Multiples of Seven: Dividing time
According to the Book of Genesis God created the world over six days and sanctified the seventh day, because on it He rested from all His work:
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all His work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done. (Genesis 2:2-3)
But there is more to this story than meets the eye. A closer reading of the creation narrative reveals that it divides the continuous flow of time into three distinct cycles: seven days, seven years, and forty-nine years. Based on this structure, the legislator – who in the biblical text is always God – established three social laws. These were progressive and revolutionary laws, unprecedented in human history!
The first division of time: A day of rest
Until nearly two hundred years ago, economic life was based almost entirely on manual labor. Slaves, the poor, children, and beasts of burden were deprived of all civil rights. Children often began working at the age of five and labored day after day until they died, frequently by the age of thirty or thirty-five, from exhaustion, disease, and premature old age. This was the reality in ancient times, and tragically, similar conditions still exist today in underdeveloped regions where forms of slavery persist.
According to the Book of Exodus, the children of Israel were enslaved by Pharaoh in Egypt. Three months after God freed them, the Israelites arrived at the foot of God’s mountain, whose location remains unknown. During this sublime event, God gave them the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20; Deuteronomy 5:12–15).
The first three commandments require exclusive faith in the God of Israel. They are followed by social laws, the most important of which is directly connected to the story of creation:
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it, you shall not do any work. Neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days, the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15)
The first division of time, structured as six days of work followed by a day of rest, is rooted in the story of creation. This division establishes an egalitarian law that includes slaves, maidservants, and foreigners, people who throughout the ancient world were regarded as having no legal rights.
The law takes an additional, revolutionary step by recognizing the right of beasts of burden to rest. Animals that plow the fields and carry heavy loads are granted a day of rest after six exhausting days of labor.
By way of comparison, in 1641 Massachusetts enacted “The Body of Liberties”, often considered the first modern Western law prohibiting cruelty to animals. Yet even this law did not recognize the fundamental right of working animals to rest, a right that had already been established more than three thousand years earlier as part of the rights granted at the time of creation itself.
The second division of time: Freedom after seven years
The second division organizes the flow of years into cycles of seven years.
Ancient societies were predominantly agricultural, and family land was the most important economic asset. Such an economy was extremely vulnerable. A single year of drought, flood, or locust infestation could destroy a farmer’s livelihood.
When disaster struck, a farmer who was forced to take out a loan to survive often found himself unable to repay it. As a result, he was forced to mortgage his land. If this still did not cover the debt, he and his wife and children were required to work for the lender. In practice, they became slaves (Deuteronomy 15:12–18; Nehemiah 5:1–5).
By the seventh year, they were freed. However, to secure repayment of the loan, the land itself remained mortgaged in the lender’s possession:
If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. (Exodus 21:2-4; Deuteronomy 15:12–18)
This law requires further explanation. According to the Bible, from the moment God freed the children of Israel from Egypt, they were considered free people. Accordingly, the first part of the law mandates that the man and his wife are released after six years of labor.
The second part of the law addresses a different situation, in which the master provided the man with a wife. The fact that the wife was not freed indicates that she was a slave. Consequently, she and her children remained the master’s property, as was customary throughout the ancient world.
Yet, if the man did not wish to separate from her, he could choose to remain in the master’s household as a slave (Exodus 21:5–6).
The third division of time: The Year of Jubilee
The third division structures the sequence of years into cycles of forty-nine years (The Year of Jubilee), calculated as seven times seven years.
In an agricultural society, a family that mortgaged its land to a lender could never recover economically. For this reason, after forty-nine years the land was released and returned to its original owners:
Count off seven sabbath years – seven times seven years – so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. … Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. … each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. (Leviticus 25:8-10)
This law served two important purposes. In most cases, the man who had taken the loan fifty years earlier was no longer alive. His children and grandchildren, however, were, and the return of the land enabled them to restore their economic situation.
An additional purpose was to prevent land that had been legally pledged from permanently becoming the property of the creditor. This practice later characterized feudal Europe, where kings and wealthy elites exploited the poor and legally took over their lands.
The blueprint for a just society
Anyone who reads the story of creation without considering the legal frameworks derived from it is likely to see it as naïve and not particularly impressive. Yet there are no naïve stories in the Bible.
The three laws discussed here were enacted more than three thousand years ago. At that time, both before and after, rulers used their power to enact laws that granted them unlimited legal authority. They placed no restraints on their power, imposed no limits on their privileges, and granted no legal rights to the citizens of their kingdoms.
The laws derived from the creation story move in an entirely different direction. They unequivocally establish social order as an integral part of creation itself. Their purpose was to create a just society in which all people are equal before God.
These laws were designed to restrain the power of kings and the strong, and to shape a society that shows compassion toward the poor, slaves, children, and working animals, all of whom are an integral part of creation. In their scope and intent, these humanitarian and revolutionary laws were unlike anything the ancient world had known.
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