שִׁמֻּר

From the study of Exodus 12:42

Range of meaning

A noun from the root sh-m-r, whose basic sense is "to watch over, guard, keep". The root covers several ideas:

• a guard watching a city or flock at night (Isa 21:11, "Watchman, what of the night?")
• protecting someone (Ps 121:4, "he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep")
• waiting or watching for something (Ps 130:6, "more than watchmen for the morning")
• keeping a command or festival by doing it carefully (Exod 12:17, 24, 25)

The noun shimmurim occurs nowhere else in the Bible, so its exact shade has to be judged from the root and this context. The plural form is the way Hebrew often names an abstract or concentrated act, especially in ritual terms (kippurim "atonement", millu'im "ordination"). "Watching" or "vigil" is better than "many watches".

Against the English

KJV/WEB "a night to be much observed" take the plural as "much" and the root as "observe" in the sense of celebrating a holiday. Both halves then become Israel's duty. BSB/ESV/NIV "vigil" or "watching" keep the picture of staying awake on guard, and let the first half describe Yahweh's own watching. YLT "watchings" is the most literal.

How it drifted

"Observe" has narrowed in modern English to "notice, see" or "mark a holiday". The image of a guard staying awake through the night has dropped out of it. "Vigil" now suggests candlelit mourning or protest, which is close to the opposite of this night's mood of deliverance.

Used elsewhere in the period

The Septuagint renders it prophylakē ("a watch, a guard post"). The Vulgate makes the night observabilis, "to be observed", which lies behind the KJV. Rabbinic readers took it in two directions. Rashi (11th c.) gives two readings: the night on which God was "watching and waiting" to keep his promise to bring Israel out, and a night "guarded" from harm. The Talmud (b. Pesachim 109b) calls it "a night continually guarded from harmful forces". In b. Rosh Hashanah 11b it is "a night kept in store since the six days of creation", the night on which future redemption would also come.