VA’AVDTEM ועבדתס

Exodus 23:25: “And you shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless your bread, and your water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.”

I was reading this morning in Exodus and I discovered a grammatical abnormality in Exodus 23:25 in the words “your bread and your water.” You see in Hebrew the pronoun you and your have both a singular and plural form. What is curious is that the pronoun you in “you shall serve” (va’avdtem) is in a plural form “while your bread and your water” (etlachmecha ve’et meimecha) are clearly in a singular form.

This is really curious, for what it is saying is that the community is to serve God for the sake of just one being blessed with bread and water. The Rabbi of Kotzk wrote in his commentary that one person praying alone is nevertheless praying for – and all together with – the entire community. On the other hand, a thousand people eating together are each eating for the sake of their own selves.

As I pointed out in an earlier study the word ‘avad means a service performed out of love and respect. The Rabbi of Kotzk explains that when you eat and drink no one benefits except yourself. But when you serve God, ‘avad, or pray, you are doing it to benefit the community.

Simply put this grammatical abnormality in Exodus 23:25 is not an error in Scripture, but is there for a purpose to show that our service and prayer to God is not meant for us personally like eating and drinking but when we serve God in prayer, in church attendance, in tithing and worship we do so not for ourselves but for the body of believers.