Roots?

[The Revolting Man]

Please remember that this is the Hebrew Roots section, it is not a place to argue about whether Sabbath is Saturday or Sunday. We each have firm views on that and they're not going to change in this discussion. However it is an entirely reasonable place to discuss how legalistic to be about observing it though.

I'm just trying to imagine a commercial dairy farm with 1000 cows pouring 20,000L of milk down the drain (and probably polluting waterways as a result) just because it is Sabbath. It's not practical, nor can I see any reason to interpret scripture that legalistically. You can choose not to sell your calves on Sabbath, but you can't choose not to (at a minimum) hold your milk in a vat for collection the following day.

Think about it a different way - crops grow on Sabbath. Calves grow on Sabbath. It is this growth that we sell. We don't slaughter the calves on Saturday evening and throw them away because they had the insolence to grow on Sabbath. We keep the growth, and sell it another day.

Same with milk. The production happens on Sabbath, goes in the vat, and is sold another day.

So can one family do all the work on that 1,000 cow farm? Because you know they can’t pay any one to work it on the Sanbath.

I would submit that Sabbath keeping helps achieve Paul’s admonition to, if at all possible, live simple lives working with our hands.

If an economic model doesn’t conform to God’s Word we should change the model not the Word.

 

[The Revolting Man]

Milking your cow is a part of taking care of the cow. If it needs to be done on the Sabbath there is no reason for it to get poured out. I do not see that commanded anywhere in the Bible.

The same reason the Apostles could pick grain to eat but would have not been allowed to bring in the harvest.

 

[FollowingHim]

So can one family do all the work on that 1,000 cow farm? Because you know they can’t pay any one to work it on the Sanbath.

I would submit that Sabbath keeping helps achieve Paul’s admonition to, if at all possible, live simple lives working with our hands.

If an economic model doesn’t conform to God’s Word we should change the model not the Word.

That is an interesting point. No, you can't entirely run a 1000 cow farm with one family - but you only need two people at any one time, so if you were going to be legalistic about it you could easily roster yourselves on every sabbath.

Nevertheless, this all began from your suggestion that you would dump the milk from every sabbath. I used a 1000 cow farm as an extreme illustration of the implications, but the implications are still the same for a 300-cow single-family dairy farm, or even a 50 cow farm. Even if you've only got 50 cows, dumping every Sabbath's milk is neither pragmatic nor economically viable nor environmentally sustainable - nor required in scripture. I don't think you've thought that one through far.

 

[Pacman]

The same reason the Apostles could pick grain to eat but would have not been allowed to bring in the harvest.

Picking the grain wasn't part of taking care of an animal. If your only motivation for milking is to harvest the milk for sale that's a problem but I know you well enough to know that isn't the case. Don't make the yoke hard and the burden heavy.

 

[Pacman]

So, according to that, ranchers can't work. But

That's not what it says. It says let your cattle rest. Absolutely we have to take care of our animals. We should do our best to minimize the work involved in taking care of the animals but we cannot neglect them.

 

[steve]

I don’t see that wasting a product, such as milk, counterbalances the work that one was required to do to produce it.
Personally, I would recommend not going into a business focused on milk production if one has any desire to follow Yah’s heart. A few cows on a well rounded farm wouldn’t be a problem, imo.
Animals need a certain level of care, and lovingly caring for them on the day that is set apart doesn’t seem to violate the spirit of the law. But it does become a problem if your business model requires the same level of labor on each day of the week.
Just in case there is someone who doesn’t understand it, cows cannot skip a milking without experiencing pain.

Also, chickens lay eggs on the Sabbath. But that violates the law against your animals doing work.

 

[The Revolting Man]

That is an interesting point. No, you can't entirely run a 1000 cow farm with one family - but you only need two people at any one time, so if you were going to be legalistic about it you could easily roster yourselves on every sabbath.

