Why do we Blow the Shofar?

When the Bible says “blow the shofar”, it is not using the Hebrew word for “blow”. There are three types of blast: the tekiah (a long, steady, and urgent sound), teruah (a burst of short and joyful blasts) and shevarim (three blasts). In Joel the word is tekiah.

Strongs concordance explains that the root of the word tekiah (תָּקַע) is a verb to thrust, clap, give a blow, blast (Jewish-Aramaic תְּקַע strike, blow horn). In other words, there’s a fairly physical and dramatic action involved. This is seen all the more in the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon which puts it like this:

תָּקַע tâqaʻ, taw-kah’; a primitive root; to clatter, i.e. slap (the hands together), clang (an instrument); by analogy, to drive (a nail or tent-pin, a dart, etc.); by implication, to become bondsman by handclasping):—blow (a trumpet), cast, clap, fasten, pitch (tent), smite, sound, strike, thrust.

It’s almost like a body blow – a loud noise that strikes us, shocking us into readiness. You can see how this fits in the declaration in Joel.

Similarly, the word teruah (תְּרוּעָה) carries the concepts of an alarm, a signal, the sound of tempest, a shout or blast of war or alarm or joy.

Blowing the shofar means to make a loud noise, a clamor. Not dissimilar to a heavenly alarm clock, the sound of the shofar is blown straight into our soul to rouse us to readiness and wake us up.

It serves several purposes such as gathering the community, or warning of impending trouble like the sirens we hear so often in Israel today. It can come as a blast during a march, as a battle-cry, or a shout of praise. It can be to gather the troops to get ready to move camp. The shofar is blown to announce kings, to signify the beginning of high holy days, to make proclamations, and express joy in feast times, and appears many times throughout Scripture.

The blowing of the shofar is used not only to warn of danger, but also as an actual weapon of war, when we think of Joshua circling Jericho and blowing the shofar, or Gideon and his 300 merry men, who whipped out their torches in clay pots and blew their shofars, striking such terror into their enemies that they ran away without a fight. And blowing the shofar can also be used as a declaration of victory when the battle is won.

Who orders the blowing of the shofar?

When tracking the mention of the shofar throughout the Bible with some friends, we noticed that it’s almost always connected with the idea of authority.

It is God who orders the blowing of the shofar again and again, whether it’s for commemorating appointed times, announcing it’s time to move camp, or as a warning. In the Law God Himself lays out the ways he wants the shofar to be used, and because He is the one mandating it in each case, the sound (or voice) of the shofar comes with all God’s authority. If you hear that shofar raising the alarm, you better move! If it says time to pick up camp, you better jump to it, or you’ll get left behind. Similarly, when announcing a king the shofar carries weight of authority in proclaiming his sovereign rule.

Moreover, it’s God who first seems to be responsible for the very first sound of the shofar in the Bible, at the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai.

On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. (Exodus 19:16)

The people of Israel were terrified and made Moses go up instead. The “very loud trumpet blast” is literally the “very strong voice of the shofar”. It was almost like God’s own voice, since no human was blowing the shofar, just God. The Hebrew word קול (kol) can also mean sound, like the still, small voice, or the “sound of silence” that Elijah heard in the cave when he went to seek God. But this time God’s voice was thundering.