Hebrew Word Study – Remove Your Shoes – Shal Ne’aleyka   של נעליךShin Lamed   Nun Ayin Lamed Yod Kap

Why Remove Your Shoes During Worship?

Exodus 3:5: “And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”

I have noticed in various worship services that some people tend to remove their shoes as they worship. I never ask anyone about it. They may or may not have a reason for doing so. Some may just have tight-fitting shoes and want some relief.  Others feel that it will bring them closer to God. They feel they are standing on holy ground and should not wear their shoes.  If this is your way of worshipping God, who am I to question you.  It is after all Biblical as we see in Exodus 3:5 when Moses approaches the burning bush and God commands him to remove his shoes for he is on holy ground.  We find a similar account in Joshua 5:15 where an angel visits Joshua and instructs him to remove his shoes because he is on holy ground.  Although, this is not true in every case.  God appeared to Abraham and he was not commanded to remove his shoes. 

It is interesting that according to Jewish law and tradition it is preferable that a person walks with some separation between their foot and the ground, even if it is a pair of socks or a slipper. I read something interesting  in the Talmud in Shabbat 129a: “One should always sell even the beams of his house to buy shoes for his feet.”   So why is wearing shoes commanded in one respect and not in another?

The answer is not in the footwear, it is the difference in the essence of the ground.  The ground was cursed by God  in Genesis 3:17 “And unto Adam, he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.”  Shoes or footwear create a separation from the flesh to the ground.  In a metaphoric sense, it is a constant reminder that we are to be detached from earthiness, to be spiritually separated from the things of this world. But then, where God created a place of holiness, it would be the opposite that you would want your flesh to touch the ground which was made holy by God. 

So, what makes something holy? The word in Hebrew for holy is kodesh which means a separation or to be apart. That is to be beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience. 

I remember I had a student when I was teaching in Bible College who came from the backwaters of Georgia as we would say.  He had the dirt water accent to prove it. He wrote an essay for one of my classes one time where he mentions going to Walmart for a pair of “paints.”   I found out he meant “pants.”  I asked him in class why God commanded Moses to remove his sandals on holy ground and his answer really made sense, if you get by his Southern charm and Ross Perot type quips: “Why did Moses remove his shoes on the ground? Well, apple to oranges that’s like my grandma trying to cut a loaf of sourdough bread with a butter knife, you can do it but you don’t get a good cut.  I suspect old Moses wanted to get the full effect of the presence of God.”  I think he had something there and I credited him with the best answer to that question.

But if you go deeper, you will find even more.  “Remove the shoes from your feet.”  Let’s look at those three words remove, shoes and feet and see if we have a little commentary found in the root of these words. 

The word for remove is shal from the root word shlilah which means to deny the existence of something.  The word for shoe is na’al which comes from the root word neilah which means to lock or hold captive. Then the word feet is raglecha from the root regilut which means a habit or custom. So what God is saying metaphorically by remove your shoes from your feet, is to remove the lock that habitually holds you captive from the divine experience by temporarily denying the existence of this natural world.

So, if you are in the habit of removing your shoes during a worship service, aside from your usual reasons for doing so, it might not be a bad idea to also think that at that moment in your worship and praise to God you are removing yourself from this natural world, denying its existence in your life to receive the full experience of the presence of God. 

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