By Joey Israel and Shmuli Phillips
The Torah’s description of God resting on the seventh day is not widely regarded as presenting a theological challenge. We are comfortable with the idea, which unusually finds support across the gamut of traditional commentators, that God merely ceased from creative activity on the seventh day. Rather than imagining that we mimic God’s seventh-day siesta each week, the laws of Shabbat are understood to symbolise our recognition of God’s specific and defined creative input into the world at its inception (a matter examined from various perspectives in Judaism Reclaimed).
Several sources suggest, however, that 2000 years ago the notion of God resting on Shabbat was more keenly contested, and may even have been at the heart of early Jewish-Christian disputation.
Bereishit Rabbah (11:10) explains, from a close reading of the verse, that God’s rest on Shabbat constitutes rest only from the specific work of world-creation, and not from God’s activities as a judge of the righteous and the wicked. This is based upon the understanding that God’s rest marks the satisfactory completion of the specific process of world-creation: it is the cessation of that specific work that the rest marks. We might draw two conclusions from this:
1) God continues to engage, on Shabbat, in other types of work which are not considered part of the process of ‘creating the world’.
2) It does not necessarily follow that God would repeat his rest on a weekly basis, considering that the creation has now been satisfactorily completed.
The question of whether and to what extent God rests on Shabbat features again in our parasha of Beshalach:
In response to their complaining, the Israelites are given manna from heaven, which is initially presumed to continue each day. However, on Friday a double portion arrives. In answer to their questions the people are told:
“…This is what God has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of rest, a holy Shabbat to God; bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning” (16:23).
The apparent implication is that God will not be delivering manna on the following day because He himself will be resting. Bear in mind that the people, according to the plain meaning of the verses, have not as yet received any instructions regarding Shabbat. This suggests that God does in fact observe some kind of weekly rest which would preclude Him from delivering manna on the Shabbat, a suggestion which is reinforced in verses 16:25-26, where a defining feature of Shabbat seems to be the absence of God’s provision of manna.
To summarise, the rabbis seem to endorse two potential positions. The first is that God does not rest entirely on Shabbat because Shabbat only constitutes His rest from creating the world but not His rest from acting within it as a judge. The second is that, given the nature of God and his relationship with the world, God’s post-creation activity in the world on Shabbat cannot constitute work.
Both of these approaches find parallels in the writings of Hellenist philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who suggests in his Allegorical Interpretation that God is forever ‘creating’ and does not rest on Shabbat as man does. This is achieved by rereading וישבת (Gen. 2:2) as ‘he causedto rest’ i.e. he made other things rest but not Himself. Elsewhere Philo suggests that, as a consequence of His vastly different nature, only God is truly able to fulfil the quality of ‘rest’ on Shabbat and festivals properly. God alone is constantly in a state of rest, considering that He is wholly unaffected by fatigue from activity.
The most striking ancient argument relating to what God does or does not do on Shabbat may be found in the New Testament, where Jesus justifies working on the Shabbat by saying “My father is still working, and I am also working”(John 5:17). Simply put, this assumes that God does not observe the Shabbat, thus aligning the evangelist’s position with that of the min (“heretic”) in Shemot Rabbah above. Notably, both the heretic and the New Testament are primarily focused on the lesser prohibition of carrying. The Gospel of John is usually assumed to have been authored between 70CE-110CE, within a decade or two of when the Rabbis named in the story of Shemot Rabbah are said to have lived. Some scholars have suggested that the term min refers to early Christians, with the insertion of “veLamalshinim” in the prayer-book an attempt to excommunicate them from the synagogue. Indeed, frustration with being excommunicated is an important theme in the Gospel of John. If this is correct it could be suggested that the heretic in our midrash who, like Jesus, claims that God ‘’works on Shabbat’’ is actually an early Christian.
The disagreement over how to interpret the biblical reference to God’s resting may reflect a deeper gulf between Jewish and Christian conceptions of God. While Judaism recognises an absolute qualitative distinction between the divine and human realm which defies any meaningful attribution of “rest” to God, Christianity conflates the divine and human identities. This conflation grants theological legitimacy to the notion that one can meaningfully compare God’s work with human activity and thus permit work on Shabbat (hence “My father is still working, and I am also working”). The rabbis’ reaction to Jesus’s claim – as recorded by John in the continuation of the passage – certainly highlights the theological significance underpinning his words:
“For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” (John 5:18).
The passage in Shemot Rabbah telling of the rabbis’ debate with the ‘’heretic’’ would therefore have been addressing a highly relevant matter of profound theological significance.
First posted to Facebook 27 January 2021, here.
