God’s Calendar: Counting the Rest Days of Israel
Introduction
The Old Testament calendar is a full life liturgy that regulated temple activity, moral expectations, legal codes, and purification processes. It also regulated work and rest. But how many days did the calendar prescribe work and how many days was spent not working?
It’s not a simple answer. Counting the work and rest days of Israel’s calendar requires a biblical-theological reckoning on a 49-year cycle with a concordance in one hand and a calculator in the other.
This reckoning can be organized according to five categories:
First, the ordinary year.
Second, the annual feast days.
Third, the seventh year.
Fourth, the Jubilee year.
Fifth, the implications.
Let’s get started.
First, the ordinary year
The expectation for an ordinary week was that the people would work six days and rest one day. The pattern was established at creation. In Genesis 2:1-3, God finishes his work in six days and rests on the seventh day. Notice several things. First, this occurs before the Fall, which means this pattern is not a reaction or result of the Fall. Second, this pattern predates the Mosaic Law, which means it is a creation ordinance. Third, Adam’s first day on earth is a full day of rest, not labor, meaning that in God’s calendar, rest precedes labor.
The 6/1 pattern was then commanded in the Decalogue. Exodus 20:8-10 says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work.” Why are people to rest on the seventh day? The answer is in Exodus 20:11, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” This means that the 6/1 pattern is imitation.
Deuteronomy 5 also contains the Decalogue, but the fourth commandment contains a different rationale for the 6/1 pattern. Why must they rest on the seventh day? Deuteronomy 5:15 says, “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand.” So, the reason for the 6/1 pattern in Exodus 20 is creational imitation. The reason for the 6/1 pattern in Deuteronomy 5 is in memorial of redemption. Different reasons, it seems. Or are they? In both cases, rest is God’s blessing to his people. The backdrop of Egypt reminded them that slavery is the condition of the person who cannot stop working.*
The 6/1 pattern is also reflected in the surrounding laws of the Torah. Sabbath mercy is extended downward, to servants, foreigners, and animals, suggesting that a society that cannot stop their labor especially harms the dependent parts of the community (Ex. 23:12). During the harvest season when economic pressures is heightened, God’s command for rest is still in force (Ex. 34:21). This is why Nehemiah shut down the Tyrian merchants, wine pressers, and grain loaders working on the Sabbath (Neh. 13:15-22). In the passages about the construction of the tabernacle Moses writes, “Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest” (Ex. 31:15; 35:2), reminding the people that even the construction of God’s house does not override the command to rest.
Those who resent the disruption of their work grumble and complain about the command to rest (Amos 8:5). But required rest is God’s good design. Six days of work suffices for seven days needs. The story of the manna in Exodus 16:22-30 includes a double portion on the sixth day. This is God’s provision to protect the rest day of the people.
The ordinary year also includes the new moon days (Num. 10:10; 28:11-15). These days don’t explicitly include the no-work clause. They are primarily a day for sacrifices to God. But then in other passages they are described as special days when work ceased (1 Sam. 20; 2 Kings 4:23; Amos 8:5; Ez. 46:1-3). Sometimes the new moon days are mentioned alongside Sabbaths and feasts, as if they are one class of holy days (Hos. 2:11; Is. 1:13f; 66:23; Col. 2:16). There is one new moon at the beginning of each month (Num. 28:11; Ps. 104:19; Ex. 12:2). The year has twelve months (1 Kings 4:7; 1 Chronicles 27:1-15). So, there are twelve new moon days a year. One out seven new moon days occur on a Sabbath, which was already a non-work day, meaning new moon days add ten or eleven days to the 52 Sabbath days.
Now for the calculation. One sabbath rest day a week for 52 weeks means 52 rest days per year, plus ten new moon days equals 62 non-work days, which is just over 17% of total days in the year.
Second, the annual feast days.
Leviticus 23 is a catch-all description for the feast days in the liturgical calendar.
The Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread is seven holy days for the year on which “you shall not do any ordinary work” (Lev. 23:6-8).
