Our Favorite Proverbs: Proverbs 23:4, Just Stop

by Marilynn Chadwick

"Do not wear yourself out to get rich; do not trust your own cleverness." Proverbs 23:4

It's been said that Americans are the only people who worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship. Maybe that's why keeping Sabbath is so hard. Many of us enjoy feeling productive, and taking a day off seems to slow us down.

The word "Sabbath," or sabat in Hebrew, simply means "to cease, desist, rest." Put another way, Sabbath means "stop." The very first use of sabat, translated "rest," in the Bible is in Genesis: "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 NIV).

Proverbs 23:4 warns us to avoid the exhaustion that comes from overwork—the opposite of a Sabbath-keeping lifestyle.

Other versions express the same caution in different words:

• "Don't exhaust yourself in pursuit of wealth; be smart enough to desist" (Proverbs 23:4 CJB).
• "Do not work so hard to become rich that you make yourself ill. Be wise and rest when you need to" (Proverbs 23:4 EASY English Bible).

Maybe you spend a lot of your waking hours caring for those you love and scrambling to finish your to-do list. But who is telling you to guard your soul and to tend to your spiritual life?

You might be surprised at how often the Bible reminds us to care for our soul. God looks at rest as an important part of daily life. He even ordained a weekly day of rest as one the Ten Commandments. He said, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy…" (Exodus 20:8-11 NIV). The Bible includes more instructions about how to keep the Sabbath than all the other nine commandments. Rest is a command. It impacts our worship, our prayer life, and our family. We need to guard our Sabbath rest. Keeping the Sabbath is a good way to protect our marriages. Sabbath makes space for nurturing our families, our church, and our communities.

Sabbath-keeping helps us care for our souls in an age when many are desperately thirsty for inner peace. Rest from our work is also a theological theme woven throughout the Bible. It describes the liberating life of grace for the believer who has found true rest in Christ's salvation. Perhaps St. Augustine could have been hinting at our need for Sabbath rest when he made this famous statement in his Confessions: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."