Work that wears you down

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

The ground is cursed, thorns come up in it, and bread comes by sweat until the body returns to dust. Whatever else the passage is doing, it places difficulty inside work from the beginning rather than treating exhaustion as a sign something has gone wrong.

And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof: for they be idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God. Let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let them not regard vain words.

Pharaoh's order: stop supplying straw, hold the brick quota where it was, and add more work so the labourers have no attention left over. The Bible's first long look at oppression is a production target.

Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun. For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil. For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.

The Preacher, having built and planted on a large scale, reports despairing of all of it. Someone who did not labour will inherit it, the days are sorrow, the heart takes no rest at night. Nothing in the passage resolves.

Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit. Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun. There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.

A handful with quietness is better than two hands full with travail. Then a man with no family working without end, never satisfied, who never asks who he is labouring for. The book calls that a sore travail and leaves it there.

I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.

The same book's other note: to eat, drink and find good in your labour is called a gift, something received rather than earned. It sits inside a chapter about times that come and go outside anyone's control.

Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.

The sabbath command with its reason attached. Household, servants, livestock and the foreigner inside the gate all stop, so that the servant rests as the master does, because Israel had been worked as slaves in Egypt. Rest here is a limit placed on employers.

Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates: At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin unto thee.

Wages had to be paid the same day, before sundown, to a hired man poor enough to be counting on them. The law names the reason: he setteth his heart upon it. Delay is treated as oppression rather than as an accounting matter.

Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

Written to wealthy landowners. The wages held back from the men who reaped their fields are described as crying out, and the cries as already heard. The letter treats unpaid labour as something that makes a noise.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.

The disciples come back from travelling and there are so many people coming and going that they cannot eat. Jesus takes them away to a deserted place to rest. In the verses that follow, the crowd gets there first.