Taking Care of Business

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy; six days you shall labor and do all your work; and the seventh day is a sabbath to YHWH your God; you shall not do any work,  . . .  Exodus 20:8-10  J. Green translation

Work – Work/worship/serve is the combination of meanings associated with the Hebrew word avad.  But this isn’t the word used in the fourth commandment.  The word used in this commandment is melakah, a word that means “work, occupation, business, workmanship or service.”  Six days you shall take care of business, but not on the seventh day.  Seems clear enough, right?  Well, maybe not.

As an interesting aside, we might notice that melakah has the same assumed root as the word mal’ak and mal’ak is used not only for messenger but also for angel (all those who carry a message).  Does this suggest that work is also a form of message-bearing?

TWOT[1] distinguishes melakah (work) from ‘amal and yaga’ (toil).  Work emphasizes effort that involves skill and benefits, as opposed to toil which it seen as burdensome labor.  Melakah describes not only the effort but the results.  This commandment prohibits three things on the Sabbath:  what we do that is associated with skill, what we do that provides benefits and what we do that could involve saying something about us to the watching world that would dishonor God.

With this broad definition, the next obvious question is, “What are those kinds of things?”  The Bible specifically mentions nine activities.  Only nine.  But Judaism expanded these nine to 39 classifications and from there to hundreds of rulings on particulars in works like the Tractate Shabbat.  Of course, there were good motivations behind these expansions.  No one wanted to accidently violate a commandment so everyone wanted to know the details.  These details are included in the oral Torah, eventually written down in rabbinic material.  This process tells us something about the culture we encounter when we read the Bible, particularly the New Testament.

Martin Hengel’s study of the influence of Hellenism on Judaism contains this remarkable statement:  “From about the middle of the third century BC all Judaism must really be designated as ‘Hellenistic Judaism’ in the strict sense, and a better differentiation could be made between the Greek-speaking Judaism of the Western Diaspora and the Aramaic/Hebrew-speaking Judaism of Palestine and Babylonia.”[2]  Hengel continues, “The Jews were the only people of the East to enter into deliberate competition with the Greek view of the world and of history,  . . . after 70AD they suddenly broke off from giving accounts of their history and concentrated entirely on developing fundamentally ahistorical halacha and haggada  . . .”[3]  The destruction of the second temple precipitated this break but the foundation for it was laid hundreds of years earlier in the rise of rabbinic theology.  An example of Hegel’s observation can be seen in the dozens of rulings regarding the proper application of melakah.  Judaism in the time of Yeshua was already on its way toward this concentration of halacha and haggadah.  It is simply impossible to read the texts of the New Testament without understanding this background.

Judaism today is not the same faith that we find in the older books of the Tanakh.  It has been transformed since the destruction of the Temple.  That doesn’t mean we cannot learn a great deal from Jewish insights and investigation, but it does mean that we have to probe as best we can behind the cultural transformation that occurred after the fourth century BC in Israel.  In other words, we have to look toward the cultures of the ancient Near-East (like Mesopotamia, Babylon and Egypt) if we are going to understand words like melakah as they were understood by the chosen ones who stood before YHVH at Sinai.

We have a lot to learn, don’t we?

Topical Index:  Sabbath, work, melakah, Judaism, halacha, Exodus 20:8-10

 


[1] The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, eds. Archer, Waltke, Harris

[2] Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, p. 104.

[3] Ibid., p. 100.

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Christina Venter

Amen and Amen. True learning has just begun. My prayer for all is that we will humble ourselves to receive the wisdom that is hidden in the Word through the working of the Holy Spirit. The babies are beginning with their first steps now – the crawling fase has passed. We can now reach out and touch our Master as He passes by! “Heavenly Father we bless Your Holy and mighty Name. We kneel at Your feet and wash it with our tears. We are sinners. Your grace and everlasting love and kindness keeps us growing day by day. All glory to You our Father and King. We long for Your return. Thank You that You will shorten the time to spare us the afflictions that will kill us all. Amen and Amen!”

Wisdom is standing at the door. Will you open for her to come in, take your hand and show you THE WAY?

Kees Brakshoofden

Hellenistic Judaism. I must think of Barbara Streisand singing: Papa can you hear me…. Fiddler on the roof, where ghosts are appearing…..
Artist painting Jesus and Jewish men in His time with a kipah. And that’s only the visible effect. Indeed, we have much to learn yet!

carl roberts

“Why is it that you have been searching for me?” He replied; “did you not know that it is my duty to be engaged upon my Father’s business?” (Luke 2.49)

The Messiah was a man with a mission. He was (is) the Sent ONE.

There are three levels of living.. -duty, drudgery or delight. Hear (again for the first time) the words of (the) Christ: ~I delight to do your will~. Yahoshua, the G-d/man in deference to the Father and in showing us the “how-to” of practical daily life lived His life in complete submission and surrender to “shema” the word(s) of the Father. For the will of G-d (want the Father wants) is found and expounded in detail in the word(s) of G-d. What does G-d want? Read His book- “it’s in there!”
This from a young man by the name of Skip Moen:

“Avad is the Hebrew verb for work. This word covers all your labor in living, but when it is used to describe serving G-d, it does not include the connotation of toil. Serving G-d is a joyous fulfillment of life as it was intended to be. Because each one of us was designed to find true satisfaction when we are productive within G-d’s perfect design, avad captures that activity of life that liberates us to be who we were meant to be. Yes, avad is about obedience, but it is not about compulsory oppression. It is about exuberant, voluntary submission to my G-d-given destiny under His direction. Let’s put it this way: If you are truly serving the Lord, you discover that what you do is the most natural, exhilarating, liberating thing that you could ever imagine doing.”

Is this drudgery? or even duty?- no…- this is ~delight!~ The desire of my heart-prayer is I (too) delight to do Your will (what You want!) my Abba-Father. What son or daughter, (rightly related to his/her father) would not delight in doing what is pleasing in his/her father’s sight?

Avad! ~Amen!~

Robin Jeep

Thank you Skip for focusing your scholarly research on the history of and changes in Judaism and how it effects Jewish and Christian theology.

Gabe

For those of us trying to find our way back to The Path – our next roadblock is distinguishing between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Jewish/Hebraic culture, or beliefs.

Just as Jesus’ teachings seemed to be in line with Beyt Hillel sometimes, and Beyt Shammai at other times — we need to learn to glean truth, as well.

I appreciate everything you do towards this end Skip.

Krista

“The Bible specifically mentions nine activities. Only nine.”

What are the 9?