But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God... Exodus 20:9
“One thing is certain: it is no insignificant problem logical man finds himself facing from the moment the Sabbath enters upon the arena.
That is the Sabbath commandment, to him a most awkward "foreign body" defying all common rules of rational philosophy…How much more reassuring it would be, to the most independent spirits among us, if we could just have a slightly modified formulation of the fourth commandment to grapple with.
For instance: "Remember the day of rest." Full stop. Or still better: "Remember a day of rest". Or why not simply? "Remember to rest".
That would seem quite a roomy way of putting it, would it not, and comparatively inoffensive to all sensitive souls. You would not even have to be a good humanist in order to find that reminder meaningful and harmless.
Any logician with some mysterious preference for the indefinite, the vague and reducible, would feel that this was a commandment he could manage to handle. And men with a passion for Western self-sufficiency would be quite happy, too.
For a commandment of that kind would be nothing more than what any sensible man could manufacture all by himself.”
Carsten Johnsen. Day of Destiny ch.7
