Today’s Old Testament reading speaks of the sabbath:
Those who escaped the sword were carried captive to Babylon,
where they became servants of the king of the Chaldeans and his sons
until the kingdom of the Persians came to power.
All this was to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah:
“Until the land has retrieved its lost sabbaths,
during all the time it lies waste it shall have rest
while seventy years are fulfilled.”
The day of rest is worth remembering: it gives thanks for what God has given to us in the created world. It sets a limit to our sometimes constant labor: a limit to our using the world. It expresses a faith in God’s providence, by desisting from work for a day.
The passage from 2 Chronicles presents the sabbath as something we owe the land. If I may return to Rod’s book again: he’s been thinking about what we owe the land too, in an excerpt about environmental conservation.