3.9

A commandment or promise?

Did God command Israel to keep His Sabbath by imitating His rest so that she can be as He is and do as He does? “You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2), He told Israel. Is God commanding her to make herself holy like Him? The Hebrew word for commandment in the Ten Commandments is davar, which means word or speech. Most Bibles translate the Ten Davar as the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13; 10:4). When spoken as commandments, they are understood as orders to be obeyed, rules to live by or risk punishment as great as death. The Sabbath as commandment requires Israel to fulfill it, as if she can keep the Sabbath rest as God rested and be holy as He is holy

Another common translation for davar is promise. The words God gave Israel are either ones she must accomplish or God’s promises to her that He will fulfill. As commandments, they end in despair because no one in Israel has kept them. The rabbis know that Israel has never been able to perfectly keep even one Sabbath. As commandment, it has yet to be obeyed by anyone. But as promise, keeping the Sabbath becomes a gift God offers. The commandment shows the human inability to ever live as God lives, but the promise speaks the grace of a faithful God. God’s word of promise both reveals and fulfills for her. God’s promise to remember and keep His Sabbath for Israel and sojourners and animals and land and all that has to do with her is His hope for all. The God whose creation was completed in His rest does not need help to fulfill His promise of holy rest for whoever would enter in. He will do it

The word God spoke to Israel is His promise of an eternal blessing. If she would but rest from her work and ways and choose instead to rest in God’s life and ways, then she will see the glory of her God. If she keeps His promise of the Sabbath, to “. . . honor it, desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own word, then you will take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken (davar)” (Isaiah 58:13,14) God has spoken His davar, His promise which is His to fulfill. Even as He spoke creation into being, God’s Sabbath is a promise He speaks to complete in us. As we hear, His word is being done. When we hear His words in our heart and see Him accomplishing them, we cannot find our own words to describe what He is doing. Regardless of the inadequacy of human words to express His good, the next chapters will try to describe God keeping His Sabbath promise for all that has to do with His creation