Next is listed the Feast of Firstfruits (Lev. 23:9-14). More slender and subtle, no additional holy days result from the Feast of Firstfruits. When there is a holy day of no work, like with the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Lev. 23:7), Pentecost (Lev. 23:21), Trumpets (Lev. 23:24), Atonement (Lev. 23:27), and Tabernacle (Lev. 23:35-36), it is explicitly said there is “no ordinary work.” The Feast of Firstfruits has no such statement, suggesting it is not a day of rest (Lev. 23:9-14).
The Feast of Weeks (AKA Pentecost) is described in Leviticus 23:15-22 and has one holy day (Lev. 23:21). The Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement, likewise, receive one holy day each (Lev. 23:24, 27). The Feast of Tabernacles (AKA Booths) has eight holy days. The first and eighth days are for solemn rest. Days two through seven are feast days. No ordinary work is done on these days.
The feasts tell a story. It begins with redemption in the Passover feast, then resurrection in the Feast of Firstfruits anticipating Christ in 1 Cor. 15:20, then the creation of a people at Pentecost where they receive unleavened bread for the first time (Acts 2), then the Feast of Trumpets where a trumpet blasts summons the congregation, then the Feast of Atonement where the blood is carried into the holy place anticipating Christ (Heb. 9-10), then the Feast of Tabernacle where God dwells with them (Zech. 14:16-19; Rev. 21:3). The point of the story is to train the popular instinct to return to it, even in times when the doubting instinct is let loose.
The calendar of feasts and holy days annually walk the people through the story of redemption, past, present, and future. This would continue until the Messiah came to fulfill it. The body and soul are being trained to look to the higher work of the Lord. God is writing a story that has a plot, a crisis, and a resolution. It moves. There are twists and turns; ups and downs; bad guys and good guys. And walking through the shadows of the story, the people see the One True Good Guy, the Messiah. When the Savior fulfills the feast days, it satisfies rather than replaces the need to set aside time to look to the higher things and be shaped by them. This is the real R&R of Scripture. In the divine calendar, the harvest is preparation for the feast. The work is preparation for rejoicing.
The feast days in total add eighteen holy days. When you account for the overlap with Sabbath days, which were already rest days, that means, at minimum, an additional 15 non-work days for the year. So, Sabbath/new moon days (62) plus non-overlapping feast days (15) is 77 rest days a year, which is 21% of the total days in the year.
Third, the seventh year
Leviticus 25:1-7 says that when Israel comes into the land, the land shall be given a Sabbath (Lev. 25:2). For six years Israel works the land and harvests the crops. The seventh year is a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land. This is a time when the people will not work the land (Lev. 25:3-5). This is the 6/1 pattern of the week stretched and applied into years.
What exactly is prohibited on the seventh year? Active, productive agricultural work. Leviticus 25:4-5 say, “You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine.” Reaping is prohibited, meaning they may not harvest the field systematically for the purpose of stockpiling. Gathering is prohibited, meaning, they may not strip the vines completely to press the grapes and store the wine.
What is permitted on the seventh year? Leviticus 25:6-7 says, “The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you.…all its yield shall be for food.” So, on that seventh year, the land is not under cultivation, but it doesn’t stop producing. The people and their animals must still eat. What will they eat? Whatever the untended land yields of itself. But this volunteer growth may not be treated like a harvest. Day by day the people pick and eat what they need.
There are other components of the seventh year. First, as Exodus 23:10-11 explains, the fallow year is a means of provision for those with no land of their own. So, in years 1-6, the person treats the land as their harvest. They own it. In year 7, the owner denies his special claim on the harvest, making it open to those in need. Second, as Deuteronomy 15:1-11 explains, the seventh year is a release from debt. “Every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord’s release has been proclaimed” (Dt. 15:2).
So, in the seventh year, people still eat, worship, keep the weekly Sabbath, and keep the feasts. They still tend the flocks and gather the volunteer growth. Trades and craft work continue, as does commerce, study, and domestic labor.
How should we handle this in our calculation? Are these 365 rest days? Not exactly. There is prescribed resting from some work. The farmers are given a distinct kind of rest, while other work remains. A significant category of work is removed, but not work as such. For a herdsman or craftsman, the seventh year apparently changed very little. For the agrarian majority of Israel, the seventh year changed a great deal. They experienced a lighter year. Mathematically, these are not counted as additional non-work days, but as lighter work days for a majority of the people.
