Notice that the command from God regarding the rest that the people were to have on the first day of the month was from doing 'servile work'. The Jewish authorities over the years following had defined what kind of work this might mean, so that plucking heads of grain in order to eat and picking up your mat that had been your bed, because you were healed and could now walk, were forbidden, as also was healing on the Sabbath or freeing a person from demonic power, but if an ox had fallen into a pit, then the law allowed you to rescue it and animals that needed water could be led from the stall to water to drink.

God defined servile work as trading, making money on the Sabbath or working with the intent to make money by producing goods to sell or working for harvest to sell, and these drew people away from God and from their Sabbath rest in H ...