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The beginning of the shabbat evening kiddush (vayehi erev, vayehi boker, yom hashishi...) is from Bereshit, 1:31 ff. Where does the second part (khi hu yom tehilah lemikraei kodesh...) come from? Is it also from the Torah?

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Igor, welcome to Mi Yodeya, and thanks very much for bringing your question here! Please consider registering your account, which will give you access to more of the site's features. –  Isaac Moses May 24 '12 at 23:05
Did you mean specifically the part starting "ki hu yom t'chila l'mikrae kodesh"? There is stuff before that but after the quotation from Genesis. –  msh210 May 24 '12 at 23:12

2 Answers 2

Avudraham cites the following verses for a couple of the lines:

He also gives these non-citation explanations of the sources of the ideas:

  • "t'chila l'mikra'ei kodesh" due to the fact that shabas is listed first among the holidays (in Vayikra 23)
  • "zecher liy'tzi'as Mitzrayim" based on a [couple places in] Ramba"n's commentary on the Torah where he says that shabas attests to the miracle of the Exodus
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So it's not a direct quote from Tanach, but only inspired by it? Do we know who wrote (or compiled?) the kiddush? –  Igor May 25 '12 at 7:06
It's either shabbat (sphardi pronunciation) or shabbos (ashkenazi)... sorry, just a pet peeve of mine –  Ari A May 25 '12 at 22:31
@AriA I hold of this orthography because in English we do not verbalize gemination so the second "b" is extraneous in spelling and the vowel quality of kamatz and patach (for Ashkenazim, as interpreted by me) is different but not as different as "a" from "o" in [my pronunciation of] English in most contexts, while both are within the range of possible "a"s in [my pronunciation of] English. It would be nice to distinguish them but the poverty of the literon makes this the choice on which akpid. –  WAF May 25 '12 at 22:43
. . . "Avudraham", on the other hand, I don't claim to have any idea about. –  WAF May 25 '12 at 22:44

The first paragraph of kiddush is Biblical verses. The second paragraph is part of the core text of prayers, which were presumably finalized by Anshei Knesset HaGedolah, "The Men of the Great Assembly", i.e. the rabbinic leaders during the early Second Temple period, about 2300 years ago. (See Rambam Berachot 1:5)

The same goes for something like the Amida prayer on shabbat. The paragraphs yismach moshe and elokeinu veilokei avoteinu, retzei vimnuchateinu were composed by the editors of the core siddur 2300 years ago, while it also contains a paragraph of Bible -- "as it says in the Torah ... veshamru bnei yisrael et hashabat ..."

As referenced in the other answer, it's clear that when the Men of Great Assembly composed the core siddur, they often used Biblical paraphrases and references. But it's not "this whole paragraph comes right out of the Bible."

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