Fourth, the Jubilee Year
Leviticus 25:8-11 describes a Jubilee year that should take place every “fiftieth year,” which is probably referring to the last year of the 49-year cycle and the first year of the next cycle. So, the “fiftieth year” is overlapping in a way that makes it the 49th year itself.** The Jubilee was announced on the Day of Atonement with a trumpet blast (Lev. 25:9). Three releases are commanded. The release of the land (Lev. 25:11-12) where the land was given rest, the release of the property where land reverted to its original family holding (Lev. 25:10, 13-34), and the release of the slaves where Israelite indentured servants went free (Lev. 25:39-55).
The Jubilee year adds no new category of human rest day beyond what we’ve already counted. The Jubilee sets right who is free and who owns what. The free servant returns home, not to rest, but to work his own land. So, it’s not extra rest from work. It’s a different kind of gift, a sort of homecoming of money, people, and land such that everyone is returned to their inheritance. It’s a reset, a refresh, a re-creation, which is what all the work and all the rest was pointing toward, a time when the people and the land would be made whole.
So, the rest days point to the Jubilee year, and the Jubilee year points to the Great Jubilee of the Messiah. Isaiah had foreseen a coming Messiah anointed to “proclaim liberty to the captives” and to announce “the year of the LORD’s favor” (Is. 61:1-2). This is the language of the Jubilee horn, now applied to all history. When Jesus stood in the synagogue at Nazareth and read Isaiah 61, He closed the scroll and said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). He was declaring Himself the Jubilee Incarnate. Every seventh year that rested the land, every “fiftieth” that freed the slave and restored the field was a preview of Christ, the Son of God arriving to cancel the true debt, to set the real captives free, and to return His people to the inheritance lost since Eden. Christ accomplished the homecoming the Jubilee year pictured. The rest and worship that Israel practiced one day in seven, Christ offers without end, saying “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28).
Fifth, the implications
When it comes to rest and work, we should strive to talk about it as biblically as possible, which means we must understand God’s liturgical calendar. We must see and count the days. We must run the calculation. We must see the purpose of resting from work.
What is the purpose? The point of rest and leisure is not to make people more efficient cogs in the economic system, but to restore the soul to wholeness. This allows a person to worship the Lord and Giver of Life, celebrate existence in God’s world, see the goodness of reality, and receive truth and beauty as gifts not measurable on a P&L sheet. A feast day, or celebration, or Sabbath that merely stops work for the sake of work serves no higher purpose than work. When the entire liturgical calendar, or corporate calendar, is reduced to fine-tuning man to be a tool for profits, then work becomes a cult—a religion—as if work included the whole field of human existence, activity, and life. This changes the nature of human existence by making “worker” the whole conception of man.
In the Old Testament calendar, 77 out of 365 days are explicitly non-work days, which makes for 1.5 days out of 7. So, the weekly ratio is to work 6 and rest 1, while the annual average is to work 5.5 and rest 1.5, which is the floor for rest days. The seventh year of land rest must also be accounted for. The seventh year hasn’t entered this calculation because some people kept herding, cooking, trading, and foraging.
But, for the agrarian majority, including the farmers and vine dressers who made up most of ancient Israel, the seventh year was dramatically lighter, even if not classified as a rest day. In a normal year, the farmer’s calendar was dominated by the grueling labor of cultivation, plowing, sowing, pruning, weeding, and harvest time. Exodus 34:21 singles out the work of the farmer as part of the covenant renewal need for Sabbath rest.
In the seventh year, all of that work stops. No plowing, no sowing, no pruning, no harvesting. What remains for the farmer is lighter than the work of the other six years. For the majority of people then, the seventh year wasn’t 1.5 rest days a week; it was closer to a year-long reduction to subsistence gathering. This can’t be neatly fit into the calculation, but it is part of the calendar to keep in mind.
It’s true that the laws and ceremonies of the Old Testament expired with that nation-state, including the liturgical calendar of feast days, new moon days, and so on. But the general equity principles still remain for the people of God, which suggests there is biblical wisdom in trying to apply the biblical-theological calendar, calculations, and commission of work and rest.
