Abstract
The priestly account of creation in Gen 1:1-2:3 provides the basis for the weekly Sabbath, centering the command to rest in God’s creative activity. The Ten Commandments not only require that servants be allowed to rest but also extend this requirement to those animals that are dependent on and work for humans (Exod 20:8-11; Deut 5:12-15), connecting the Sabbath to both social justice and creation care. The Sabbath principle is connected to care for the poor in laws that extend the pattern of rest from days to years. After 6 years of work, slaves are released (Exod 21:1-6; Deut 15:12-18), debts are forgiven in a universal seventh year (Deut 15:1-11), and fields are left fallow for the poor of the land and the beasts of the field every seventh year (Exod 23:10-11). The Holiness Code (Lev 17-26) uses the Sabbath principle as an organizing factor in Israel’s life and calendar. For the Holiness Code, the Sabbath year is a Sabbath of the land. The Sabbath Year is a call to creation care for the earth itself, and, should humans fail in their duty, God asserts that the land will be allowed its Sabbaths without humans.
God’s creative work ends in rest. After 6 days of creation, God rests on the seventh day. As God rests, God does one more task: blessing and consecrating the seventh day as a holy day (Gen 2:2-4). The priestly account of creation in Gen 1:1-2:3 1 establishes an inseparable connection between creation and rest. The holiness of Sabbath is based in God’s rest, and for this reason, the holy rhythm of creation and rest applies not just to humans but to all of creation. The Sabbath commandments in Exod 20:8-11 and Deut 5:13-15 2 include animals as well as humans. Leviticus 25 adds its own innovation to this commandment by extending the Sabbath beyond living things to the land itself. It charges the people to safeguard the land’s Sabbath, a requirement for the care of creation that God will secure if humans do not.
Sabbath rest is also connected with ideas of justice. Both versions of the Ten Commandments make clear that the weekly Sabbath rest is not just for the free Israelite but also includes both slaves and non-Israelites in the land (Exod 20:10; Deut 5:14). Likewise, when the weekly pattern is extended into years in the fallow year of Exod 23:10-11, it is described as for the “poor of your people” and the “beasts of the field.” Leviticus 25 is also interested in justice but verses 2-7 describe a different kind of Sabbath justice. Although the text offers provisions for human and animals alike, it legislates a year of Sabbath rest for the land. I argue that the author of Lev 25 extends the Sabbath principle established in Gen 2:2-4 to recognize the inclusivity of all of creation. The Sabbath, both as a day of rest and a year of fallow, is necessary in the continuing work of creation. In this article, I examine the responsibility of humans to care for the earth through the lens of creation and Sabbath. I begin by looking at the Sabbath in the priestly creation narrative of Gen 1-2:3. I then look at how the Holiness Code, Lev 17-26 that calls the people of Israel to be holy as God is holy, employs Sabbath as an organizing principle. With the stage set, I turn to the issue of the land’s Sabbath in the Holiness Code and the requirement that the human observation of Sabbath includes creation care.
Priestly Sabbath in Genesis
Sabbath as a weekly day of rest developed during the exilic period, when the elite from the kingdom of Judah had been taken into exile in Babylon and the Temple in Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. With the Temple destroyed and the elites far from Jerusalem, finding a way to worship the God of Israel as a people in a foreign land became a matter of survival. One of the strategies the priestly and scribal classes developed, in place of the Temple, was the weekly Sabbath ritual established by and for the exilic community. 3 The priestly creation narrative of Gen 1:1-2:3 was composed within this context. 4
The non-priestly creation account in Gen 2:5-25 begins when God creates humanity and plants a garden in a particular location on the barren earth. Like the creation myths of Mesopotamia, however, the priestly creation account begins earlier, when the earth is still in chaos, “formless and void” (Gen 1:2). In the midst of this primordial chaos, God creates order: “And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day” (Gen 1:4-5). 5 The priestly account of creation sets time, at least as measured by days, at the beginning of God’s creative work and continues the importance of this new measurement of days throughout the narrative. Each day marks a new stage in God’s creative activity.
