Scripture Daily

Context No. 1172 of 4322 · Exodus

Context · Reflection

Exodus 23:12-17: in context

12“Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant, and the alien may be refreshed. 13“Be careful to do all things that I have said to you; and don’t invoke the name of other gods or even let them be heard out of your mouth. 14“You shall observe a feast to me three times a year. 15You shall observe the feast of unleavened bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib (for in it you came out of Egypt), and no one shall appear before me empty. 16And the feast of harvest, the first fruits of your labors, which you sow in the field; and the feast of ingathering, at the end of the year, when you gather in your labors out of the field. 17Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord GOD.

In the middle of the covenant laws, God gives the rhythm of Israel's year. Six days you work, but the seventh is rest, and the rest extends beyond you, to your ox and donkey, your servant's children, and the foreigner, that they may be refreshed. Do not even speak the names of other gods. And three times a year gather to celebrate: the feast of unleavened bread remembering the exodus, the feast of harvest bringing the firstfruits, and the feast of ingathering at year's end, and no one is to appear before God empty-handed.

Two things in this small passage are worth catching. First, the reach of Sabbath rest. God does not only command that the free Israelite man rest; he specifically names the ox, the donkey, the servant's child, and the foreign laborer, so that the weekly rest covers the animals and the powerless who cannot claim it for themselves. The Sabbath is a mercy that protects the ones most likely to be worked without stopping; God builds rest into the week for the sake of those who could not otherwise get it. Second, the instruction that no one appears before God empty-handed. Three times a year the people come to God, and each time they bring something, firstfruits, an offering; you do not come before God with nothing. It is not that God is greedy; it is that coming to him rightly involves bringing, giving, offering back a portion of what he has given. Together the two shape a people whose rest overflows onto the weak beneath them and whose worship is never empty-handed. God's rhythms are generous to those below us and honoring toward him above us.

Does my rest overflow to protect the ones under me who cannot claim it, and do I come before God bringing something rather than empty-handed?

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