#Exodus 20:8-11

The Sabbath

It was a staple of early Christian interpretation - and it remains so today - that of all the hundreds of laws in the Pentateuch, the only ones Christians are obliged to observe are the Ten Commandments. But, among those ten...not so much this one.

Augustine said that all of the Ten Commandments were meant to be followed literally, except the sabbath, which is to be taken figuratively. Why? Because what could be more Jewish than observing the sabbath? This one comes with the full set of laws and rituals...no thank you!

Of course, when Augustine was writing, he understood the Jewish sabbath as we do now (in traditional circles at least): the hyper-specific definitions of what constitutes work, the massive books full of rules and regulations, etc. But this commandment doesn’t say any of that.

Here it just says don’t work. Whatever it is that it forbids is something that domestic animals can be spared from too. Last I checked, domestic animals couldn’t light a fire, so I don’t think that’s what they had in mind. Actually, I think it was relatively simple.

It’s the sabbath. You should sanctify it - that is, keep it separate from the rest of the week - by not doing the sort of work that you make a living by. No farming - that’s the animal’s day off. No selling or trading, if that’s your thing. What instead?

Probably going to the local sanctuary to do a little sacrificing and social eating. Like you do on the new moon. Just focus on that - it probably took all day anyway - and leave the other stuff to the side. (Think of the prophets who decry thinking about work on the sabbath.)

The irony is that the original concept of the sabbath here is probably closer to the later Christian one than to the later Jewish one that Christians were so keen to avoid. Which is what happens when you confuse the interpretation and the thing being interpreted.

Two quick unrelated notes here. First, the opening word of the commandment here, “remember,” is different from its parallel in Deuteronomy, where it’s “observe.” This is, for all practical purposes, a distinction without a difference.

For theoretical purposes though, it might be related to the other major difference: in this version, we get reference to the priestly creation account of Genesis 1. That, I think, is the referent of “remember,” and speaks to the canonical context.

In D, there’s no previously stated sabbath to be remembering. Here, though there is no previous sabbath mention in E, there obviously is canonically. Which is part of why I think this Decalogue is a late post-compilation addition.