There are other factors to think about before these principles can be comprehensively formulated, such as (1) how work is not equal to a job/career, (2) how much of the work days should be spent working at the job and how much time should be spent doing other work, (3) the change from an agrarian society to an industrial one, (4) the shift of work as something that once took place inside the home to something that now takes place outside the home, (5) the difference between manual labor and desk work, (6) the intolerance of laziness in the covenant community (2 Thess. 3:6-10), (7) the exact nature of a convocation day, a feast day, and a Sabbath day, (8) the nature of leisure as awakening your soul to higher things, and (9) how the purpose of rest days points to the work of Christ as the great giver of rest (Mt. 11:28).
But for now, we can say this. Israel’s calendar built rest in at every scale. One day in seven, an extra half-day worth of feasts, and then an entire agricultural sabbatical every seventh year. Rest is woven into the day, the week, the month, and the year, all the way up to the Jubilee, which is not a corporate Christmas party to build company loyalty, but an entire year of receiving divine gifts. God’s divine design is a society that works hard and unto the Lord (Col. 3:17). But the people were forbidden from working endlessly. The whole calendar was pointing to the rest, not just as a time to put your feet up, but as the time to worship, celebrate, and receive the divine rest of the Redeemer who is Lord Sabbath.
Without the liturgical calendar, Israel would have been like the Canaanites, where strange gods were worshiped under strange skies. God’s design of worship, rest, celebration, and work points to the King of King’s defiance of the pagan program that thrusts people up against a vast and vague hostility to divine rest. So odd and beautiful is God’s movement toward rest that the faithful might hear not only the blast of the trumpet, but the voice of the outsider singing along, longing for the perilous grace that is poised to receive him in eternal rest.
Jason Cherry is an elder at Trinity Reformed Church in Huntsville, Alabama, as well as a teacher and lecturer of literature, history, and economics at Providence Classical School in Huntsville. He graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary with an MA in Religion and is the author of The Culture of Conversionism and the History of the Altar Call and The Making of Evangelical Spirituality.
* The author of Hebrews had something to say about the rest of God (Heb. 3:7 – 4:13).
** We should note that there is another view that this is a distinct 50th year. For our purposes, it matters only very little, as it will change the math slightly if we are calculating on a 49-year window or a 50-year window.
The Old Testament calendar is a full life liturgy that regulated temple activity, moral expectations, legal codes, and purification processes. It also regulated work and rest. But how many days did the calendar prescribe work and how many days was spent not working?
It’s not a simple answer. Counting the work and rest days of Israel’s calendar requires a biblical-theological reckoning on a 49-year cycle with a concordance in one hand and a calculator in the other.
This reckoning can be organized according to five categories:
First, the ordinary year.
Second, the annual feast days.
Third, the seventh year.
Fourth, the Jubilee year.
Fifth, the implications.
Let’s get started.
First, the ordinary year
The expectation for an ordinary week was that the people would work six days and rest one day. The pattern was established at creation. In Genesis 2:1-3, God finishes his work in six days and rests on the seventh day. Notice several things. First, this occurs before the Fall, which means this pattern is not a reaction or result of the Fall. Second, this pattern predates the Mosaic Law, which means it is a creation ordinance. Third, Adam’s first day on earth is a full day of rest, not labor, meaning that in God’s calendar, rest precedes labor.
The 6/1 pattern was then commanded in the Decalogue. Exodus 20:8-10 says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work.” Why are people to rest on the seventh day? The answer is in Exodus 20:11, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” This means that the 6/1 pattern is imitation.
Deuteronomy 5 also contains the Decalogue, but the fourth commandment contains a different rationale for the 6/1 pattern. Why must they rest on the seventh day? Deuteronomy 5:15 says, “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand.” So, the reason for the 6/1 pattern in Exodus 20 is creational imitation. The reason for the 6/1 pattern in Deuteronomy 5 is in memorial of redemption. Different reasons, it seems. Or are they? In both cases, rest is God’s blessing to his people. The backdrop of Egypt reminded them that slavery is the condition of the person who cannot stop working.*
The 6/1 pattern is also reflected in the surrounding laws of the Torah. Sabbath mercy is extended downward, to servants, foreigners, and animals, suggesting that a society that cannot stop their labor especially harms the dependent parts of the community (Ex. 23:12). During the harvest season when economic pressures is heightened, God’s command for rest is still in force (Ex. 34:21). This is why Nehemiah shut down the Tyrian merchants, wine pressers, and grain loaders working on the Sabbath (Neh. 13:15-22). In the passages about the construction of the tabernacle Moses writes, “Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest” (Ex. 31:15; 35:2), reminding the people that even the construction of God’s house does not override the command to rest.
