BP: Seventh Day Rest
The Restless Craving for Rest notes
The word Sabbath means stop. It's the word Shabbat in Hebrew. There are actually other words for rest. In English, we think of like laying down and relaxing and being rejuvenated. To do those things you'd have to Shabbat, but the word Shabbat, its basic meaning is "to cease from," "to stop."
In terms of our usual criteria introduced on pages 1, 2 and 3 developed work over and over and over again and repeating developments throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, there's a culminating moment in the story of Jesus, which then launches you out into the new creation.
In that calendar, Sunday is the beginning of the week. What we perceive
as the end of the day (sunset) is the beginning of the Shabbat day. It
goes from sunset to sunset.
Because of the stories about Jesus and the Gospels having conflict with religious leaders over how to do the Sabbath, there has been an unfortunate reflex, unintended I think by the gospel authors, that has cast a negative atmosphere over the Sabbath and the guidelines for observing it as being legalistic or rule-oriented instead of God-oriented. And that's totally wrong. In Jewish tradition, it's so beautiful what the Sabbath means. But what the Sabbath means is it's worthy being protected just like parents will establish guidelines for how we work as a family in our house: we don't yell at each other, we say "please", we share things. You know, those are rule, and it would be totally missing the point to be like, "How legalistic?" The point is, is you love this thing and you want to honor it precisely by protecting it. but the whole thing was there's something beautiful here when we stop, we stop the hustle and bustle, we stop acting like we're the center of the universe or that my work is the center of the universe.
The practice of the Sabbath as its described in the Hebrew Scriptures is just one of many, many, many other ways that the Sabbath idea is explored and talked about and developed.
So in Christian tradition, what's happened is that this gets removed from the Friday night to Saturday night thing and gets applied to going to church on Sunday. But there's an irony there because that's not what Sabbath means in the Old or New Testament. . But Sabbath within the first two generations of Christianity and Christian literature, Sabbath never referred to Sunday. The Sabbath was Friday night to Saturday night. Sunday most likely is what the phrase the Lord's Day refers us to. It was only much later that the word "Sabbath" came to be attached to mean a Christian version, which is on Sunday. But because, think, for the many of those early generations many of the followers of Jesus were Jewish, and so they would observe Sabbath at Friday night. they didn't stop observing Sabbath. They observed Sabbath, but then they would also do something on Sunday.
In Exodus, it finishes by saying "your ox or the immigrant who stays with you." Then it's done. In Deuteronomy 5, the list keeps on going. "Neither your ox or your donkey, or your cattle or the immigrant who stays with you."
In Exodus 20, the reason - why do you do this? Why do you stop working for? Vs 11 of Exodus 20, "for in six days, Yahweh made the skies and the land and the sea and all that is in them and he rested on the seventh day. The Hebrew word there is Shabbat. He ceased on the Sabbath day.
Deuteronomy 5 and you get to the reason why it says "so that your male slave and your female slave may rest along with you." The word "rest" there is different. The word "rest" that's the same root as known as name. Noach Noach means that you have stopped and now you're in a state of being refreshed and settling in and resting in the place that you've stopped. There's kind of two stages. Shabbat is about stopping what you were doing, Noach is about now settling into the place where you stopped so that you can be refreshed.
Deuteronomy 5 goes on and says, "You shall remember you were a slave in the land of Egypt and Yahweh your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and outstretched arms. Therefore, Yahweh your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day." Two different rationales for the Sabbath. They're not contradictory, but they are different.
The seventh day is like a multifaceted gem. As the concept develops through the story of the Bible, we're going to discover in different story after story that there's going to be different ways and angles and facets that get to the core. One of the main facets is the fabric of creation as leading towards a great goal, where humans imitate God and join Him in ceasing from work and labor. But there's going to be another facet that's all about being enslaved to our labor and slaves to something. So the seventh day is the time to celebrate our liberation from slavery so that we can rest with God. Actually, both of these themes are in Genesis 1-3. Genesis 1-3 is where you find both of them developed. Then it's like from there you get two strands, two chords. Think of a symphony. One will be the creation, and all history leading up to the seventh day. Another one will be the seventh day is about liberation from slavery to rest in an Eden-like state. But they're both really about the same thing. And you can see it. This is why I like the two expressions of the Ten commandments. Exodus 20 gives you the creation imitate God, participate with Him in the seventh day, Deuteronomy 5 gives you the liberation from slavery. You're celebrating liberation from slavery every seventh day in anticipation of some future... Those two ideas are both ways of thinking about the meaning of the seventh day. It's like Genesis 1-3 will introduce these two facets of Sabbath, and then the rest of the storyline of the Bible like a symphony, it's going to riff and weave them in with different stories and different themes, and so on.
