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By Niels-Erik Andreasen
A Comment on the Sabbath School Lesson for December 8–14, 2001, "Amos’s Fourth Vision—Summer Fruit"
The seventh day is the armistice in man’s cruel struggle for existence, a truce in all conflicts, personal and social, peace between man and man, man and nature, peace within man.1
—Abraham Joshua Heschel
Seventh-day Adventists have traditionally associated the Sabbath with creation (nature walks), worship (church attendance) and covenant sign (obedience to God’s law). None of these associations is denied by the late Rabbi A. J. Heschel in our opening statement, which will serve as an organizing principle for this essay. Instead, Heschel notes two other areas of the Christian’s life that may be blessed by the Sabbath. One is man’s attitude toward work, and the other is his attitude toward people, including himself.
First, man’s attitude toward work: "The seventh day is the armistice in man’s cruel struggle for existence." General agreement exists that the fourth commandment is not a double injunction: man must work on six days and must rest on the seventh day. The commandment assumes that a man (and woman) will work. Its exclusive concern is to limit work to the six days.
The teachers of Israel ever since the days of Solomon encouraged hard, consistent work as the only way to success and security (Prov. 6–11; 24: 30–34). However, their teaching is also ambivalent about work, and this is our second point. They do not question work as such, but hubris— work that entices the worker into trusting his own strength and forgetting God (Prov. 11:28; 15:16). Perhaps the most vivid warning of such deception is given in Psalm 127:1 ff. It is at this point that Heschel suggests that the Sabbath can improve the important relationship between man and his work.
Perhaps a more obvious relationship between the Sabbath and the worker is the permission to stop all work, which the Sabbath insists on granting to everyone. 2 The reason, according to Deuteronomy 5, is the exodus deliverance: "You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day" (vs. 15). All of Israel, bond and free, must be given the opportunity to participate in the Sabbath’s exodus experience. 3 On the Sabbath, Israel is a community of equals.
In this passage, however, the emphasis on equality is overshadowed by the demand for freedom. The Sabbath commands Israel to let her dependents go free. It issues a humanitarian appeal for Israel to extend her experience of the exodus freedom to all workers. 4 It brings freedom not only from human bondage, but also from the demands of nature—the heavy requirements of sowing and harvesting (Exod. 34 :21). The Sabbath, then, faithfully protects man from totalitarianism of all kinds, whatever the source.
The armistice in the cruel struggle between man and his world, about which Heschel speaks, provides two benefits: freedom of the worker from his work, but also freedom of the work (that is, the world and its resources) from man’s exploitation. The Sabbath has notably contributed to this second aspect of the truce in man’s struggle through its sister institutions, the sabbatical and jubilee years. 5 The Sabbath most likely inspired these institutions whose intentions were to protect people, land, and property from exploitation by the worker. 6 In short, the Sabbath brings a respite in "man’s cruel struggle for existence" whether that cruelty is directed toward the worker or the object of his work.
Heschel’s second point deals with man’s personal and social conflicts. The Sabbath, he notes, brings "peace between man and man, man and nature, peace within man." The peace to which Heschel refers is not simply absence of war, like a pax romana. It is shalom, meaning peace, well-being, harmony, security, and understanding. A deeply personal word, shalom, when spoken, restores broken relationships and heals the inner person. Peace (shalom) attends the individual whose person is whole and whose relationship to others is sound.
According to the Bible, a person is whole when soul, spirit, heart, and body combine into an ideal of unity and harmony. "The Hebrew," writes H. Wheeler Robinson in commenting upon the unity of man in Old Testament thought, "conceived man as an animated body, and not an incarnate soul." 7 By the same token, a community is sound when the relationships within its families, clans, tribes, and nation are characterized by the ideal of unity and solidarity. But such ideals of harmony and solidarity are not always achieved. Within the individual, the spirit may "faint" (Ps. 142:3), the soul may be "bowed down to the dust" (Ps. 44:25), intoxication may take away the heart or understanding (Hos. 4 :11), the flesh may "waste away" (Job 33:21). Within the community, interpersonal relationships can also break down. Two touching and masterful portrayals of such breakdowns are the Old Testament stories of Michal, David ,and Paltiel (2 Sam. 3:14–16; 6:23) and of Amnon and Tamar (2 Sam. 13:1–15). Does the Sabbath offer some solution to these disorders, as Heschel suggests?
Perhaps the most natural place to begin is with the freedom which the Sabbath provides. It is essentially a freedom from work, as we have seen, provided for those not in a position to secure it (Exod. 23:12; Deut. 5 :12–15), but it also includes freedom from servitude imposed by the pressures of work (Exod. 34 :21). We further noticed that the Sabbath’s sister institution, the sabbatical year, offered the slave permanent freedom in the seventh year of servitude (Exod. 21:1–6; Deut. 15 :1–18).
Genuine freedom must lead to equality. Although the Old Testament Sabbath texts themselves do not advocate complete human equality, Isaiah 56 refers at least indirectly to the equality between all people, which the Sabbath provides. Isaiah is here responding to the role of foreigners and eunuchs in the congregation of Israel. Traditionally, they were excluded, but the prophet wants that practice reversed. These outcasts, of whom the Assyrian and Babylonian wars produced many, were to be welcomed in the Sabbath worship of the temple, if they genuinely wished to belong to God. The remarkable prominence in this chapter of the Sabbath as a sign of such belonging would suggest that this day was an important symbol of membership in the covenant community of Israel, but it must also have been a powerful symbol of equality among all worshipers, something that these former outcasts desperately needed.
The Sabbath thus represents not only freedom for all, but also equity among all. Hence, it brings a truce into social conflicts and establishes solidarity and unity in the community. This result must also apply today. On the Sabbath, the executive and his janitor share the same pew; no one gives the other an order or extracts a service. The Sabbath sets all men free and makes them equal. It restores the ideals of solidarity and unity in the community. Finally, the Sabbath brings to man a certain kind of serenity, what Heschel calls "peace within man," and what we have called the ideal of inner harmony. It is caused partly by man’s release from the conflicts of this world, whether through work, or ambitions or social relationships, and partly by the vision of the transcendent which man receives in the worship and joy that this day can provide.
1. A. J. Hesehel, The Sabbath (New York, 1952), 29.
2. They are servants, foreigners, children, and even domestic animals (Exod. 20: 8–11; 23:12; Deut. 5:12–15). cf. N.-E. Andreasen, "Festival and Freedom," Interpretation 28 (1974): 281–97.
3. Cf. B. S. Childs, Memory and Tradition in Israel (London, 1962).
4. Cf. Deut. 5: 15; 15: 15: 16: 12; 24: 18, 22.
5. Exod. 21: 1–6; Lev. 25, 26; Deut. 15 :1–18; 2 Chron. 36 :21.
6. R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel I: Social Institutions (New York, 1961), 174.
7. Inspiration and Revelation in the Old Testament (Oxford, 1946), 70.
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