Those who resent the disruption of their work grumble and complain about the command to rest (Amos 8:5). But required rest is God’s good design. Six days of work suffices for seven days needs. The story of the manna in Exodus 16:22-30 includes a double portion on the sixth day. This is God’s provision to protect the rest day of the people.
The ordinary year also includes the new moon days (Num. 10:10; 28:11-15). These days don’t explicitly include the no-work clause. They are primarily a day for sacrifices to God. But then in other passages they are described as special days when work ceased (1 Sam. 20; 2 Kings 4:23; Amos 8:5; Ez. 46:1-3). Sometimes the new moon days are mentioned alongside Sabbaths and feasts, as if they are one class of holy days (Hos. 2:11; Is. 1:13f; 66:23; Col. 2:16). There is one new moon at the beginning of each month (Num. 28:11; Ps. 104:19; Ex. 12:2). The year has twelve months (1 Kings 4:7; 1 Chronicles 27:1-15). So, there are twelve new moon days a year. One out seven new moon days occur on a Sabbath, which was already a non-work day, meaning new moon days add ten or eleven days to the 52 Sabbath days.
Now for the calculation. One sabbath rest day a week for 52 weeks means 52 rest days per year, plus ten new moon days equals 62 non-work days, which is just over 17% of total days in the year.
Second, the annual feast days.
Leviticus 23 is a catch-all description for the feast days in the liturgical calendar.
The Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread is seven holy days for the year on which “you shall not do any ordinary work” (Lev. 23:6-8).
Next is listed the Feast of Firstfruits (Lev. 23:9-14). More slender and subtle, no additional holy days result from the Feast of Firstfruits. When there is a holy day of no work, like with the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Lev. 23:7), Pentecost (Lev. 23:21), Trumpets (Lev. 23:24), Atonement (Lev. 23:27), and Tabernacle (Lev. 23:35-36), it is explicitly said there is “no ordinary work.” The Feast of Firstfruits has no such statement, suggesting it is not a day of rest (Lev. 23:9-14).
The Feast of Weeks (AKA Pentecost) is described in Leviticus 23:15-22 and has one holy day (Lev. 23:21). The Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement, likewise, receive one holy day each (Lev. 23:24, 27). The Feast of Tabernacles (AKA Booths) has eight holy days. The first and eighth days are for solemn rest. Days two through seven are feast days. No ordinary work is done on these days.
The feasts tell a story. It begins with redemption in the Passover feast, then resurrection in the Feast of Firstfruits anticipating Christ in 1 Cor. 15:20, then the creation of a people at Pentecost where they receive unleavened bread for the first time (Acts 2), then the Feast of Trumpets where a trumpet blasts summons the congregation, then the Feast of Atonement where the blood is carried into the holy place anticipating Christ (Heb. 9-10), then the Feast of Tabernacle where God dwells with them (Zech. 14:16-19; Rev. 21:3). The point of the story is to train the popular instinct to return to it, even in times when the doubting instinct is let loose.
The calendar of feasts and holy days annually walk the people through the story of redemption, past, present, and future. This would continue until the Messiah came to fulfill it. The body and soul are being trained to look to the higher work of the Lord. God is writing a story that has a plot, a crisis, and a resolution. It moves. There are twists and turns; ups and downs; bad guys and good guys. And walking through the shadows of the story, the people see the One True Good Guy, the Messiah. When the Savior fulfills the feast days, it satisfies rather than replaces the need to set aside time to look to the higher things and be shaped by them. This is the real R&R of Scripture. In the divine calendar, the harvest is preparation for the feast. The work is preparation for rejoicing.
The feast days in total add eighteen holy days. When you account for the overlap with Sabbath days, which were already rest days, that means, at minimum, an additional 15 non-work days for the year. So, Sabbath/new moon days (62) plus non-overlapping feast days (15) is 77 rest days a year, which is 21% of the total days in the year.
