The Lord of the Sabbath
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- Category: Jesus and the Sabbath
Yahweh is renowned to have shaken the ancient world by issuing the revolutionary Sabbath laws.
- The Sabbath Day commandments declare a mandatory day of rest every week, for everyone in the society.
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The Sabbath Year commandments release everyone from debts and also the land from cultivation, every seven years.
- Natural food from the uncultivated land becomes free for all in the Sabbath Year, no matter who owns the land.
- The Jubilee Year commandments, which are a logical extension of the Sabbath Year laws, return mortgaged ancestral lands and properties back to their original owners even if the debt is not paid back.
The chief hallmark of these commandments is their application to one and all, regardless of class, gender and ethnicity.
- They proclaim justice, equality and liberty for all.
- Yahweh even brought animals and the land into the protections of these laws.
Unfortunately, as centuries go by, the spirit of those laws are lost by the people. The kings of Israel and Judah fail to follow them as they go the ways of the neighboring Empires, doing injustice to the people and evil in the eyes of Yahweh. Then both the kingdoms fall under the direct control of those Empires. The Northern Israel falls to the Assyrians and gets wiped off the map while the Southern Judah survives but is later taken into exile under Babylon.
When the exiled people later return to Judah, there is a pent-up nationalistic fervor to do things that will help take them back to their ancestral roots. As part of those efforts, adherence to Yahweh’s laws is promoted. Groups that mis-interpret those laws, with more of a ritualistic and legalistic bent, start to appear. The irony is that, in their zeal to force compliance from the people, they end up instituting regulations that violate the very spirit of those laws. This essentially is the state of affairs during the times of Jesus.
Jesus, throughout his ministry of preaching the Empire of Yahweh, reminds the people of the original intent of those groundbreaking laws including the Sabbath.
The Picking of the Grain
One sabbath he [Jesus] was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”
Mark 2:23-28
In this incident, the Pharisees, a first century group that had strict interpretations of Yahweh’s laws, make a deduction that plucking grains in a field constitutes work, and hence it is an illegal act, as work is rather forbidden on the Sabbath day. Jesus responds to them quoting an incident from David’s life, and reminds them of the spirit of the Sabbath commandment and the original intent behind it. The “bread of presence” was holy and reserved to be eaten by the ritually pure priests during the Sabbath (Leviticus 24:5-9; Exodus 25:30). But David and his band of hungry men entered God’s house in their time of need and ate it freely with no fear (1 Samuel 21:1-6). The need of the people superseded the priestly Sabbath requirements, and God was fine with it.
In fact, Yahweh’s commandments always have that theme of putting your fellow human in need above all else.
For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard. Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed.
Exodus 23:10-12
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.
Lev 19:9-10
The disciples of Jesus pluck the grain in that field that fine Sabbath day, not as landowners out to make a profit, but as men who are in hunger. And Yahweh’s Sabbath laws are actually designed to ensure the needs of such people are met.
This is the point Jesus makes, ending with his reminder to the Pharisees that “the sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.” Now there are two possible ways to interpret the phrase “the Son of Man”. Either it could be Jesus essentially referring to himself in third person as the “the Son of Man” figure from the apocalyptic prophecies of the Hebrew Bible (Eg. Daniel), or it could simply mean “human being”. Considering the preceding statement on how the Sabbath was made for humankind and not the other way around, the latter interpretation seems more apt.
The Sabbath was made for humanity during the creation itself (Exodus 20:11). Human beings were made in God’s own image to be “lords” of the Earth (Genesis 1:26). They were to be lords of the Sabbath. When the people of God were enslaved by the Empire and suffered oppression, Yahweh liberated them and restored them back to be their lordships and gave them back their Sabbath privilege (Deut 5:15). That is why, the human i.e., “the Son of Man”, is indeed lord of the Sabbath.
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