Abraham Heschel has written one of the most profound reflections on Jewish conceptions of Sabbath, and I could not help but feel the beauty of his book pointed throughout to Christ. His expansive picture of the Sabbath is in no way diminished by this interpretation, as its universality is inclusive of both Judaism and Christianity. What this interpretation makes clear, is the personal reality and dynamism behind Heschel’s description. Perhaps the great offense of Christianity to Jews, is that all that Judaism claims about holiness is thought by Christians to be fulfilled in the person of Christ: the embodiment of the holy law, the holy place, the holy time, and ultimately of the holiness of God, but this holiness in the Bible never existed as an entity unto itself, but is preceded by and conjoined with the Sabbath (indicative of a fulfilled messianic time). Holiness (qadosh), the word which is representative of the divine, is not first connected with a holy object, a holy mountain, or a holy altar, but it is first introduced in Genesis at the end of creation as a holy time.[1] “Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy” (Gen 2:3). This is not the usual religious thinking, concerned at it is with holy places, but it is connected to a holy time and voice, speaking of himself to all creation. “It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”[2] The holiness of the Sabbath preceded and extended beyond Israel, with its land and feasts and temple and the Jews as a people, and is directly connected with God’s universal sanctifying presence. “According to some it is the name of the Holy One,”[3] a day into which all humans are invited.
The Bride of the Lamb/Sabbath
“The love of the Sabbath is the love of man for what he and God have in common.”[4] In this time humans are joined to God, joined to this time permeated by the eternal presence, and are thus literally made in his image through this union. This is universal man, Adam, and not a particular race or religion. The Jewish people preserved the Sabbath, but it was never theirs alone. The completion of man by woman means creation is an open-ended process, in which the whole inner basis of humankind (contained in the name Adam) is an ongoing realization of love, an ongoing realization of the divine image through marriage.[5] “This is what the ancient rabbis felt: the Sabbath demands all of man’s attention, the service and single-minded devotion of total love.”[6]
In the interpretation of the rabbis, all the other days are paired and the Lord says to the Sabbath: “The Community of Israel is your mate.”[7] Sabbath is God’s search and longing for man, a reversal of the usual picture. “The six days stand in need of space; the seventh day stands in need of man. It is not good that the spirit should be alone, so Israel was destined to be a helpmeet for the Sabbath.”[8] Welcoming the Sabbath is likened to meeting one’s bride and its celebration is like a wedding.[9] “We are the mate of the Sabbath, and each week through our sanctification of the Sabbath, we marry the day.”[10] A wedding feast for all.
The rabbinic focus, and that of the early Christians, on the Song of Songs indicates that the depth of love is lit by the flame of Yahweh’s presence (8:6). The one flesh relation between male and female is realized only in the presence of this binding, passionate, presence. According to Rabbi Akiba: “All of time is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all of the songs are holy, but the Song of Songs is the holiest of holies.”[11] Early Christians concurred, reading it as an allegory of the marriage between Christ and believers. It was cited by Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, Origen, and Augustine and in medieval Western Christianity it became the most popular biblical text.[12] In the Jewish conception the promise of the Sabbath is this depth of love, being conjoined to God in the spirit in the love of a day. In Christian thought the two becoming one in Genesis is the mystery fulfilled through Christ and the church (Eph 5:32). The Second Adam completes the human capacity for image bearing and the second Adam and his bride join the human and divine for eternity.
It is not so much an observance as an alternative existence in and through relationship. The marriage of and to this day contains the movement and purpose of personhood and history. This time, this event, this personhood, is what God and humans share and in which they are conjoined. The Church as the bride of Christ indicates Sabbath predestination was always the unfolding telos summing up all things. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:31-32). Sabbath pointed to and contained the reality of Immanuel, “God with us.” God has come to his Temple, he has been joined to his creation, inclusive of the cosmic order but most particularly his habitation in and with the human soul.
