of eating until morning, it is irrelevant because there is no basis for expecting that the laws of the left over will be identical to the laws of Shabbat. You think that both the terms in Hebrew, and the laws of the left over, and the laws of Shabbat, and the laws of prayer, all depend on the same human concept of ”day”. But the human concepts are separate, and the laws of the left over are separate, and the laws of Shabbat are separate, and so on.
In section 4 there is no argument, the manna fell every morning, while on Shabbat morning it did not fall, so Moses explains to them that it is because of Shabbat.
[By the way, perhaps we can assume that the reason why the change of days is not determined by sunrise, for example, is that in the morning people wake up at different times and don't want someone to turn over in bed for another five minutes and suddenly wake up the next day. Nowadays, the day changes in the middle of the night, which is supposed to be a time when people have already gone to bed and haven't woken up yet. Back then, it was convenient to change the day in the evening - because in the evening everyone had already returned home from their day's work and there were no more businesses and negotiations and the like, so now it doesn't matter to anyone when exactly the day changes. It's like on the date line, they make various cuts so that the gap of a "day" isn't in the middle of a populated place.]
See Rashbam on Genesis 1/5 and Exodus 12/18 (and in the Jonathan translation there).
Tulginos
A. Today we still use the usual form because it is the most intuitive and simple and has remained from the Bible. This does not mean that it is impossible for the calendar day to begin differently, the problem is that it is unnatural and may create communication problems. Starting the day at 12 is not as problematic in this respect as starting the day at sunset, which is around 6-7, which is still very active in them. Therefore, evening events that are written only in Hebrew date are confusing.
B. The tradition is not reliable.
“There is no basis for expecting that the laws of the rest will be identical to the laws of Shabbat.”
Except for the principle of consistency. And convenience (Ockham's razor). Does it make sense that for each mitzvah the day would begin at a different time? Or do we actually set one day with an internal division so that we can plan everything according to it and not say that everything starts at the first hour of its day but each day starts at a different time…
There is no doubt that it is more likely that the Torah will not confuse us with a different day for everything.
Regarding the Sabbath, it is not only the language in which people speak but also because of Genesis Chapter 1’ the day begins in the morning.
A. In a world without a clock and streetlights, the available options are what exists in nature: sunset or sunrise, and dawn or sunrise. It seems logical to me that in practical terms it is more convenient for the formal change to be in the evening than in the morning. As is done all over the world today (without any connection to the Bible, what is the connection at all?!). But still in human language when we say tomorrow we sometimes mean the hours of daylight from the morning that will arrive, even if formally we are already in that day. Do you think it is more natural and there will be fewer communication problems if the day formally changes for workers who get up while working? In my opinion, absolutely not.
I don't know if the Bible even contains the idea of a day (composed of day and night or night and day). It is possible that they only counted days (even when it says “in the tenth of a month”) without the perception that there is something in common with the day and night of ‘the same day’. They referred to the day and night separately and when they said tomorrow they simply meant the next day (not the next day).
B. The laws remain independent of “the day” but of another period of time that is determined to be day and night. For some reason you think that the eating period should end when the sun sets on that day and the Torah thinks that the eating period ends when the sun rises the next day. The Torah also thinks that it is unreasonable to sow wheat and barley in a vineyard because they are hybrids. I also do not always water my pots according to the synchronization of days. It has nothing to do with consistency and Occam. The Torah decides what period of time is relevant to each topic and it does not need to correlate it to some abstract term called ‘day’.
C. What are you trying to claim? That the Sabbath (which appears in the Torah and in many prophets even without Chazal) was not night and day but day and night? Or was it just a day without night?
A. There must have been an idea of a day because you have to adjust the night to a certain date. This also follows from Genesis 1.
If not, then why do you keep Shabbat from the evening?
B. The verse says that one must eat on the day of sacrifice and not have anything left over until the morning. Even the sages understood this to mean that the night follows the day. That is, the “day” in this verse is in the sense of a day.
C. In my opinion, just a day without a night (which makes sense because what is special about Shabbat is only the period of the day, because in any case, on the night of all days God did nothing).
In the 23rd of Nisan 5781
The Torah speaks in the language of humans, in whose natural behavior the night is the continuation of the day, during the day a person goes out to his work and labor until evening, and at night he rests after the work of the day.
Even in the service of the Temple, the main part of the sacrifices is offered during the day, and their completion – the incense of the milk and the organs on the altar – is done ‘all night until morning–. (Leviticus 6:2)
However, regarding the sacred times – the Torah clearly states that they begin in the evening, as is explained regarding the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread: ‘On the first of the fourteenth day of the month in the evening you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month in the evening’ (Exodus 12:18)
And so with regard to Yom Kippur, which is called the ‘Sabbath Sabbath’ it is explained: ‘It is a Sabbath of rest for you, and you shall afflict your souls on the ninth day of the month, from evening to evening, you shall rest your sabbath’ (Leviticus 27:33).
The holiday is sanctified at night, as Isaiah says: ‘The song shall be to you entirely, the holiday shall be sanctified’, and even when Esther commands: ‘Fast for me three days’ she explains that the three days will be ‘night and day’.
With regard to the act of Genesis, since the light and darkness therein were not created by the sun's rotation around the earth, since the lights were only created on the fourth day– there was no difference in light or darkness between the beginning of the day or night and their end. Therefore, it turns out that all the hours of the day and night were equal. All the hours of the night were equally dark, and all the hours of the day were equally bright. Therefore, in the act of Genesis, all the night was called ‘evening’ when all things were mixed and not visible, and all the hours of the day were called ‘morning’ because of the ability to distinguish and distinguish between things.
Only after the ‘light of the seven days’ was set aside did the distinction between the different degrees of evening and day begin, because that is why the concept ‘between the evenings’ was created, between the different degrees of the evening of the sun. But in the days of creation – the concept ‘and there was evening and there was morning’ is equivalent to the concept ‘and there was night and there was day’.
In any case, on this point – That the Sabbath and the feasts begin at night – There is a ‘close to ’
Amioz, lips are wet.
A.B. , in section C you write ‘just a day without a night’ and in section A you write that the night should belong to a specific date. It is not clear.
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