A lunch zemer whose refrain is one long sentence spread over four short lines: the one who keeps the Sabbath, the son and the daughter, will be acceptable to God like an offering brought on a griddle. That last image is from Leviticus, and it is a deliberately modest one — not a bull, a pan of flour. The poem's argument is that keeping the day is a small offering that counts as a large one, and it repeats that argument seven times.
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Key: Am · 3 chords used ·Am · Dm · E
100 BPM · 4/4 · Shabbat lunch · seven short stanzas, each answered by the same four-line refrain about the one who keeps the Sabbath · to reset the chord panel:
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The first stanza is a question, not a statement, and the question is addressed to the singer's own soul: how long will you grieve. פִּדְיוֹן (pid-on) is a ransom, a word from the laws of redemption, applied to what the day does for a person.
One sentence over four lines, returning seven times. מַחֲבַת (ma-cha-vat) is the griddle of Leviticus 2, where the flour offering is the one a poor person brings. The refrain is quietly saying that a day of rest counts as a sacrifice, and choosing the cheapest sacrifice on the list to say it with.
זֶבַח (ze-vach) and מִשְׁפָּחָה (mish-pa-cha) — a family sacrifice — is from the story of David and Jonathan in Samuel, where it is an excuse for missing the king's table. The poem uses it for the meal being eaten as it is sung.
בָּעֲרָפֶל (ba-a-ra-fel) is the thick darkness of Exodus 20, where Moses approaches the cloud God is in. Two lines later the same stanza ends on the sun, which is about as far as a poem can travel in six lines.
The stanza states the refrain's argument in plain terms: the day discharged is an offering sent. מִנְחָה (min-cha) is the same word as כְּמִנְחָה (kmin-cha) in the refrain, so the poem is explaining its own image at the exact midpoint.
חֶמְדַּת (chem-dat) and הַיָּמִים (ha-ya-mim) — the desire of days — is the phrase the Shabbat morning liturgy uses for the day itself. The stanza ends on נָחָה (na-cha), rested, the same root as the word for rest in the first stanza and as the name of the day.
זָכוֹר (za-chor) is the opening word of the fourth commandment in Exodus, and this line quotes it whole. The Daat edition breaks it across a column here, leaving the definite article stranded at the end of one line and the noun at the start of the next; the scaffold rejoins them, because an article on its own is not a word anybody sings.
The last stanza is the fourth commandment's own list of who must rest — sons, daughters, servants — and the poem gives it in the same order Exodus does. הַמַּלְכָּה (ha-mal-ka) is the Sabbath queen, an image from the Talmud that Lecha Dodi would later build a whole poem around.
The refrain is four short lines and returns seven times. It is the only part a guest needs.
The lines are very short — two or three words — so the melody turns fast and a stanza is over quickly.
Around 100 BPM at lunch. It sits well after Yom Zeh Mechubad, which shares its tempo.
Seven refrains is a lot. Most tables sing three or four stanzas and stop, and nobody minds.
♦ About this song
The griddle
Leviticus 2 lists the flour offerings, and the one brought on a griddle is among the smallest. The refrain claims that keeping the Sabbath is accepted like that offering — deliberately modest, and the whole argument of the poem rests on the choice of which sacrifice to name.
The son and the daughter
The refrain names both, and the last stanza names sons, daughters, servant and maidservant. That is the commandment's own list from Exodus 20, and the poem keeps it complete rather than shortening it.
Baruch bar Shmuel of Mainz
The Daat edition closes with an attribution to him. That line is editorial matter, unpointed as such matter always is in these editions, and the scaffold removed it rather than printing it as a line of the song.
A column break inside a word
This edition twice breaks a word across its own line break, leaving a one-letter prefix at the end of one line and the rest of the word at the start of the next. Split naively, the page would show a word cell containing only the definite article. The scaffold rejoins them; measured across all twenty-two songs the rule fires exactly twice, both here.
Hebrew: Siddur Ashkenaz, Shabbat, Daytime Meal, Zemirot for Second Meal, Baruch Kel Elyon · Daat Siddur Ashkenaz · Public Domain, via Sefaria, pinned in this repo at content/songs/source/013.json.
English gloss lines authored for this site; the source translation is used as raw material only. Transliteration generated by this site's own engine (assets/translit.js).