advoc8

When I was down in St Kilda this afternoon I saw this advertisment, and was wondering if it’s suggesting something similar to the Jewish and Christian tradition of Sabbath. What do you think?

I’ve been thinking a bit recently about Sabbath. The basic idea is that everyone should be able to have one day a week where they can rest. This was so important to the ancient Israelites that it was part of their creation story:

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
(Genesis 2:2-3)

(It seems as though the day of rest must have been really important if even God needed to have a rest. Or maybe it was important because it was something God did?)
Later on, when the Israelites are wandering in the desert, they are told that they won’t need to gather food on the Sabbath, because they’ll have enough fresh food left over from the day before:

Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. He said to them, “This is what the LORD commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.’ ”
So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. “Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a sabbath to the LORD. You will not find any of it on the ground today. Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.”
(Exodus 16:21-26)

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