Third, the seventh year
Leviticus 25:1-7 says that when Israel comes into the land, the land shall be given a Sabbath (Lev. 25:2). For six years Israel works the land and harvests the crops. The seventh year is a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land. This is a time when the people will not work the land (Lev. 25:3-5). This is the 6/1 pattern of the week stretched and applied into years.
What exactly is prohibited on the seventh year? Active, productive agricultural work. Leviticus 25:4-5 say, “You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine.” Reaping is prohibited, meaning they may not harvest the field systematically for the purpose of stockpiling. Gathering is prohibited, meaning, they may not strip the vines completely to press the grapes and store the wine.
What is permitted on the seventh year? Leviticus 25:6-7 says, “The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you.…all its yield shall be for food.” So, on that seventh year, the land is not under cultivation, but it doesn’t stop producing. The people and their animals must still eat. What will they eat? Whatever the untended land yields of itself. But this volunteer growth may not be treated like a harvest. Day by day the people pick and eat what they need.
There are other components of the seventh year. First, as Exodus 23:10-11 explains, the fallow year is a means of provision for those with no land of their own. So, in years 1-6, the person treats the land as their harvest. They own it. In year 7, the owner denies his special claim on the harvest, making it open to those in need. Second, as Deuteronomy 15:1-11 explains, the seventh year is a release from debt. “Every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord’s release has been proclaimed” (Dt. 15:2).
So, in the seventh year, people still eat, worship, keep the weekly Sabbath, and keep the feasts. They still tend the flocks and gather the volunteer growth. Trades and craft work continue, as does commerce, study, and domestic labor.
How should we handle this in our calculation? Are these 365 rest days? Not exactly. There is prescribed resting from some work. The farmers are given a distinct kind of rest, while other work remains. A significant category of work is removed, but not work as such. For a herdsman or craftsman, the seventh year apparently changed very little. For the agrarian majority of Israel, the seventh year changed a great deal. They experienced a lighter year. Mathematically, these are not counted as additional non-work days, but as lighter work days for a majority of the people.
Fourth, the Jubilee Year
Leviticus 25:8-11 describes a Jubilee year that should take place every “fiftieth year,” which is probably referring to the last year of the 49-year cycle and the first year of the next cycle. So, the “fiftieth year” is overlapping in a way that makes it the 49th year itself.** The Jubilee was announced on the Day of Atonement with a trumpet blast (Lev. 25:9). Three releases are commanded. The release of the land (Lev. 25:11-12) where the land was given rest, the release of the property where land reverted to its original family holding (Lev. 25:10, 13-34), and the release of the slaves where Israelite indentured servants went free (Lev. 25:39-55).
The Jubilee year adds no new category of human rest day beyond what we’ve already counted. The Jubilee sets right who is free and who owns what. The free servant returns home, not to rest, but to work his own land. So, it’s not extra rest from work. It’s a different kind of gift, a sort of homecoming of money, people, and land such that everyone is returned to their inheritance. It’s a reset, a refresh, a re-creation, which is what all the work and all the rest was pointing toward, a time when the people and the land would be made whole.
So, the rest days point to the Jubilee year, and the Jubilee year points to the Great Jubilee of the Messiah. Isaiah had foreseen a coming Messiah anointed to “proclaim liberty to the captives” and to announce “the year of the LORD’s favor” (Is. 61:1-2). This is the language of the Jubilee horn, now applied to all history. When Jesus stood in the synagogue at Nazareth and read Isaiah 61, He closed the scroll and said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). He was declaring Himself the Jubilee Incarnate. Every seventh year that rested the land, every “fiftieth” that freed the slave and restored the field was a preview of Christ, the Son of God arriving to cancel the true debt, to set the real captives free, and to return His people to the inheritance lost since Eden. Christ accomplished the homecoming the Jubilee year pictured. The rest and worship that Israel practiced one day in seven, Christ offers without end, saying “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28).
Fifth, the implications
When it comes to rest and work, we should strive to talk about it as biblically as possible, which means we must understand God’s liturgical calendar. We must see and count the days. We must run the calculation. We must see the purpose of resting from work.