Although it is at the end of the sixth day, after God has created humanity, that God declares creation to be “very good” (Gen 1:31), the priestly author does not end the narrative there. After 6 days of creative activity, God rests, but even so God is not done. God blesses the seventh day and makes it holy (Gen 2:3). This blessing is not the first part of creation that God blesses. God had already blessed humans, as well as fish and birds, with the command to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:22, 28). It is, however, the first time that God sanctifies anything. Holiness, for the priestly account of creation, is located in time, the seventh day, and founded in God’s universal acts of creation. The worship of God does not have to be only in a place where God set God’s name, but in a day that God not only blessed but made holy.
God’s rest creates a break within the natural flow of time. 6 This break becomes the basis of the holy rhythm of time observed by Israel, bringing Israel back to creation in its weekly observation of this break in time and activity. God’s creative work in establishing days and declaring the Sabbath as holy sets God not only as the lord of the world but as the lord of time itself. By observing this holy rhythm, the people of Israel recognize God’s lordship over them, subordinating their autonomy to YHWH by obeying the requirement to rest. 7
Although “God finished the work that he had done” on the sixth or seventh day (Gen 2:2), 8 that God still had one last task suggests that creation, already declared “very good” after the creation of humanity, is only brought to perfection with the sanctification of the seventh day. 9 According to Jürgen Moltmann, God’s seventh day rest is far more than a restorative break. It is, rather, God being at peace and with a sense of joy in creation. 10 Moltmann further argues that “everything, which exists, was created” for the purpose of celebrating creation on Sabbath. 11 Whether Sabbath was the reason God created everything else or simply the perfection of creation, the continuing celebration of the weekly Sabbath brings those who celebrate it, whether human, animal, or land, back to the event of creation.
Humans are given authority over creation, but as partners with God, they must honor the Sabbath and practice care for creation. Sabbath completes creation, but the creation of humans is undoubtedly different from the creation of living things that have come before. God creates humans in God’s own likeness (Gen 1:27) and commands them to subdue and have dominion over creation (Gen 1:28). Dominion is the direct result of being in the image of God. Humans are not given free rein to exploit the rest of creation with no constraints, to use and destroy that which God celebrates in Sabbath. Instead, they are God’s representatives, stewards of creation and, therefore, responsible to care for creation. Just as kings were meant to be seen as stewards and shepherds of the people trusted into their care, 12 so humans, made in the image of God, must exercise their dominion over creation through protection and care. Genesis 1:28 “does not envision humans as violent tyrants destroying creation. Instead, it envisions humans being given the power and commission to powerfully and peacefully dominate other beings around them.” 13 In the consecration of the seventh day, God models that care for humans and invites them into the continuing work of creation.
Because Sabbath is founded in creation, the honoring of Sabbath is crucial for humanity’s right relationship to the whole of creation. 14 This command to honor the Sabbath is not only a command to submit to God’s lordship but also an invitation to join in the continuing work and joy of creation. To rest one day a week is not enough, though this rest is a crucial and inseparable element of Sabbath. Joining God in the celebration of creation requires active participation in God’s continuing care for creation.
Sabbath in the Holiness Code
Within the law codes of the Hebrew Bible, the Holiness Code (Lev 17-26) centers Sabbath “as an essential precondition of the Israelites’ sanctification via law observance.”
15
Both the Covenant Code (Exod 20:19-23) and Deuteronomy command Sabbath observance in their respective versions of the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:8-11; Deut 5:12-15), but as Julia Rhyder points out, in the Holiness Code, the Sabbath is second only to obeying one’s mother and father in what it means for Israel to be “holy, for I, the L
Not only is Sabbath a holiness requirement, but it also serves as the foundation for the sacred calendar in the Holiness Code.
