God’s “rest” and the “land” are interchangeable ideas both with participatory assumptions.[1] The land, as has been discussed, requires Torah to be lived in faithfully and Torah assumes a land. The idea of land as rest reminds us of the first inheritance of land by humans, the Garden of Eden.[2] God has created the whole universe and humans come on the scene the sixth day. God takes his Sabbath rest on the seventh day but human beings have just showed up and are ready to work. The first day of human living obedience with their creator is a day of rest in the land.[3] The rebuking end of Psalm 95 evokes the question of obedience. The rest of God and our sharing in that reality is “based to a large extent on the concept of imitatio dei,” but perhaps further than this because humans share the imago dei “the rest of God is a promised rest for humankind” when we are submitted to a kind of meek obedience in the same direction.[4] This obedience in the daily, that knows its place in the cosmic sweep of God’s world and in his ways of ordering its landscapes, is able to look then confident toward tomorrow.
[1] Deuteronomy 12.9.
[2] Genesis 2.15.
[3] Watchman Nee, Sit Walk Stand (Wheaton IL: Tyndale, 1957), 16.
[4] Adin Stiensaltz, The Essential Talmud (NY: Basic Books, 1976), 108. Brueggemann, Genesis: in Bible commentary for teaching and preaching, 36. Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (Downer Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 17.
