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Most units of time are based on nature. A day is one rotation of the Earth. A month is the moon’s orbit. A year is the Earth’s path around the sun.
But a week? There’s no natural explanation for it. (See the video at the top of this article.)
That’s why ancient cultures defined the week in vastly different ways: four days in West Africa, 10 in Egypt, 15 in China.
In the 1930s, the Soviets tried to eliminate the seven-day week entirely — first replacing it with a four-day week, then a five, “to facilitate the struggle to eliminate religion.”
They were at least right about the source. The seven-day week comes straight from the Bible.
In Exodus, God commands: “Six days you shall work, and on the seventh you shall rest.”
That short verse carries deep insight. First, it applies to everyone. Second, it treats work not as a necessity, but as a value.
The Torah doesn’t say “work must be done,” but that you shall work. The work itself matters regardless of the outcome.
This work doesn’t need to be paid. Volunteering and child-rearing certainly count as long as the activity is demanding, consistent and productive.
“The Torah doesn’t say ‘work must be done,’ but that you shall work.”
The second insight can be seen in the life of Joseph, the only person in the Bible called a “success” — twice. This happened once as a slave, and once as a prisoner – and all the time with God by his side, whom he constantly cited (even as he, unlike his father Jacob and grandfather Abraham, never spoke with God).
Still, work must stop.
The seventh day, Shabbat, is not just a break. It’s a weekly reset, a day to gather, reflect and reconnect.
The Jewish tradition calls it “a taste of Heaven on Earth.”
Modern culture, though, swings between extremes.
For most of the 20th century, work was considered an unfortunate financial necessity to be escaped.
We see this in popular music, such as “Heigh Ho,” “9 to 5” and “Taking Care of Business” — all songs about how work is meaningless drudgery.
So God was right.
The good life isn’t all leisure or all work.
It’s six days of meaningful work, followed by a seventh day of sacred rest.
Mark Gerson’s new book is “God Was Right: How Modern Social Science Proves the Torah Is True,” published by BenBella Books and distributed by Simon & Schuster (June 2025). This article is the second in a series featured exclusively by Fox News Digital.
The post Why God and the Bible were right about your work schedule all along appeared first on Fox News.
