Exodus 20: God's Unilateral Covenant for the Betrayers

Exodus 20: God's Unilateral Covenant for the Betrayers

"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy." (Exodus 20:8, NIV)

God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel approximately one year after the Exodus. This year was not a romantic honeymoon. Between God and Israel, there was a wearisome repetition of complaints and appeasement, betrayal and forgiveness. Israel's spiritual memory hit rock bottom, and grace was forgotten as soon as they turned away.

Just when betrayal reached its peak and the sustainability of the relationship became questionable, God bestows the Law upon Israel. Therefore, the Ten Commandments are not a certificate of award given to those who kept them well. Rather, they are closer to a solemn covenant document extended first from God's side, saying, "Even if you betray me again and again, I will be your God."

Originally, a covenant should be bilateral. The condition "if you obey me fully... then you will be my people" (Ex. 19:5) is fair. However, Israel's history proves that humanity lacks the ability to keep this bilateral covenant. If the Ten Commandments had been a strictly bilateral contract, Israel should have been annihilated before the golden calf. But God, by re-engraving the broken tablets, turns this covenant into a unilateral covenant based on His one-sided love (Hesed). The Ten Commandments are 'holy shackles' by which God binds Himself to us (Self-binding).

At the pinnacle of this unilateral grace stands the Fourth Commandment, the Sabbath. In the structure of the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath is placed right in the center where love for God (1-3) and love for neighbor and creation (5-10) meet. In a world governed by causality, rest is a 'reward' for labor. Those who do not work deserve neither to rest nor to eat. However, in God's kingdom, rest is an 'unconditional gift.' The command to remember and keep the Sabbath day holy is not simply a welfare policy telling us to rest. It is a command to stop every week (Shabat) and desperately remember that our survival depends not on the sweat of our brow but on God's unchanging grace. The time to remember His faithfulness in not giving up on us who betray Him as routinely as eating meals—this is the rest that Scripture speaks of. Rest is both the completion of creation and the eschatological home to which we will return. Only within this sanctuary of time are we truly safe.