Nevertheless, this all began from your suggestion that you would dump the milk from every sabbath. I used a 1000 cow farm as an extreme illustration of the implications, but the implications are still the same for a 300-cow single-family dairy farm, or even a 50 cow farm. Even if you've only got 50 cows, dumping every Sabbath's milk is neither pragmatic nor economically viable nor environmentally sustainable - nor required in scripture. I don't think you've thought that one through far.

Then the logical conclusion is that large dairy operations, at least ones that can’t skip one milking, are against the Torah.

 

[The Revolting Man]

That's not what it says. It says let your cattle rest. Absolutely we have to take care of our animals. We should do our best to minimize the work involved in taking care of the animals but we cannot neglect them.

You don’t care what it says on this topic though. It says to do no work. You’re coming up with ways you can do work. @steve is right. If you can’t keep Sabbath and a milk cow then it’s the cow that has to go.

 

[FollowingHim]

Then the logical conclusion is that large dairy operations, at least ones that can’t skip one milking, are against the Torah.

No cow can skip milking for an entire day without harm. You can milk once a day, but you cannot avoid milking a cow entirely. She'll be in enormous pain and soon get mastitis. And that goes for even one house cow. So if you follow your logic through, even having a single housecow is against Torah.

The only possible dairying scenario that is then permissible is to have calves on the cows all the time, milking occasionally and also letting the calf drink, leaving the sabbath milk entirely for the calf, and stopping milking before weaning the calf. That is doable on a very, very small scale. But it is not healthy for the cow (she's being inadequately milked out once a week and at risk of mastitis), and practically difficult (this is most achievable when cow and calf are housed, separated in the evening, milked in the morning, and then the calf is put back on for the day). Same applies for goat and sheep milking.

You are heaping unnecessary burdens upon people.

The burdens you are inventing cannot be correct, because cutting out almost all dairy production is not compatible with the idea of the promised land as "flowing with milk and honey". If dairy production was not practically possible without breaking Torah the land could never be described as flowing with milk.

 

[PeteR]

We always milked our goats on Shabbat... it's just part of farm life.. but, our economic model wasn't 2-5000 gallons of milk per day. It was more than we could drink and excess was made into cheese midweek, some of which was sold...

 

[FollowingHim]

Having said that, I can understand how you have reached your conclusion even if I disagree with it.

If you can’t keep Sabbath and a milk cow then it’s the cow that has to go.

If that is your honest conviction, then you should absolutely practice it. Don't keep a cow yourself, and don't consume dairy products made by others.

Do you consume milk, cheese, butter, yoghurt, or any food containing whey protein?

 

[The Revolting Man]

No cow can skip milking for an entire day without harm. You can milk once a day, but you cannot avoid milking a cow entirely. She'll be in enormous pain and soon get mastitis. And that goes for even one house cow. So if you follow your logic through, even having a single housecow is against Torah.

The only possible dairying scenario that is then permissible is to have calves on the cows all the time, milking occasionally and also letting the calf drink, leaving the sabbath milk entirely for the calf, and stopping milking before weaning the calf. That is doable on a very, very small scale. But it is not healthy for the cow (she's being inadequately milked out once a week and at risk of mastitis), and practically difficult (this is most achievable when cow and calf are housed, separated in the evening, milked in the morning, and then the calf is put back on for the day). Same applies for goat and sheep milking.

You are heaping unnecessary burdens upon people.

The burdens you are inventing cannot be correct, because cutting out almost all dairy production is not compatible with the idea of the promised land as "flowing with milk and honey". If dairy production was not practically possible without breaking Torah the land could never be described as flowing with milk.

First off I don’t accept the claim that this is impossible. You alluded to at least one possible solution yourself. There’s a way to make this work.

That being said I didn’t say “Don’t milk your cow on the Sabbath.” I said don’t keep that milk past the Sabbath. I said drink all of it you want that day. I said you could give it away. Hell I wouldn’t mind if you found a non-Sabbath keeper to come milk it for you that day and they keep the milk. The possible solutions to conundrum are myriad.

