This is the 10th of a series of essays that cover the origin of the Israelite nation and conclude with a discussion of the Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments. This and all remaining essays will deal with the Decalogue. Links to the prior essays can be found in the left hand column of this post under My Links: "Essays on the Exodus and the Ten Commandments."
To make it easier to understand this essay and to reference the relevant Biblical passages I am including here the passage that most closely relates to this essay.
From Exodus 20
8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work--you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. (NRSV)
Commandment #4, "Remember the Sabbath," forms the bridge between the first three Commandments relating to God, and the last six Commandments, which are about relating to one another. The 4th Commandment is often viewed as the last of the four Commandments about how we relate to God. And it is. But it also involves how we relate to one another because believers are to keep the Commandment together in obedience to his instruction.
Let's start with a technical detail that has, through the centuries, caused a lot of heartburn for some Christians, including some of the members of churches I have served in the past.
Because most Christians take our Sabbath rest on Sunday, instead of Saturday, does that mean that we Christians do not obey this Commandment? The short answer to that question is "No". However, some Christians do make a big deal of which day the Sabbath should be observed.
One the one hand, the Seventh Day Adventists and the Seventh Day Baptists, and a few other smaller Christian denominations and sects insist that the Jewish Sabbath, which is celebrated on the "Seventh Day," which we call "Saturday," is the proper day of worship for Christians.
On the other hand, the vast majority of Christian denominations set aside Sunday, the "First Day" of the week, as the proper day of Christian worship because it is said to represent the the day on which Christ was raised.
Who is "right?" Well, its not clear cut. If you want to say that the traditional Jewish understanding of the last day of the week is correct, then the "Sabbath" is from Friday at sundown until Saturday at sundown. For them, that is the "Seventh Day." So, if you want to worship on the "Sabbath" then you should have your weekly worship service during that period, like the Jews and the Adventists do.
Or, if you want to worship on a day that is particularly symbolic for the Christian faith, there is no better day to worship than on the day when Christ was raised from the grave. Most Christians do just that. But, by worshiping on Sunday do those Christians violate the 4th Commandment?
Two points need to be considered before we decide that worshiping on Sunday is a violation of the Sabbath. First, the Sabbath Commandment relates to rest, and says nothing about worship. Certainly worship would be appropriate on the holy Sabbath Day, but worship is not in any way part of the Sabbath Commandment.
Tradition added worship to the Sabbath, and that is reasonable. But it is not a commandment of God that the day of rest be combined with a special day of worship. There is certainly nothing wrong with worshiping God on Saturday, but there is also nothing wrong with worshiping God any day of the week.
Second, the Sabbath day rest is based on the story of the Creation as recorded in Genesis, which says nothing at all about how to set up a calendar. Calendars were a hodge-podge of differing lengths of time, ways to divide the year into months, etc., right up through the time of Christ.
For example, the Jewish Calendar at the time most of the Old Testament was written consisted of ten months, not twelve. Weeks, however, from the time of Moses were seven days to honor the story of creation in Genesis. But, from God's point of view, who is to say that the day we later chose to call Saturday was in fact the seventh, last, day of creation?
What if the later calendar makers, who named some days of the week in English after pagan gods, had decided that the first day in the week was Thursday?
Luckily for both Jewish and Christian tradition Constantine converted to Christianity and decided that the calendar would be set up with traditional Jewish seven day weeks with the Sabbath day being the last day of the seven.
But there have been both longer and shorter weeks in other cultures. Some of those line up more closely with either the Lunar or Solar cycles. As recently as the last century at least one major nation recognized 5 and 6 day weeks. And historically weeks have varied in different cultures from 5 to 20 days.
The point is that what God was trying to tell us is that he rested on the seventh day of the week of creation - whatever day that may be: and so should we. We should rest one day out of seven, whatever that day may be in our modern calendar. Whether or not that is also our day of worship is something that he left up to us.
The issue of the Sabbath is not about what day of the week it falls on, but that we remember it. And do not think that "remember" means "think about it." The Hebrew word for remember means "to observe" it; i.e.: do something about it!
For example, a husband should "remember" his wife's birthday and their wedding anniversary. Visualize this conversation. You come home from work, spend the evening in front of the TV watching Monday Night Football, and, as she storms off to bed at the end of the first half, your wife says in tears: "You don't even remember what day this is!" And you reply, "Sure, I remember, its our 20th wedding anniversary!" How well do you think that would go over? She expected you to do something about your anniversary, not just "remember" it! Just so, God expects us to do something about the Sabbath, not just "remember" that it exists!