Sabbath Rest as Redemption and Arrival of the Spirit
Rest or menuha is not simply a ceasing from work, but from the futile toil of labor as described in Genesis, outside the presence of God. Heschel describes civilization as caught up in the struggle of toil, subduing the earth, forging instruments of war and technology, being “within” the world without being able to surpass the world. Sabbath is this surpassing possibility.[13] Even at the beginning, it is the creation of something new, in that tranquility, serenity, and repose, with God are made possible. There is a divine dignity in labor, which Sabbath does not diminish but ensures, by providing a time of freedom from the all-consuming demands. On this day the toil, the futility, the worship of money, are halted.[14] We can do without such things, such possessions, such values. “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; a day on which handling money is considered a desecration, on which man avows his independence of that which is the world’s chief idol.”[15] Heschel equates menuha with happiness, stillness, peace, and harmony. It is the root word Job used to describe the after-life he was longing for, or the state in which troubling wickedness and weariness, fighting, strife and fear are abolished. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters (the waters of menuhot).”[16] “All that is divine in the world is brought into union with God. This is Sabbath, and the true happiness of the universe.”[17]
The Sabbath is the foretaste of the miracle of redemption, sometimes considered as the arrival of the soul unto itself (a second soul). As Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said: “The Holy One, Blessed be He, gives a person an additional soul on Shabbat eve, and at the conclusion of Shabbat removes it from him, as it is stated: “He ceased from work and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:17).[18] It is not the creation of the soul but the reception of more soul, or spirit. It is also described as the “resurrection of the soul, of the soul of man and of the soul of all things. A medieval sage declares: The world which was created in six days was a world without a soul. It was on the seventh day that the world was given a soul.”[19] As Heschel describes referencing the rabbis, man is given a “supernal soul” or a soul which is “all perfection.” “It is ‘the holy spirit that rests upon man and adorns him with a crown like the crown of angels….”[20]
This granting of the soul or Spirit, completed through Christ, is the end point of God’s in-breathing of his image. No longer will death and death-dealing inclinations intervene, as life and peace are an enduring presence in the Spirit. “He gives the Spirit without measure” (John 3:34). In Judaism the spirit comes and goes with the passing of the Sabbath but as the writer of Hebrews describes, Christians enter into a continual Sabbath rest (Heb 4). This abiding presence is to be coveted and desired above all things. “It seeks to displace the coveting of things in space for coveting the things in time, teaching man to covet the seventh day all days of the week.”[21] “Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest” (Heb 4:11).
The love, joy, peace, and long-suffering, granted by the Spirit, were already to be present in the joy of the Sabbath. As Heschel writes, “Not only is it forbidden to light a fire on the Sabbath, but, . . . “Ye shall kindle no fire– not even the fire of righteous indignation.”[22] There is to be no sadness, anger, or mourning on the Sabbath. This is not simply a day, but the beginning of the realization of paradise, in which wrath, and strife are overcome. The Sabbath was always anticipation of the messianic age in which there is an enduring Sabbath: “Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath … one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.”[23]
Sabbath Time Giving Significance to Space
Sabbath is the entry of the eternal into time, an eternalization of the moments of time. Time can be “spent” in subduing nature, in gaining control through technical means, and thus one can build houses and barns but these things are not what is required for the soul (Luke 12:20). Barn building technique enlarges the physical habitation but does nothing for the expanse of the soul. The six days of toil are not to reign over the seventh, but are subordinate, as life spent in gaining power, wealth, and control is a form of slavery, if not conjoined to the eternal. “The manufacture of tools, the art of spinning and farming, the building of houses, the craft of sailing-all this goes on in man’s spatial surroundings.”[24] All of these describe a preoccupation with space, and this aim of spatial dominance tends to infect even religious understanding. In Japan, for example, sacred groves, sacred rocks, sacred mountains, constitute the “places” of the holy. People tend to “locate” the divine in space, and time and history are not assigned spiritual significance. The question of “where” and not “when” is primary.
This spatial attachment, to land, to place, to objects, or to things, tends to mold our image accordingly. Memorials to the dead and sacred shrines to the deities are literally made of the same stuff. Remembrance and preservation of the dead, service of dead objects, exercise a kind of spatial tyranny. “Thingness” or material space seems to constitute reality. “In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is thinghood, consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived, by most of us, as a thing.”[25] The gods fashioned in our image, reflect back the tyranny of the material world over our self-conception. In Sabbath there is an engagement of time, not simply as passing, but as an intersection with the eternal. Our tendency to cling to objects and space as if they are not perishing, is an obvious falsehood. “Things perish within time; time itself does not change.”[26] Time does not pass or die, but things in time do. “Monuments of stone are destined to disappear; days of spirit never pass away.”[27] The desire to possess creates rivalry, but time cannot be possessed or owned. “We cannot solve the problem of time through the conquest of space, through either pyramids or fame.”[28] The Bible assigns primacy to time, and so history, generations, events, are more important than countries, geography, or space. Time bears the meaning of space and is assigned a significance to which space is relegated.