Hebrew, the phrase is "Shabbat La'Adonai" (a Sabbath to Yahweh). "One day out of seven the Israelite is to renounce dominion over his own time and recognize God's dominion over it. Simply put: Every seventh day the Israelite renounces his autonomy and affirms God's dominion over him in the conclusion that every seventh day the Israelite is to renounces dominion over time, renounces autonomy, and recognizes God's dominion over time and thus over himself.
the seventh day is always some culminating day of rescue or of divine miraculous provision, or of God doing something and coming through in a way that I couldn't do myself
The whole point of this tradition is you don't morph off, you flex your life to this pattern. And it's inconvenient. On Friday, it's intentionally inconveniencing your life, and the structure reminds you, there's something bigger going on and I have to adjust my life to it.
The Significance of Seven
the idea of a culminating seventh day and the symbolic importance of the number seven is introduced in the first sentence of Genesis 1, which consists of seven words in Hebrew.
Bereshit, bara, Elohim, et, Hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz. Seven words. So you think of seven, one of the things is that the number itself gives a possibility of a perfect symmetry of three with a center and then another three. Literary structures in the Hebrew Bible is just doing stuff with sevens all over the place.
In the first sentence - people have pointed this out for a long time - of those seven words, the central word of Genesis 1:1 is actually not translated in any English translation. It's the Hebrew word "et" which is a grammar term that marks the direct object of a verb. In English, "Jon, hit the ball." "Jon" is the subject. You are the subject, you're the actor of the verb. The verb is "hit." The object, the thing that is hit, the object of the verb is the "ball."
d in Hebrew that marks the object of the verb, is the Hebrew word "et." When "et" is in Hebrew, it doesn't get translated in English by an English word, it gets translated by word order. The center word, which is word number four in the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 is the word "et." And especially if you look at older Jewish commentators, they note that the word "et" consists of two letters, aleph and tav, which are the first and the last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The opening line of the Bible has seven words, and in the center is a word that contains the first and the last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. the opening is itself an image of completeness and wholeness. the center word is about from the beginning to the end.
"Et Hashamayim" is marking the skies. Ve'et and ha'aretz, the land. In the New Testament, in Revelation 1 when Jesus appears to John, the visionary, Jesus' first words in Revelation are "I am the Alpha." So he takes the Greek letters of the alphabet, the Alpha and the Omega... So he's picking up this concept "I am the beginning in the end," I am the first letter of the alphabet and the last letter. Almost certainly, he's riffing off of Genesis 1:1.
So you have the first sentence Genesis 1:1 has seven words. In Genesis 1:2 it says, "Now the land was wild and wastes. Darkness over the face of the deep abyss, but the ruach (the breath, spirit, wind) of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:2 contains 14 Hebrew words. The opening sentence contains seven words, the next sentence contains two times seven words. Then starting in verse three begins the pattern of days.
Genesis 1 is teaching you how to read biblical literature. That's why it's probably one of the most exquisitely designed pages of the Hebrew Bible. Down to syllables and word numbers, every sentence has this exquisite design. It's a remarkable page of the Hebrew Bible. And I think it's because it's the tutorial lesson.
It would be day four. When you look at the beginning and the middle and the end of the seven days, namely days one, four, and seven, the first and the last, and the middle, you notice that all of those three days are about time. They're all about time. Day one is the darkness is interrupted by God's light, and He names that day and night. That's the order of time. Day four is about God appointing the sun and the moon as rulers of day and night, and also the stars. Oh, and remember in Genesis 1:14, it says, "Let the lights be for signs." We've talked a lot about that. They're symbols. And then the next word is and for moedim is the Hebrew word, but it's the word for Israel's feast days. It gets translated seasons in English, which makes English readers think of fall, winter, spring. That is not what it means.
Moedim, that word seasons and our English translations of Genesis 1:14 is the word used in the rest of the Torah for Passover for the new year, for Pentecost, for tabernacles and the Day of Atonement, and then also for the year of release and for Shabbat. I think in 23 there are seven of these moedim that Israel was to celebrate. They're hyperlinked right here in this word right here
Then you move to the seventh day, the last day of Genesis 1, which is the seventh, here we're introduced to God's Shabbat on the seventh day. And then that Shabbat, the culminating seventh day becomes the model for the seventh year of release which becomes the model for the seven times seven year of release in the Jubilee. If you think about it, this is setting up an ancient Israelite to see that all of the patterns of my building my life around patterns of honoring Yahweh, day and night, day one, I say the Shema in the beginning of the day, I say the Shema at the end of the day. That represents day one. Day four is all about the annual festivals. Day seven is all about Shabbat and the seventh year release - the seven times seven year Jubilee.
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