More from Ched Myers (whose book Sabbath Economics we've been studying at church, which I referenced way back ). On speaking about Sabbath and the Creation story, Myers says:
The Creator culminates this "good" work by stopping: "God rested on the seventh day from all the work God did" (Gen. 2:2). Hebrew Bible scholar and activist Richard Lowery, in his brilliant Sabbath and Jubilee (2000), points out "...in a delightful twist, 'rest is signified as a verb in this passage and 'work' as a noun." This establishes a primal pattern: Good work followed by Sabbath. It is important to note that this cosmic Sabbath is not for the purpose of resting in order to work more; there is no "Monday" in the Creation narrative.
The purpose of this Sabbath is to enjoy the world forever, which is why it is "blessed," just like the creation itself. Lowery concludes that the Sabbath thus captures the double theme of the creation story:
1. Abundance as the divine gift, and
2. Self-limitation as the appropriate response.
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Thoughts? Has anyone read Lowery's book?
11 comments:
Eh? That's a bit of nonsense. The versicle (the second part) employs the phrase 'mikal-mlakthu' (from all his work).
mi = from
kal = all
malaka(th) = work
u = his
The phrase must be taken grammatically as a whole. The hyphen shows that the substantive (word acting as a noun) 'kal' stands in what in Hebrew grammar is called the 'construct' state, to the word 'mlakth' which is in the 'absolute' state. That is, the grammatical relationship between the two is 'all-of-work. Add the eclectic particles and you get from-all-of-his-work meant to be taken as one grammatical unit.
What I mean by all that blather is that to express that idea in Hebrew and not be annoyingly awkward, the word 'work' HAS to be a noun. Only nouns can stand in the 'absolute state'.
That is, much as John Nash (A Beautiful Mind), your author is seeing patterns that aren't there.
There are two points made very clear in the Writ that seems to escape the Sabbath aficionados:
1. "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work"
The command here is to work six days. It isn't an observation, or 'if you happen to be working six days, then take a Sabbath off.' It is a direct command to work, not goof off, not pontificate, not make excuses, .... work! Then after you have done that, we'll talk about the Sabbath.
But until you you have fulfilled the FIRST part of the command, the second is meaningless and doesn't apply to you.
2) "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread"
The Hebrew language has no 'tenses' as does English. 'Shalt' in both of these verses is a command, not a request or an observation. This versicle establishes what sort of work the above is talking about, that is, we are to take care of our own needs through our physical activity.
It is the idle mind that is not doing these commands of God that can hallucinate over patterns in text that aren't really there.
I don't believe anyone here is advocating NOT working, E.
Thanks for the Hebrew lesson, though.
No, I wouldn't expect that anyone would advocate not working. Rather that working is a bad thing rather than a blessing from God, as well as a command of God.
As your author does point out, Sabbath does not mean "rest" in the modern sense but rather "refrain" and "cease."
Also the root of the word used in reference to God doesn't usually mean 'labor' but rather "endeavor", "enterprise", "arranging", and "organizing."
So 'rest from His labor' less conveys the idea than 'refrain from His organizing'.
Yet my posit, Dan, would be that if we concentrate on our endeavor and labor as being a gift from God, the opportunity to do it a gift from God, then the whole concept of Sabbath becomes a different proposition.
Again, every one here believes in good work as a blessing and a grand thing. We're on the same page in that regard.
Perhaps it may sound from this small excerpt that Myers is opposed to work, but that's not the case and I apologize for if my offering was not clear in context.
Eleutheros, on an unrelated note: Where did you learn your Hebrew/Greek?
Ask me privily and will tell you.
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Alas, nothing would be safe.
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"I could infer from that comment that there is hope for an uneducated mechanic and would-be Clarence Jordan who "in the wee small hours of the morning" is plugging away at a UBS4 text and Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek."
Kmoo, something along those lines would be the gist of my meaning.
However, I much recommend broadening your exposure to Greek farther than one conservative exegete. Mounce's books have value, but they suffer from what so much of the Christian religion suffers, somehow no matter what the linguistic or historical data, the grammar and semantics will always oddly and miraculously support the views of Mounce's denominational views.
Mounce also suffers, does he not, from the ridiculous assertion that Konie Greek had eight cases of nouns, a moronic idea first proposed by Robertson in 1934. I always found it odd that the Greeks themselves from three millennia ago identified five cases in their own language but thousands of years alter a conservative Biblical scholar finds that Greek speakers have been wrong all this time.
That's the sort of thing I'd watch out for.
Dan, I haven't had the opportunity to read Lowery's or Meyers' books. Do they have anything to say about America's shift, away from an agrarian economy, with an emphasis on physical labor, and the decline in observing that much needed Day of Rest.
I have not read Lowery's book(s), Myers references it in his book, Sabbath Economics, which is really just a booklet - a tiny thing. As I recall, he may address our shift away from agrarianism, but just barely.
By the way, I've picked up the Brende book, Better Off from the library. Looks interesting.
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