The Creative Sabbath (3)
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Exodus 20:8 NASB
Work and “Work” – “The biblical story of mankind begins with the command, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.’ Work is more than labour. Biblical Hebrew has two words to express the difference: melakhah is work as creation, avodah is work as service or servitude. Melakhah is the arena in which we transform the world and thus become, in the striking rabbinic phrase, ‘partners with God in the work of creation.’ God, taught Rabbi Akiva in the second century, deliberately left the world unfinished so that it could be completed by the work of human beings. The creative God seeks creativity from mankind.”[1]
The commandment not to “work” on Shabbat employs the creative word, melakhah, not the laboring word, avodah. We have explored this before. (What to Do During What Not to Do) It’s particularly important to note that melakah (or melakhah) has the root malak, a word that means messenger, representative and even angel. This is someone who comes in the authority of another. In like manner, the creativity of both God and Man expresses the authority of the author, demonstrated in the final result. The cheesecake that my wife bakes is the representation of her creativity (and it is very good, by the way). It is melakah—creative expression of who she is. Washing the dishes is avodah, in her case, because it is simply the task necessary after the production of melakah. It is the ordinary, the routine, the “not who I really am” effort. But cooking is her art. She makes the world a better, and more righteous place with her talent and passion. This creativity is what she must set aside on Shabbat in honor of the ultimate Creator, the One who brought her to life so that she could contribute to completing the world.
But that isn’t quite the end of the story.
All work was banned both on the weekly Sabbath (Ex 20:9–10) and on the festal Sabbaths (Lev 16:29). God himself ceased from working on the Sabbath day (Gen 2:1–2).
Turning to specific usages of mĕlāʾkâ, it could refer to a particular task or project at hand (Neh 5:16) or it could refer to one’s routine or habitual work, i.e. one’s business (Gen 39:11; Prov 18:9). It referred to the king’s business (I Sam 8:16) and that of the royal bureaucracy (I Kgs 9:23).
“Work” referred to skilled craftsmanship when God endowed men with supernatural skills for the skilled work of the tabernacle (Ex 31:3: RSV “craftsmanship”), and Solomon imported Phoenician craftsmen for the skilled work of the temple (I Kgs 7:14).
The resulting products of work, both skilled and unskilled, were described by this term. Moses looked upon the skilled “work” of the tabernacle (Ex 39:43). Or it could refer to property in general without regard to special skills or value (e.g. I Sam 15:9, “all that was despised” for “every despised work”; cf. also Ex 22:8, 11).[2]
As you can see, context also helps determine the meaning of melakah. So Exodus 20:10 prohibits melakah but that obviously includes (as we learn from examples) ordinary and routine tasks as well as creative ones. Just what these ordinary and routine prohibited tasks are is, for the most part, left undefined. Conscience, community and example help us decide. Perhaps this is the “spirit of Shabbat” referred to by the rabbis. In the final analysis, apart from those specific tasks named in the text, reverence, culture and community seem to be the determining factors.
But this much we know. We create the holiness of the Shabbat by our choices. YHVH set it aside, but we are the ones who complete it. The Sabbath remains unfinished until we remember.
Topical Index: Shabbat, melakah, Exodus 20:8, Exodus 20:10
[1] Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference, p. 96.
[2] Bowling, A. (1999). 1068 לאך. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke, Ed.) (electronic ed.) (465). Chicago: Moody Press.
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Got it. Partnership in creativity 6 days, and partnership in holiness, the seventh. Fun. Learn the difference between making stuff and enjoying the results of making. I walk my garden, and other results of my creativity on Sabbath, and ENJOY them, and admire them, and take the time to appreciate how much I put in, and praise Him for how much He put into me so that I could. LOL!
I was reflecting the other day on how critical the necessity is for us to STOP periodically in all our dimensions, whether spiritual, mental or physical, and take a break. It makes even a muscle stronger if you give it a break! Even a breath or a heart beat takes a break! In that pause, we re-remember the exercise; we find the beginning again. To change from glory to glory, even, we have to start over, over and over again. Back to the beginning. Break up the tyranny of time so that we do not succumb to the false worship of it that we use to drive ourselves into the ground and break ourselves off. The heart wears out, I truly believe, if we ask it to conform to the incessant worship of time. If I was not honoring Shabbat, I wonder, looking back, if I would have just gone ahead and had that heart attack that I came so close to. You have to STOP something before you can exercise your true control over it. Shabbat bids me to remember what that looks like. Where’s the brake pedal to life? Shabbat!
Laurita; The other day you mentioned you grew up keeping Sabbath, well so did I,perhaps the same denomination, The one I grew up in is also very diet/health conscious. There have been studies that show this group has ,on average, a longer life expectancy. I’ve recently wondered if that might have as much or more to do with Sabbath rest as with with diet.
I enjoyed Laurita’s insights today…taking a break–regularly. And I just read something that supports Skip’s last paragraph in today’s column. David Stern, in his “Jewish New Testament Commentary,” notes that the phrase “Son of Man” in Mark 2:28 may not be referring solely to Yeshua Himself. The “Hebrew ben-adam (literally “son of man”) can mean simply ‘man, person,’ with no Messianic overtone: ‘people control Shabbat’ and not the other way around.”
I have a question. If the word melakah means creative work. When Yeshua healed on the Sabbath, is that creative work?
Of course, there is no prohibition of healing on Shabbat. That wasn’t the issue. And perhaps Yeshua suggests that bringing someone back to God’s intended state of being isn’t really creative work. Perhaps. But the real point is that Yeshua follows that Pharisees in the claim that LIFE trumps Shabbat rules. There is a hierarchy of obedience, what I call “loose Torah.”