What is that something we are to do? The answer, in this so-called "positive" Commandment is negative: we are not supposed to work!
Verse 10: 10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work--you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.
Notice too that it applies to the entire household, to servants and foreigners who reside in your country. Basically it applies to everyone. You are not to go off to play golf and leave the wife and kids home to do the wash and yard work! It applies to every creature that works, including servants, alien residents, even animals!
What God is saying is that he built into the very Creation a divine rhythm of work and rest. And when his creatures honor that rhythm within the created order that is how it is supposed to be. When we honor the Sabbath rest we honor God by imitating his actions at the beginning of Creation.
I do not want to get into some Pharasic argument about what specific things we can and cannot do on our day of rest. That depends, it seems to me, on how each individual defines "rest" and "recreation."
I do not think, for example, that riding around on my lawn tractor on a Sunday afternoon mowing the lawn is "work." I enjoy it. But I can remember a number of irritated parishioners of churches I have served, those who were self-appointed guardians of my moral conduct, who thought that to ride a lawn tractor on Sunday was a terrible sin! That is one of the joys of living in parsonages. An amazing number of church members think that they should tell you how to behave.
More to the point is that we may think that our busy-ness is not chaotic, but we actually know better. We may try to convince ourselves that the rat race we have gotten sucked into is "normal," but it is not normal to God. God did not create man or animals to work all the time.
Notice that the Sabbath rest is a great equalizer, applying to the rich and the poor, the oppressed and the oppressor. God is saying that he rested on the seventh day, and so should all of his Creation. God's argument to the believer is that the Sabbath rest is the way he designed things to be. So when believers violate that rest, we violate how God intends us to be, and how he intends the Creation to be!
So, here's the question for those who choose to obey the commandments in faithful response to God. Do some believers violate the Sabbath because we worship on Sunday and not Saturday, or do we violate the Sabbath because we are caught up in the web of constant work; of striving for success?
We are taught from the cradle that everything of value in this life comes from hard work. Sadly we believe that we get our identities from our work: from what we do, not from who we are! That is, we are told, the American Way.
But it is not God's way. God's way says we, all of God's creatures, need to slow down once a week, take time to smell the roses, to refresh ourselves, to recreate. Think about that innocent little word "recreate." Break it down a little differently than we normally pronounce it: "RE-create." We are to take time to "Re-create" ourselves.
That is God's way. It may not put a smile on the face of your boss who believes he owns you body and soul, and that your time is his to do with as he pleases. But, if you are a faithful believer, at least for one day a week, your time belongs to God! And God wants you to rest on that day!
So, believers have to choose. Do we choose to live God's way, in accordance to the way God would have us live? Or do we choose to live the way that modern society says we must live to be "successful?"
God says, "Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy." He is telling us that the Sabbath day, whatever day of the week we choose to make it, is his day, not ours, and we are to act like the creatures that we are and to observe the Sabbath rest that is built into the ordering of the Creation.
Next: Commandment # 5: Honor thy father and mother.
God bless.
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But, well....I know Hebrew...and that Old Testament sure has been rewritten.
Monte, have you ever been to synagogue? xox
Another good essay, Monte, although I do have a question for you. Doesn't "keep it holy" imply the relevance of worship? Or do you think it means keep the remembrance holy, that is, be consistent about it?
This line pretty much sums up, for me, what I don't like about organized religion of any type. I don't mean to be disrespectful to you as a man of the cloth, but from my early years being raised in the catholic church, I came away with this message;
When asked by a man how to gain the kingdom of heaven, Jesus answered by saying that you must 1) love god and 2) love your neighbor as you would love yourself.
Seems pretty simple to me.
I do enjoy your writings and will have to spend some time reading your other posts because I'm new here.
Why, in fact, is “worshipping” considered complimentary to your god?
This is not an idle question…nor is it an attempt to belittle you or your religion…it is a search for an answer that I consider significant.
As you know, I am an agnostic…and I acknowledge that I do not know if there are gods (or a God) involved in the Reality of existence. But if there is (and there could be!)…I consider the notion of “worshipping” that GOD to be an insult of the first magnitude.
In my opinion, it demeans rather than enhances. It seems an exercise in terror and fright…rather than what it is purported to be.
So…why is “worshipping” considered “keeping the Sabbath holy”…and why is “worshipping considered a compliment to your god?
You are not to go off to play golf [or anything else] and leave the wife and kids home to do the wash and yard work!
