God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.  But what happened on the eighth?

That question is answered, after a fashion, in this week's portion, which begins with the phrase, "on the eighth day" (sh'mini is Hebrew for "eighth").  It is not a stretch to connect it with the eighth day of creation, for this eighth day ends the ceremonial week inaugurating the Tabernacle in the desert, an inauguration that is looked upon as a new version of creation.  It marks what Christians would call a new "dispensation," that is, an essential alteration in God's relationship to humanity.

Up until now, God has had to come "down" from His transcendent realm in order to interact with people. Examples: Genesis 11:5, where God comes down "to look at the city and the tower that the humans had built"; Genesis 18:21, where God says, "Let me go down to see whether they have really acted according to the report that has come to Me"; and Exodus 3:8, where God explains to Moses, "I have come down to rescue [the Israelites] from the power of Egypt." 

Now, however, God is ready for a change.  In Exodus 25:8 he has told Moses, "Let them make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them." The sanctuary has been made, and the inauguration ceremony has been performed—and not once, but, as Moses explains to Aaron and his sons at the end of last week's portion, for a full seven days.

On the eighth day, however, just when the plan for the sanctuary and its sacrifices is meant to go into permanent effect, things begin to go wrong. Nadav and Avihu, Aaron's eldest sons, offer "strange fire," and "a fire from before the Lord" comes forth and burns them to death (10:1-2).  As two cousins of Aaron remove the corpses to a place outside the Israelite camp, Moses tries to keep the ceremony going, but without complete success: the goat of sin-offering, whose meat must be eaten in order for this sacrifice to effect atonement, has been burned up instead.  That may sound picayune compared to the deaths of two human beings, but remember that this is the very beginning of the new era in which the divine Presence will dwell among the Israelites.  "Atonement" is the infection control that will make this possible—and it has failed.

What's interesting is the reactions of Aaron and Moses to these disasters.  When Aaron's sons die, Moses explains to him, "This is what God promised.  He said, ‘Through those close to Me I shall sanctify Myself; before the whole people I shall demand respect'" (10:3).  Aaron's reaction: silence and, evidently, acceptance.  Moses himself gives instructions to proceed with the ceremony as if nothing has happened, but when he discovers that the sin-offering has been burned up rather than eaten, he loses his temper.  This time it is Aaron who explains: "Look—on a day when such things have happened to me, if I had eaten the sin-offering today, would the Lord have approved?" (10:19). Now Moses, in his turn, must acquiesce in what has happened.

This, after all, is the message of the eighth day, even in Genesis.  Adam and Eve, according to Jewish tradition, were not merely created on the sixth day.  They also ate the forbidden fruit and were thrown out of the garden on that very same day.  The seventh day was the culmination of creation, the day on which God rested. And then—on the eighth day—ordinary life on earth began.

The end of Exodus and the beginning of Leviticus recount a second creation, that of the Tabernacle, and this second creation, too, does not lead to heaven on earth.  The intense, even dangerous, spiritual metaphysics of bringing God's Presence directly into the middle of a huge population of ordinary humans is, predictably, dangerous.  And yet, as in Genesis, the partial failure of that effort does not lead to catastrophe.  Rather, the proper response turns out to be acceptance of tragedy followed by the resumption of ordinary life. 

On rare occasions, we are called upon for a supreme effort or granted a taste of holiness.  More often, what is demanded is that we get up the next morning and meet the challenges of the workaday world.  That is the message of the eighth day.

Michael Carasik is the creator of The Commentators' Bible.  He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.