What I’m saying is that we can’t controvert God’s Laws and violate His Sabbath because we assume He forgot about milk cows when He gave the Law. He didn’t forget about milk cows when he gave the Law. It’s possible to have a milk cow and keep Sabbath.

But if it’s not possible then what we have to give up is milk cows, not the Sabbath. You say I’m putting burdens on people but I didn’t write the Sabbath Law, God did. I’m the guy who says Torah keeping isn’t mandatory. If someone doesn’t want to keep Sabbath then they shouldn’t. But if someone says that they’re keeping God’s Sabbath then they have to keep it His way and milk cows be damned. It wouldn’t be the first cow sacrificed due to God’s Law.

So to recap; God’s Law is immutable. Milk cows are not. If cows aren’t able to conform to God’s Word then cows get to conform to the grill. That being said, milk cows can conform to God’s Word. Give the milk away. Spill it out. Drink it all at once. Make ice cream. Let the calf drink it. Just don’t disobey Yahweh.

 

[FollowingHim]

Is it disobeying Yahweh to consume milk that somebody else milked on Sabbath?

 

[The Revolting Man]

We always milked our goats on Shabbat... it's just part of farm life.. but, our economic model wasn't 2-5000 gallons of milk per day. It was more than we could drink and excess was made into cheese midweek, some of which was sold...

You see my problem with that right? You’re doing commerce on the Sabbath. By milking the dairy animal and then selling the resultant cheese you have done paying work on the Sabbath.

 

[The Revolting Man]

Is it disobeying Yahweh to consume milk that somebody else milked on Sabbath?

Interesting question. If I knew someone had milked the cow on the Sabbath then I would avoid the milk. I don’t know that that is disobeying Yahweh however. I don’t feel any compulsion to find out if the milk was procured on the Sabbath.

 

[The Revolting Man]

Having said that, I can understand how you have reached your conclusion even if I disagree with it.

If that is your honest conviction, then you should absolutely practice it. Don't keep a cow yourself, and don't consume dairy products made by others.

Do you consume milk, cheese, butter, yoghurt, or any food containing whey protein?

I have a cow that’s not ready to breed and if I find that I can’t not milk it on the Sabbath then she will produce meat through her calves.

 

[FollowingHim]

If I knew someone had milked the cow on the Sabbath then I would avoid the milk.

I can tell you for certain that if you consume anything produced in a large industrial facility (such as cheese, butter, powdered milk, whey protein, or anything with those ingredients), some of the milk in that product will inevitably have been milked on the Sabbath. Because it's all bulked and mixed together. Unless you only ever drink milk from your own housecow, and never even buy something as simple as a donut outside your home, you are consuming milk that was milked on the Sabbath.

 

[The Revolting Man]

I can tell you for certain that if you consume anything produced in a large industrial facility (such as cheese, butter, powdered milk, whey protein, or anything with those ingredients), some of the milk in that product will inevitably have been milked on the Sabbath. Because it's all bulked and mixed together. Unless you only ever drink milk from your own housecow, and never even buy something as simple as a donut outside your home, you are consuming milk that was milked on the Sabbath.

Right but as with food sacrificed to idols I don’t feel a need to go find out.

 

[Keith Martin]

Right but as with food sacrificed to idols I don’t feel a need to go find out.

I have a sinking suspicion that, if any of us took an endeavor such as discovering if food had been sacrificed to idols or if someone had exerted effort on a Sabbath to produce any particular thing we might be consuming, we would starve to death before we could take such a path to its logical conclusion.

 

[frederick]

I have a sinking suspicion that, if any of us took an endeavor such as discovering if food had been sacrificed to idols or if someone had exerted effort on a Sabbath to produce any particular thing we might be consuming, we would starve to death before we could take such a path to its logical conclusion.

Or if the car you drive, ammunition in the gun you fire, glass you drink your Kool Aid from, or whatever.... was made on a Sabbath you would have created more burdens than anyone wants to deal with.