Heschel notes that the Jews, like other people, celebrated life in nature, with its respective agricultural celebrations, these were transformed into time focused celebrations. Passover, originally a spring festival became a celebration of the Exodus, the wheat harvest festival became the celebration of the day Torah was given, the festival of vintage became the celebration of the sojourn in the wilderness. “To Israel the unique events of historic time were spiritually more significant than the repetitive processes in the cycle of nature, even though physical sustenance depended on the latter.”[29] The Jews began like other peoples, focused on nature and things, but then the redemption from slavery, the giving of the law, the guidance through the wilderness, drew the focus to events in history.
Heschel maintains, “It was only after the people had succumbed to the temptation of worshipping a thing, a golden calf, that the erection of a Tabernacle, of holiness in space, was commanded.”[30]The sanctity of time in the Sabbath, and then in the events of the exodus, were followed by a sanctity of space in the tabernacle, the temple, and then the land. “Time was hallowed by God; space, the Tabernacle, was consecrated by Moses.”[31] There is a holiness in time attached to sacred events. Each of these shifts however, come to be centered on the temple, which unlike the events proves subject to destruction. But then Jesus identifies himself as true temple and the significance behind each of these events.
Jesus as the Significance of Sabbath
Jesus disrupts the Passover sacrifice in the temple with a sign which, in his explanation, points to himself as true temple: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). The Jewish holy place is turned once again into a holy event in his person. During the Feast of Dedication, celebrating the reconsecrated temple (in 165 BCE), Jesus describes himself as the “consecrated one” (John 10:36). This temple is not subject to destruction, and this “building” is no longer a place but a person and a people. John the Baptist’s introduction and summation of the work of Christ, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29), pictures both Passover and the Day of Atonement as fulfilled in Christ. The event of the Exodus (the passing over of death), becomes an eternal event and entry into God’s presence (atonement) a personal and permanent realization. At the Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths), Jesus describes himself in terms of this festival as the source of thirst-quenching water (John 7:37) and the light of the world (John 8:12) recalling the miraculous events in the wilderness, but this deliverance from out of bondage, homelessness, hunger and thirst are eternal events in time. Christ is identified as the true giving of the law written on the heart through the Spirit (John 3; Rom 2:14-16). Here is the creation of a holy people promised in the law. The passage is from space centered to a centering on events, but then the focus on the temple returns these events to a place. Christ turns them into a focus on the dynamics of his personhood and incarnation.
Conclusion
The threat of time, seems to be a series of empty and identical moments delivering to death and the loss of the world, but Christ as Sabbath fills time with eternal presence. As Heschel writes, “All week long we are called upon to sanctify life through employing things of space. On the Sabbath it is given us to share in the holiness that is in the heart of time.” Here “Eternity utters a day.”[32] As the writer of Hebrews puts it, “So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His” (Heb 4:9–10). The Sabbath rest is to be found in resting in his presence. The sanctification of time, begun in Sabbath, invades all of time in he who is the reality of Sabbath.
[1] Abraham Josua Heschel, The Sabbath: its meaning for modern man (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005) 9.
[2] Ibid, 10.
[3] Ibid, 20.
[4] Ibid, 16.
[5] Ibid, xv
[6] Ibid, 17.
[7] Ibid, 51
[8] Ibid, 52.
[9] Ibid, 53-4
[10] Ibid, this is the summation of his daughter in the Introduction.
[11] Ibid, 98.
[12] See Karl Shuve, The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
[13] Heschel, 27.
[14] Ibid, 28.
[15] Ibid, 29.
[16] Ibid, 22-23.
[17] Ibid, 32.
[18] Beitzah 16a:12
[19] Heschel, 83
[20] Ibid, 88.
[21] Ibid, 91.
[22] Ibid, 29.
[23] Ibid, xv
[24] Ibid, 4.
[25] Ibid, 5.
[26] Ibid, 97.
[27] Ibid, 98.
[28] Ibid, 101.
[29] Ibid, 7.
[30] Ibid, 9-10.
[31] Ibid, 10.
[32] Ibid, 101.