17
Leviticus 23 establishes the “fixed times of the Lord, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions” (v. 2) and begins with the seventh day as a “Sabbath of complete rest, a sacred occasion” (v. 3). The Sabbath pattern continues throughout the festivals even when not directly related to the weekly Sabbath day. For the Feast of Unleavened Bread, both the element of rest and the 7-day pattern are present: “You shall eat unleavened bread for 7 days. On the first day you shall celebrate a sacred occasion: you shall not work at your occupations. Seven days you shall make offerings by fire to the L
The Day of Atonement most clearly reflects the Sabbath as key to the sacred calendar. In Lev 23:26-32, the prohibition against work on the Day of Atonement is repeated three times. This prohibition includes a threat of being cut off from the people (v 30), an element unique to the Day of Atonement. This day is not simply a day of rest, but a day of self-denial and a Sabbath in its own right: “It shall be a Sabbath of complete rest for you, and you shall practice self-denial; on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall observe this your Sabbath” (v. 32). On the Day of Atonement, a Sabbath of complete rest, “expiation is made” on behalf of the people Israel before God (v. 28). The Day of Atonement is a fresh start, a new beginning, the people once again pristine in their relationship with God. The Sabbath of the Day of Atonement reflects God’s continuing creative activity seen in the first Sabbath and restores the relationship between God and Israel.
Although not without controversy,
19
Sabbath plays an important role in the date of the Festival of Weeks. While other festivals are set on established days, for example, the Feast of Unleavened Bread starts on the fifteenth day of the first month, the Festival of Weeks is based on a count of 7 weeks: And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering—the day after the Sabbath—you shall count off seven weeks. They must be complete: you must count until the day after the seventh [Sabbath]
20
—fifty days; then you shall bring an offering of new grain to the
Despite the dispute regarding the starting day of the count, the penultimate day seems to be a weekly Sabbath. The method of setting the Festival of Weeks further demonstrates the role of Sabbath as an organizing principle in the sacred calendar in the Holiness Code, as Sabbaths provide a foundation for measuring time. This counting also sets the foundation for the calculation of the Year of Jubilee in Lev 25.
Sabbath as an act of a new start and ongoing creation also appears outside the sacred calendar of Lev 23. Leviticus 25 expands the weekly Sabbath pattern into weeks of years. Seventh years are to be Sabbath years, and just as the Festival of Weeks occurs on the fiftieth day from the Sabbath of the elevation offering, the Year of Jubilee is the fiftieth year, based on a cycle of seven Sabbath years (vv. 10-11). Because the Sabbath year is the method for calculating the Year of Jubilee, the economic aspect of the Year of Jubilee belongs to the same holy rhythm of time as the Sabbath. The same principle that organizes the annual sacred calendar for the people of Israel also provides the basis for holy time at the larger level of years.
The Year of Jubilee is an economic restart that returns the people to the division of property given to their ancestors when they first entered the land. Land sold is returned, and those Israelites who had been sold into slavery are released. Everyone returns to their own original family holding (Lev 25:13). Appropriately, this renewed creation of the nation of Israel within the land begins on the Day of Atonement (Lev 25:9). Every 50 years, on the day that the relationship between God and people is restored, the whole of Israel as a nation is returned to the pristine economic state of a divinely equitable distribution of property through an act of re-creation.
The Year of Jubilee is more than a once-a-generation restoration of the land or redistribution of property, however. The Jubilee governs the economic reality of Israel. The price of both land and slave labor 21 depends on the number of harvests until the next Jubilee. For the Holiness Code, the generational re-creation of Israel is a guiding principle throughout all time. Through the Year of Jubilee, the Sabbath principle, even on the grandest scale, maintains justice by guaranteeing the poor will not be poor forever.
In the Holiness Code, the festivals, the Sabbath year, and the Year of Jubilee set God not only as the lord over the land and the people but also as the master over time itself. These appointed times are connected to the story of creation through their relationship to the weekly Sabbath. 22 They are an essential part of the natural and holy rhythm set in place by God at the very point of creation. By observing this holy rhythm, the people of Israel recognize God’s lordship over them, subordinating their autonomy to God by obeying the requirement to rest and to allow those under their authority to rest. 23 In observing the Year of Jubilee, the freedom to buy and sell, their economic autonomy, is suspended, as the original order established by God at the beginning of Israel’s entry into the land is centered. God exerts divine control over the people and the land, both of which belong to God and, therefore, cannot be sold indefinitely. In the Year of Jubilee, Israel does not simply return to the inauguration of God’s people in God’s land; they are also reminded of creation and their role as partners with God.