What is the purpose? The point of rest and leisure is not to make people more efficient cogs in the economic system, but to restore the soul to wholeness. This allows a person to worship the Lord and Giver of Life, celebrate existence in God’s world, see the goodness of reality, and receive truth and beauty as gifts not measurable on a P&L sheet. A feast day, or celebration, or Sabbath that merely stops work for the sake of work serves no higher purpose than work. When the entire liturgical calendar, or corporate calendar, is reduced to fine-tuning man to be a tool for profits, then work becomes a cult—a religion—as if work included the whole field of human existence, activity, and life. This changes the nature of human existence by making “worker” the whole conception of man.
In the Old Testament calendar, 77 out of 365 days are explicitly non-work days, which makes for 1.5 days out of 7. So, the weekly ratio is to work 6 and rest 1, while the annual average is to work 5.5 and rest 1.5, which is the floor for rest days. The seventh year of land rest must also be accounted for. The seventh year hasn’t entered this calculation because some people kept herding, cooking, trading, and foraging.
But, for the agrarian majority, including the farmers and vine dressers who made up most of ancient Israel, the seventh year was dramatically lighter, even if not classified as a rest day. In a normal year, the farmer’s calendar was dominated by the grueling labor of cultivation, plowing, sowing, pruning, weeding, and harvest time. Exodus 34:21 singles out the work of the farmer as part of the covenant renewal need for Sabbath rest.
In the seventh year, all of that work stops. No plowing, no sowing, no pruning, no harvesting. What remains for the farmer is lighter than the work of the other six years. For the majority of people then, the seventh year wasn’t 1.5 rest days a week; it was closer to a year-long reduction to subsistence gathering. This can’t be neatly fit into the calculation, but it is part of the calendar to keep in mind.
It’s true that the laws and ceremonies of the Old Testament expired with that nation-state, including the liturgical calendar of feast days, new moon days, and so on. But the general equity principles still remain for the people of God, which suggests there is biblical wisdom in trying to apply the biblical-theological calendar, calculations, and commission of work and rest.
There are other factors to think about before these principles can be comprehensively formulated, such as (1) how work is not equal to a job/career, (2) how much of the work days should be spent working at the job and how much time should be spent doing other work, (3) the change from an agrarian society to an industrial one, (4) the shift of work as something that once took place inside the home to something that now takes place outside the home, (5) the difference between manual labor and desk work, (6) the intolerance of laziness in the covenant community (2 Thess. 3:6-10), (7) the exact nature of a convocation day, a feast day, and a Sabbath day, (8) the nature of leisure as awakening your soul to higher things, and (9) how the purpose of rest days points to the work of Christ as the great giver of rest (Mt. 11:28).
But for now, we can say this. Israel’s calendar built rest in at every scale. One day in seven, an extra half-day worth of feasts, and then an entire agricultural sabbatical every seventh year. Rest is woven into the day, the week, the month, and the year, all the way up to the Jubilee, which is not a corporate Christmas party to build company loyalty, but an entire year of receiving divine gifts. God’s divine design is a society that works hard and unto the Lord (Col. 3:17). But the people were forbidden from working endlessly. The whole calendar was pointing to the rest, not just as a time to put your feet up, but as the time to worship, celebrate, and receive the divine rest of the Redeemer who is Lord Sabbath.
Without the liturgical calendar, Israel would have been like the Canaanites, where strange gods were worshiped under strange skies. God’s design of worship, rest, celebration, and work points to the King of King’s defiance of the pagan program that thrusts people up against a vast and vague hostility to divine rest. So odd and beautiful is God’s movement toward rest that the faithful might hear not only the blast of the trumpet, but the voice of the outsider singing along, longing for the perilous grace that is poised to receive him in eternal rest.
Jason Cherry is an elder at Trinity Reformed Church in Huntsville, Alabama, as well as a teacher and lecturer of literature, history, and economics at Providence Classical School in Huntsville. He graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary with an MA in Religion and is the author of The Culture of Conversionism and the History of the Altar Call and The Making of Evangelical Spirituality.
* The author of Hebrews had something to say about the rest of God (Heb. 3:7 – 4:13).
** We should note that there is another view that this is a distinct 50th year. For our purposes, it matters only very little, as it will change the math slightly if we are calculating on a 49-year window or a 50-year window.
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