It is time to work for the Lord

The tanna Hillel the Elder cited the verse to call fellow Jews to study the Torah when it is neglected. (Ephraim Urbach interprets Hillel as calling for fuller observance of the Torah commandments in general, The Sages pp. 341f.) Rabbi Nathan makes a related gesture, for Jewish efforts against heresy, at the end of Mishnah Berakhot. Nathan transposes the two halves of the verse thus: "They have made void your law, it is time to work for the Lord." (See Urbach, 836n.93)

In the Talmudic period, the verse is thus called upon to justify the radical shift in rabbinic belief after the destruction of the Temple. Due to the conditions of exilic Jewry, the rabbinic leadership decided to permit the Oral Torah to be transcribed in writing and disseminated. The verse means that "It is better that one letter of the Torah [the verse forbidding the writing down of the Oral Torah] should be uprooted than that the whole of the Torah be forgotten." (Temurah 14b, Elon Jewish Law 5:1, Louis Jacobs, p. 133 trans.)

In the modern era, the dramatic character of the verse again enters the stage. The verse is used to justify rabbinic innovations in halakha. In the Age of Enlightenment, both Reform and their Orthodox rabbis cited the verse to justify the urgent nature of their actions ("It is time to act for the Lord"). The two conflicting positions see quite different referents for the verse's "they have voided the law"—the Reformers felt the need to accommodate the growing disinterest in Jewish law. In contrast, the Orthodox felt that the Reformers were voiding the law.^[1]

• On the baraita of Hillel the Elder, see Tosefta Berakhot 6:24 and Lieberman ad loc.
• Talmud Berakhot 63
• Nathan Birnbaum, “Et la’asot,” //trans: "It is time to work (for the Lord)" // in Nathan Birnbaum, ed., Divrei ha-olim (Vienna, 1917)
• Elon. Jewish law
• Jacobs. A Tree of Life: Diversity, Flexibility, and Creativity in Jewish Law
• Urbach. The Sages

Other uses:

• Ra'avad on Maimonides (H. Mamrim 2:9)
• Jacob Emden's responsum on concubinage also relies on the verse.
• Franz Rosenzweig uses the verse in his public letter to Hermann Cohen, It is Time: Thoughts on the Problem of Jewish Education at this Moment (Berlin, 1917) //Zeit ists (German) Et la'asot (Hebrew)

Other uses:

• In an aggadic midrash, the cock sings the verse as a call to work. Ginsburg, Legends of the Jews, I:3
• There is an Israeli periodical named after this verse, Et la'asot //trans: "It is time to work (for the Lord)"