The Sabbath of the land
The Holiness Code, with its Sabbath year and Year of Jubilee, is not the only biblical law code to extend the idea of the weekly pattern of work and rest to weeks of years. Both the Covenant Code and Deuteronomy have laws that release Hebrew slaves after 6 years of labor, male slaves in Exod 21:2-4 and both male and female slaves in Deut 15:12-15. Unlike the Year of Jubilee, these years are not universal years of release but are instead based on the number of years worked by an individual slave. Deuteronomy does recognize a universal year of economic justice built upon the pattern of 6 days of work followed by 1 year of rest; the seventh year in Deut 15:1-11 is a universal Shemittah Year in which debts are forgiven.
The Covenant Code also institutes a seventh-year fallow, a law that both mirrors the Sabbath pattern of 6 days of work and 1 day of rest and is connected directly to the seventh day rest by the text. Exodus 23:10-11 commands the people to release the land and leave it to lie fallow in the seventh year so that the poor shall eat. This command may be intended as a universal fallow year, as 23:12 restates the Sabbath command to work 6 days and rest on the seventh. In all cases in the Covenant Code and Deuteronomy, however, the idea is care for the poor. Slaves are to be released rather than remaining in slavery forever. Debts are forgiven. Even the fallow year is for the poor as well as the animals: “But in the seventh you shall let it rest and lie fallow. Let the needy among your people eat of it, and what they leave let the wild beasts eat. You shall do the same with your vineyards and your olive groves” (Exod 23:11). Likewise, the weekly Sabbath commands protect the poor. If the seventh-year fallow is to provide for the needy to eat, however, despite the connection to a weekly day of rest in v. 12, a universal fallow every 7 years would not seem to be sufficient.
In the command to rest on the weekly Sabbath, both the Covenant Code and Deuteronomy explicitly include male and female slaves, domestic animals, and the stranger (Exod. 20:10; Deut 5:14), though in Deuteronomy’s version of the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath command is based not on creation but rather on the shared remembered history of being slaves in Egypt (Deut 5:15). The restatement of the command in Exod 23:12 describes the weekly rest as for the domesticated animals, slaves, and strangers: “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labor, in order that your ox and your ass may rest, and that your bondman and the stranger may be refreshed.” In this way, the observation of Sabbath does center care for some of God’s creation, namely the animals on which they depend and those people under their authority.
The Holiness Code, however, does something different. The care for the poor is an important, even central, concern for the Holiness Code, as can be seen in the Year of Jubilee, but Sabbaths are not built around that concern. No creation reminder is given for the commands to honor the Sabbath in Lev 19:3, 30 or 26:2. The Year of Jubilee deals with economic justice and the redistribution of property, but the Sabbath year on which it is built is not for the poor. The seventh-year Sabbath is for the land: When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a Sabbath of the Lord. Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, a Sabbath of the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the after growth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your untrimmed vines; it shall be a year of complete rest for the land. (Lev 25:2b-5)
While the fallow year in the Covenant Code provides for the needy and the animals, the fallow year in the Holiness Code is so much more. The land itself is resting and observing Sabbath. 24 The seventh-year Sabbath is the very earth joining in God’s continuing act of creation.
The Holiness Code views the land, specifically the Promised Land, as an active participant with God. It describes the land as spewing out the people who were in the land before the Israelites (Lev 18:25, 28). The same kind of special relationship the people of Israel have with God, belonging to God and thus not able to be owned by another (Lev 25:42, 55), exists between the land and God (Lev 25:23-24). The land can, and must be allowed to, observe Sabbath to the Lord. The land can be an agent and have a relationship with God, and God’s people, as God’s representatives, have a responsibility to care for it.
Despite the personification and agency of the land, the land cannot insist on its Sabbaths, although it may be “fully capable of refraining from its conventional work in observance of the Sabbath year.” 25 The people of Israel must obey God for the land to have its Sabbaths. The seventh-year fallow required by the Holiness Code is an act of creation care. The land needs its rest. The land needs to be allowed to participate in creation. Humans must participate with God in the continuing activity of creation and allow the land to rest, so that the land is restored in its relationship to the Creator.
