It seems like Jeremiah just can’t leave well enough alone. He’s making plenty of enemies with all of the other stuff he’s saying. Now he insists on criticizing the observance (or in this case, the non-observance) of the sabbath day. (To be fair, he does say that the Lord gave him the message.) His words in chapter 17 can be illuminated by Isaiah 58, which comes from a part of the book maybe seventy or more years later. Even after the return from exile in Babylon, the sabbath is being disregarded.

This gets to the heart of what the sabbath is all about. Is it simply a commandment to be obeyed? In Exodus 20, it’s tied to the seventh day of creation; in Deuteronomy 5, the focus is on the exodus from Egypt. God rested from work; you too must rest from work. You were slaves—you are slaves no longer. Do not treat your workers as slaves; allow them to rest.

In his wonderful (and brief) book, The Sabbath, Abraham Heschel (1907-1972), has given the world a masterpiece. This meditation on sabbath has a beautiful and mystical spin.

“He who wants to enter the holiness of the day,” says Heschel (apologies for the gender-exclusive language!), “must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go far away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life.” (13) The surface image, of course, is labor—physical and mental work—but there are layers beneath.

He continues, “Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.”

It would be foolish to put the words of this 20th century American into the mouth of Jeremiah, but surely the fire that motivates the prophet comes from a deep source that sees well beneath the surface of sabbath. He warns against embezzling our own lives.