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Pilgrim: I remember Blue Laws and I grew up much of the time in Kansas where there were not only Blue Laws but there were "dry" and "wet" counties, counties that sold only beer, counties that sold liquor or allowed retailers to sell it, but it was illegal to have it visible or open on the table. I remember the dance halls and night clubs had little cubby holes under the tables where you put your brown paper bag containing your booze and they served mixers, ice, etc. and charged you what you would have paid for a liquor drink, or you paid for your glass and a cover charge. So you would get your club soda, hold it below the table, awkwardly remove the top of your scotch and pour it into the club soda clandestinely! Bizarre things like that were allegedly "normal" in that state when I was young.
As I read the commandment, and most other scholars agree, "keep it holy" simply means to obey what God commanded: rest on the seventh day. The day itself was made holy by God, not by man: "therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it." But your point has some historical validity, because I do believe that those who wrote, over several centuries, what was to be done during the day of rest concluded that it would be appropriate to the day of rest to use part of that day in formal worship of God.
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A large number of people, grandpa, developed negative feelings about organized religion based upon their early developmental experiences with church. That tells me that the church has, too often, done a poor job of explaining Christianity to children during their formative years. You did come away with the two "greatest commandments" that Jesus talked about, neither of which are part of the Decalogue, the first being shorthand for the Shema and the second being added by Jesus, which now is called at times "the Golden Rule." If that is the satisfactory totality of what you take from religion and you are comfortable with that then that is what is good for you. As you can plainly tell, I find it a bit more complex that. Glad to have you reading my posts and I do hope you will find the time to go back and take a look at this series from the beginning. That would not be to convict you of the truth of faith, which I do not try to do, but to give you a better understanding how this series of essays got to this point.
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I see that you are trying to stir the pot yet again, Frank. Saying that your questions are not an intent to belittle does not mean anything to me. Your words lack sincerity. Besides, your track record speaks much more loudly to me than those words.
I did not say that worshiping keeps the Sabbath holy. In fact I said that the Sabbath is a day of "rest," and that nothing in the commandment says a thing about worship.
As for why worshiping is "complimentary" to God, I have no idea where to start with you. As one who does not worship I can't imagine that it makes any difference to you why I or any believer worships. Nor can I imagine why you would waste your time here and think that your search for an answer here, of all places, would be "significant" since you have never found faith to be significant for you, and you have never visited my blog to find serious answers to your questions. Rather, you have come here to engage in verbal gymnastics that I find that tiring.
About all I can say is that at base worship is a responsive gesture of respect and thanksgiving for life. But if you do not think that God made the Creation then there is nothing to thank God for. If you think that worship is "an exercise in terror and fright…RATHER THAN WHAT IT IS PURPORTED TO BE" then your question is nothing more than provocation since, by definition, you do not accept what the faithful claim worship is about.
This will be the last exchange with you on this post. I do not intend to turn this post into a give and take with you about the validity of worship or of the beliefs of those who claim faith. I hope you will respect that. Please move on.
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Hi, Anne. Yes, it is very hard to truly rest in this busy world we make for ourselves and that others impose on us. It sounds like you have a solid systematic way to keep your focus on God. I try to do that but must confess that there are times when I fail to pray as much as I should or when I get involved in some project and my mind flies off too far from God.
And, YES, men need to keep in mind that they are not the only people in the household who need R&R during the week! I really have worked hard on remembering that throughout my life.
Thanks once more for reading and commenting.
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Hi, John. Glad to have you back. Maybe you should wait and read #5 before you show it to them! ;O !! You want to be sure that we both understand it the same way first. Seriously, I will be posting it next week. About one or two a week is max given how long these are.
Monte
Realization is sought by all, each in their own way. Thank you as always.
Great point here Monte.
:-)
Only religions that are open, willing to share their beliefs and values, and willing to have others take the best of what they offer are the ones that have succeeded in the past. I think that will hold in the future as well. And history tells us that cults, like Scientology and the Branch Dravidians, and all others that have secret membership requirements and teach that they alone have special knowledge will not succeed in the long run.
Both Judaism and Christianity are open religions. Their sacred writings are openly shared with others. Anyone is allowed to attend their services and to become members if they choose to do so. In that sense their beliefs and ethics are also "open" and cannot be stolen by anyone. All you have to do is ask and they will be given to you. I agree with your conclusion.
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Thanks, once again, SMind, for reading and commenting. I do appreciate your faithful following of this series.
well done
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Kathy, I know something about that misplaced guilt. When when I was in DC I was rising through the ranks to the top of the Federal Civil Service by the time I was in my early 30s. I felt guilty if I did not work 65-75 hours a week. It cost me a marriage and the estrangement of my children. My guilt was sadly misplaced.