For the Holiness Code, the land’s being allowed to participate with God in creation through honoring the Sabbath is required for the people to be blessed in the land. God is the lord of the people, the land, and of time itself. If the people abandon their responsibility to care for the land, it will be to their own destruction. Leviticus 26 describes the blessings if the people obey and the consequences if they do not. Not surprisingly, the land features in the punishments. Just as the land will be fertile and food abundant if they obey, disobedience results in land that does not produce (Lev 26:3-5; 18-20). This element is not unique to the Holiness Code, as the curses in Deuteronomy also promise crop failure (28:15-68). In an agricultural culture, the produce of the land is crucial for life; even in later industrial cultures, crop failures can result in devastating famines.
Yet not all hope is lost for the land should the people choose disobedience. The Holiness Code is not unique in promising crop failure for disobedience but rather in the effect on the land itself during this punishment. Without the people working the land even during the Sabbath year, the land can rest. For the land, desolation brings a much needed respite from its disobedient inhabitants: Then shall the land make up for its Sabbath years throughout the time that it is desolate and you are in the land of your enemies; then shall the land rest and make up for its Sabbath years. Throughout the time that it is desolate, it shall observe the rest that it did not observe in your Sabbath years while you were dwelling upon it. (Lev 26:34-35)
This sentiment is repeated again in v. 43. If the people do not join God in the creative activity of Sabbath, not only for the poor or even for the animals but for the very earth itself, the Holiness Code portrays a God that will step in and provide for the land without humans.
Conclusion
Founded in the act of creation, the command to honor Sabbath is both a requirement for holiness and an invitation to join God in celebrating God’s creative activity. As God’s stewards and made in God’s image, humans are meant to care for creation, and God’s rest and sanctification of the seventh day are the first model of what this looks like. Although a command to rest, Sabbath is also a radical call to be active participants with God in the ongoing work of and care for creation. This ongoing work has always been founded in justice and the maintaining of right relationships, not only with other humans but also with animals and the land itself.
The law codes of the Hebrew Bible rightly highlight the role of the Sabbath in allowing those who do not control their own time and labor to enjoy much needed rest. Yet Sabbath is not simply about care for the poor. It is care for all of the creation over which God has set humans to rule, including the earth itself, the planet that God created and over which God gave humans dominion. Those who would celebrate God as creator must protect the world that God has entrusted to humanity. For the priestly story of creation, God created measured time and established creation care as a part of the holy rhythm of creation. The Holiness Code declares that the land must celebrate the Lord’s Sabbath, though it cannot without the participation of humans. The Holiness Code also warns, however, that if humans neglect the creation care that allows the earth to maintain its right relationship with its creator too long, it may be that God will relieve humanity of its stewardship so the earth can lie desolate and make up its Sabbaths.
Footnotes
1.
Most scholars agree that the two accounts of creation in Gen 1-2 come from two different sources or traditions. Although the nature of the sources in Genesis-Deuteronomy is still a debated question, Gen 1:1-2:3 is attributed to a school of thought with priestly concerns and Gen 2:5-25 to a non-priestly source. Which layer 2:4 belongs to is disputed.
2.
Notably, the Sabbath command in Deuteronomy’s Ten Commandments is based in Israel’s shared memory of slavery in Egypt and the Exodus event (Deut 5:15), rather than creation.
3.
Biblical texts prior to the exile connect the Sabbath with the New Moon Festivals rather than a weekly observance. See Israel Knohl, “The Priestly Torah Versus the Holiness School: Sabbath and the Festivals,” HUCA 58 (1987): 65–117; Saul Olyan, “Exodus 31:12-17: The Sabbath According to H, or the Sabbath According to P and H?” JBL 124 (Summer 2005): 201–209; Bernard Goose, “Sabbath, Identity and Universalism Go Together after the Return from Exile,” JSOT 29 (March 2005): 359–70; among others.
4.
For a discussion on the dating of the Priestly material in the Torah, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, “An Assessment of the Alleged Pre-Exilic Date of the Priestly Material in the Pentateuch,” ZAW 108.4 (1996): 495–518.
5.
Unless otherwise noted, all translations come from the JPS translation of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible).
6.
Matitahu Tsevat, “The Basic Meaning of the Biblical Sabbath,” ZAW 84.4 (1972): 454. I disagree with his assertion that “the sabbatical cycle is indifferent to the harmony of the universe” representing a “neutral structure of time” (457). Instead by being a part of creation itself and observed “to/for the L
7.
