The seventh day

The present Special is about the Sabbath feast day according to the Old Testament. The texts I quote are the two versions of the third commandment (in Exodus and Deuteronomy). The book that gave me most of the cues is: Il sabato nella Bibbia, André Wénin, EDB.

«Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. You shall labor six days, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your stranger who is within your gates; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy» (Exod 20,8-11).

The Lord’s motivation for the commandment is the memory of the seventh day of creation. «On the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. God blessed the seventh day, and made it holy, because he rested in it from all his work which he had created and made» (Gen 2,2-3). What completes the creation is paradoxically that God stopped his activity. He shows that he can control his power, he is not dominated by it, but he puts it at the service of life. His love knows how to “step aside” to leave a space of existence to his creatures. God has no secret motives to create the humanity; he does it only for love. He is not a vampire of his creature’s life; conversely, he is who gives everything for humanity’s complete joy and happiness: “the glory of God is man fully alive” (Irenaeus of Lyon). To men and women, correspondingly, the third commandment asks to be stronger than their production capacity and their lust for profit. It asks them to be able to stop and give a life space to the others and to the Other (God), space for free amity relationships that are essential for a worthy and happy human existence. It is interesting to note that the Hebrew verb in the third commandment is the same of the first one (lōtaʽaśeh: in English it can be translated as “you shall not do” or “you shall not make”). «You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them» (Exod 20,4-5). Not being able to stop working for lust of power and money is idolatry; it is giving to the product of our hands or intelligence a disproportionate value. This would make out of our product a demanding and bloodthirsty god that would spoil our and our neighbor’s life.

 

 

The Deuteronomy reports a different motivation for the third commandment. «Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. You shall labor six days, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, in which you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your livestock, nor your stranger who is within your gates; that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm: therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day» (Deut 5,12-15).

Again we have the combination of the two previous “ingredients”, power and freedom, even if in a different way. The Lord used his power to free the people from Pharaoh’s harsh and brutal bondage; correspondingly every Israelite must not be a ruthless “pharaoh” towards his subordinates, but he must recognize their dignity (from the most important, the son, to the humblest ones, animals and strangers). In the feast day of Sabbath the Israelite have to freely give what he freely received before from God: liberty and rest.

The punishment for those who break the commandment is terrible, and expresses the consequence of sin. «You shall keep the Sabbath therefore; for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people» (Exod 31,14). In fact the man who does not freely experience and share with the neighbors the liberty that God gave him dies in his own humanity, which is not reducible to the “gain”, and does not have the capacity to establish authentic relationships with anyone.

Jesus has well in mind the spirit of the Sabbath. On this day, in spite of the Pharisees, he heals, he frees, he forgives sins: in a word he gives himself to the others so that they have a full and happy life, as the Father, eternally, gives himself for the Son. «The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand» (John 3,35). For Christians the Lord ’s day is Sunday, because of Christ’s resurrection, but it maintains a great continuity with Sabbath’s two motivation: indeed it is a day of new creation (with the birth of a new humanity) and of new exodus (exit from an existence in the slavery of the sin).