Sabbath: (re)examining our relationship to rest
Disclaimer: This is not about rest so much as it is about looking at what we currently perceive as rest and compare it to the biblical exegesis of sabbath and what our relationship to rest means and what it should say about our connection to our output.
Today is the 1st of the month so I think it’s appropriate that we talk about the sabbath since the day we usually characterize as the sabbath also happens to be the 1st day of the week.
In Genesis 1, we see God exact creation in what is expressed in the text as 6 days separated by day and night. On the 6th day, the day of man, God “saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) There’s something different here. Other days of creation you see words like “and it was so” or “God saw that it was good,” but at the end of the day of man he saw everything and deemed it very good.
Day 7 opens up Genesis 2 which is pretty cool because what we consider the sabbath (Sunday) is more like the 7th day of our week, but it’s the beginning of a new week as the sabbath opens up a new chapter in Genesis. The first verse states that the heavens, the earth, and all their multitude were finished. Verse 2 does something very interesting. In the NRSVUE it says “on the sixth day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.” Now, I take notice that he finishes on the 6th day, yet rests on the 7th. I decided to look to the Hebrew for an understanding of the words “finished” and “rest,” because I know my human understanding of work is to do the work and then rest immediately after. That we see God rest on the 7th day rather than the end of the 6th lets me know rest that is the sabbath is different from rest from labor.
Which brings me to the Hebrew shāvat (Strong’s H7673) and the form in Genesis 2:2 is vayyishbōt (and he ceased/stopped). Shāvat means to stop, cease, desist and it is the verb from which Shabbat (Sabbath) comes. Now this is interesting. In verse 1, the Hebrew word for finished is kālāh (Strong’s H3615) and it means to be complete, finished, brought to an end and the form that appears in Genesis 2:1 is vaykhullû (and there were completed/finished). This begs the question, why not use the same word if it was essentially the same thing? It’s because it’s not. If kālāh renders creation as being complete and brought to an end, what does shāvat do if not the same thing? Shāvat speaks to God’s relationship to the completed work. In order for shāvat to occur in a sense, something has to happen in between kālāh and shāvat, and I believe that middle ground is where God is able to cease on the 7th day. Specifically I think the “something” that has to happen is reflection and it is where the Sabbath asks us to go when it suggests rest. It doesn’t necessarily mean lay down or take a break, it means to evaluate or have a relationship with what was created in the days before that necessitates such a reflection. Sabbath is where new ideas emerge, where joy comes, where a renewed sense of purpose breaks forth, and it is able to do all of this when we, the image bearers, are able to journey between completing a thing and looking back and evaluating our connection to it, our experience with it, and how it brought us to the now. Sabbath/shāvat/ceasing is really about God’s relationship to that completed work. To cease the work is to look at it and see it and establish a relationship with it and to understand, right?
In a thousand ways, more now than ever in my life, I am grateful for Shabbat/the Sabbath because it is my opportunity to reflect, reveal, renew, and replenish. This sort of process should accompany the type of rest that we generally relegate Sabbath to, and if such process existed alongside that rest, I know we’d be better people, more productive people, more creative people, more loving people, and more supportive people. God created tangible realities for 6 days and created a day to reflect on one’s relationship to that very creation. In a way, creation happens 7 days and that echoes the sentiment that God is everpresent and exists across the span of time. He created a day that was designed to recalibrate us that would prepare us for the next wave of our cycles. This very concept of the 7th day as still a day of creation separates us from being God, because we exist inside the very creation and therefore cannot “create” outside of God.
So, today I reflect on how this current moment in my life mirrors Shabbat and how the wealth of revelation and insight I’ve received from really practicing and observing the Sabbath informs this next phase in my life. The reminder to keep it holy is important because the key word is leqaddeshô and it comes from a Hebrew family of words associated with holiness, sacredness, consecration, and being set a part, so this calls for us to treat this day as belonging to a different category from ordinary time and to recognize its sacred distrinction. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, so it is important that we maintain that. Shāvat tells us to cease and qadash sets the day apart as sacred, keeping it holy means we recognize that this stopping belongs to God. What would it mean for us to treat this moment of time as sacred and holy? Surely we’d do more than sleep.