Monte
As Claude Lévi-Strauss put so clearly --the deep structure of a myth must include ALL of its variants.
Myth is a powerful force. There is often much truth in it. And while it is really impossible to include "ALL of its variants" it is helpful to remember that they do exist.
That just cracks me up! Those morality police are everywhere!
I have to say that I love the idea of a day of rest. I can speak of personal experience that a day off is necessary for one to function properly. Every battery needs to be recharged to supply adequate power. I've worked several jobs over the years that required 7 day work weeks and can honestly say that irritability and tempers rise. Accidents and productivity suffer and accidents increase.
Of course I've been out of work so long that everyday feels like the Sabbath. I still try to find something to do that makes me feel productive, but it gets hard after a while. A person's self worth and ego suffers a great deal when out of work for a long time.
I am now on an essentially constant Sabbath myself and it is no fun. We need the day off, but we also need to realize that the other part of that same Sabbath coin is that God knows the value of the days of work!
We are wired to work, to do productive things with our lives that give us a sense of accomplishment. When we cannot do that we suffer just as much as we suffer without a day of rest. It is all in the balance.
You know now by your own experience that being able to work is more than just about the money. The money is important, vital in fact, but the joy and pride of accomplishment are also important in balancing our lives. You said it better than I can and I cannot agree with you more.
Monte
I like to think of "RE-Creation" as RE-Flection, which I strive to do daily. Sunday Mass is a time for unselfish reflection of our week left behind, how we have lived it and one's intentions for the next week ahead. Just one way of looking at honoring the time God has given us to give back to Him and to ourselves, on the journey through our human existence.
Were it not for Him...
My confusion used to be about the seven days, until it dawned on me that there WERE no days during the creation, until the Earth revolved on it's axis with the sun shining on it. One of God's days could have been a billion of our days as we count them.
But the revelation that no worship is required, just rest, is an eye opener.
Every Sunday, in relation to church and worship, far too many people work. From my experience, the work goes all day and well into the night for church activities, all kinds of other Sunday activities, and Sunday dinner.
Hi, Cathy, Thanks for your faith filled comments. I often marvel at your well disciplined and open hearted faith. I think that when we realize, as you do, that we owe our very lives to the grace of God that a lot of things fall into place and worship becomes thanksgiving and reflecting on how we can share our own gifts with others.
I think, Zuma, that many of us are "in trouble" if we insist that the literal meaning of the Sabbath day be honored. As a pastor Sunday was almost entirely a day of "work" for me, teaching, leading worship, preaching, visiting and caring for the sick, the home bound, etc. And Sue had the same "busy" day, teaching Sunday School, helping with worship, accompanying me on many of my visits, doing the weekly laundry when we got home, etc.
Then I think of all those who have to work two jobs, or have to work weekends, etc. We all need to be reasonable about trying to find time for rest within the struggles of raising families, working to keep food on the table and a shelter over our heads, and all the things we must do to survive.
But, I do think that we will wear ourselves down and out if we do not work just as hard at finding times of meaningful rest. We all need to make time to recharge our batteries. If we don't we run the risk of getting sick, becoming irritable, losing a sense of what balance means in our lives, and being far less than we can be for ourselves and others. At least that is how it has worked in my life.
Thanks to you three for these additional comments.
Monte
Hey, Leonde, I am afraid that my thoughts on #9 at this point consist of a dozen or so pages of yellow legal size research notes and an outline that will be thoroughly revised before I even get to a first draft. My problem is never coming up with words about a subject, but to take complex ideas and cull through them to the point where people who are not academically versed in theology can understand them and find them useful. Wish I could accomodate your request but for now I guess that patience will have to be asked of you. Many thanks for continuing to read this series.
Monte
I invite you to check out my recent post, which also deals with the Jewish-Christian relationship through scripture (albeit New Testament).
http://open.salon.com/blog/indiana_joe/2009/11/24/james_the_conservative_bible_project_imprecatory_prayer
Monte
Yup. The commandment as I knew was, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”.
Doesn’t say what day of the week it is, only that it needed honoring.
There are quite a number of restrictions in Judaism for the Sabbath. For example, you are not permitted to operate a motor vehicle because it involves moving an object and igniting a fuel, both prohibited. G-d was very adamant about a day of rest. :-D
Rated.
An aside: as for faiths "stealing" from one another, I think if you look at most religions at their very core, they have the same foundations. They may word things a little differently, but the fundamental things apply.