4th Commandment: Remember the Sabbath
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What is the significance of the 4th Commandment in ancient Israel?
In the book of Exodus, Yahweh liberates the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and he brings them to Mount Sinai to establish an intimate relationship with them. Israel will be his people, and he will be their God. This is a marriage, and the marriage vows are what we call the Ten Commandments. Now, most of these commands make sense to us on face value. In fact, they make sense to any culture. Don't murder, don't lie, honor your parents. But today we'll look at the fourth command, which was utterly unique to Israel. How they set apart one day every week and treated it as different.
Remember the day of Shabbat to treat it as holy.
How does the 4th Commandment relate to the creation narrative?
Six days you will labor and you will make all of your work. But the seventh day is a Shabbat of Yahweh your Elohim.
The command goes on to say to stop work on the seventh day because in six days Yahweh made the skies and the land, the sea, and all that is in them. And he rested on the seventh day. So the reason for this command is cosmic. It's connected to the story of God creating and bringing order to everything.
The seven-day creation narrative is clearly being hyperlinked here. God generates out of generous love something that is wholly contained within and sustained by God. But that thing needs to then go on a journey of sharing in God's own rest to become one with God.
On days one through six of the creation narrative, the narrator repeats the line, and there was evening and morning on that day. But jarringly, the seventh day doesn't end with this phrase, implying that we're still in the seventh day, and the moment of ultimate completion and rest for the cosmos is yet to come.
The Genesis 1 narrative is trying to teach us to think about all of history as being on this journey of we're laboring towards this great day of unity and rest and completeness and blessing and sharing in the harmony and shalom that is God's own essence.
And so the fourth command of resting on the seventh day is actually an invitation to reflect on the journey of the whole cosmos. We get to partner with God as God's image, but we have to remember...
Our work is not ultimate. It's not actually what has the final word about where this universe is going. There's a purpose and a worker that transcends us all. God's purpose.
When the Ten Commands are given a second time, the reason for the Sabbath shifts.
What is the civil and social perspective on the Sabbath in Deuteronomy?
Instead of focusing on this coming cosmic rest, it focuses on a coming liberation. Moses says, six days you do your work, seventh day you Shabbat, so that your slaves can get the same rest from work.
Your slave is not your slave on the Shabbat. You will remember that you all were slaves in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your Elohim brought you out with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm. And so now the weekly Shabbat, every seventh day, is a liberation day.
Today, Tim Mackey and I talk about the fourth commandment, remember the Sabbath, with all of its cosmic and social implications. Plus, we'll look at how the early followers of Jesus balanced obeying the wisdom of the Sabbath with Sunday as Resurrection Day. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim.
Hello, John Collins.
How did the early Jesus movement interpret the Sabbath?
We're talking the 10 words. We're talking 10. 10 commandments, 10 words, 10 things that God said to the people of ancient Israel as they stood at Mount Sinai entering into a covenant. They got married. Israel got married to a God that day. Okay.
That'd be a cool theme study.
There's a Hebrew Bible scholar, Joshua Berman, who... who was trying to draw attention to how odd the story of God making a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai would sound in the ancient world. Did it?
Yeah.
This wasn't a thing you would do? Yeah, he said in the ancient world, a story about a God getting married in a covenant with a human would sound as strange as a story to us would sound about a human getting married to a cat.
What does it mean to remember the Sabbath in a modern context?
That's his analogy.
That's helpful. Yeah.
It's good to know. It is strange. It's normalized growing up with the Bible and hearing metaphors like you are the bride and... the marriage of the Lamb, and these kind of things.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the significance of the 4th Commandment in ancient Israel?
0:05–0:46
2
How does the 4th Commandment relate to the creation narrative?
0:46–2:36
3
What is the civil and social perspective on the Sabbath in Deuteronomy?
2:36–3:31
4
How did the early Jesus movement interpret the Sabbath?
3:31–4:25
5
What does it mean to remember the Sabbath in a modern context?
4:25–5:57
6
How does the Sabbath command differ between Exodus and Deuteronomy?
5:57–8:23
7
What are the implications of the Sabbath for social equality?
8:23–11:00
8
How can we apply the principles of the Sabbath today?
11:00–52:19