Tsevat, “Basic Meaning,” 455.
8.
The MT reads the seventh day; other manuscripts, however, have the sixth, as the NRSV follows.
9.
Gnana Robinson, “The Idea of Rest in the Old Testament and the Search for the Basic Character of the Sabbath,” ZAW 92 (January 1980): 39, goes further in describing the seventh day in Gen 2:2-3 to be a day of completion and perfection, rather than rest.
10.
Jürgen Moltmann, “The Sabbath—the Feast of Creation,” Journal of Family Ministry 14 (Winter 2000): 38.
11.
Moltmann, “Sabbath,” 38.
12.
An example of this metaphor is in the depiction of David as a shepherd (e.g., see the story of his anointing in 1 Sam 16:11-13). For examples of kings as shepherds representing the gods in the ancient Near East outside of Israel and Judah, see The Laws of Hammurabi (LH i 50-62) and the Laws Lipit-Ishtar (LL i 20-37) among many other examples.
13.
David M. Carr, “Competing Construals of Human Relations with ‘Animal’ Others in the Primeval History (Genesis 1-11),” JBL 140.2 (Summer 2001): 264. See also Emmanuel O. Nwaoru, “Genesis 1,28 and the Divine Imperatives for Sustainable Ecology,” BN 153 (2012): 3–17.
14.
Kathryn Schifferdecker, “Sabbath and Creation,” WW 36 (Summer 2016): 3210.
15.
Julia Rhyder, “Sabbath and Sanctuary Cult in the Holiness Legislation: A Reassessment,” JBL 138 (Winter 2019): 721–740.
16.
Rhyder, “Sabbath and Sanctuary Cult,” 722.
17.
For an overview of issues of redaction surrounding the Sabbath in Lev 23, see Rhyder, “Sabbath and Sanctuary Cult.” While these questions are crucial for understanding issues of provenance surrounding the Holiness Code and understanding its growth, for the purpose of this article, the focus is on the final form of the text. This approach is supported by Rhyder’s assertion that, even given the growth of the Sabbath Day as a “discreet celebration” among the “appointed times of the
18.
Leviticus 23:36 and 39 describe the day of rest at the end of the festival as the eighth day, though vv. 34 and 39 describe the festival as seven days.
19.
For a discussion of the controversy surrounding the start of the Festival of Weeks in Second Temple Judaism, see David Henshke, “‘The Day after the Sabbath’ (Lev 23:15): Trace and Origin of an Inter-Sectarian Polemic,” Dead Sea Discoveries 15 (2 2008): 225–47; and Gerson Hepner, “The Morrow of the Sabbath is the First Day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread,” ZAW 188.3 (2006): 389–404.
20.
Here, the JPS translates the Hebrew word “Sabbath” as “week” instead of Sabbath so it reads as “the day after the seventh week.”
21.
Leviticus 25 does not allow for the slavery of Israelites even as it acknowledges the reality. An Israelite who has fallen into hardship to the point of needing to enter slavery is to be treated as a hired worker (Lev 25:39-40), and one who has had to sell himself to a foreigner should be redeemed, and if not even the foreign master must treat him as a hired worker rather than a slave.
22.
Bill T. Arnold, “The Holiness Redaction of the Primeval History” ZAW 129.4 (2017): 483–500; see also his Genesis Commentary, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 30. Edwin Firmage, “Genesis 1 and the Priestly Agenda,” JSOT 82 (March 1999): 103, argues that what connects Gen 1:1-2:3 to the Holiness Code is the culmination of the creation of humanity and YHWH’s command to the people of Israel to be holy as God is holy. Through this connection, he sees Gen 1:1-2:3 establishing the foundation for the Sabbath.
23.
Tsevat, “Basic Meaning,” 455.
24.
For how the phrase “Sabbath of the land” emphasizes the land’s agency, see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 3b (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 2159.
25.
Jeffrey Stackert, “The Sabbath of the Land in the Holiness Legislation: Combining Priestly and Non-Priestly Perspectives,” CBQ 73 (April 2011): 243.