The Hebrew Torah commands Israel to keep the Sabbath. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds three words that change the flavor entirely: Israel shall keep the Sabbath "to perform the delightful exercises of the Sabbath" — an everlasting statute for every generation (Exodus 31:16).
This phrase, oneg Shabbat ("delight of Sabbath"), would become one of the central categories of Jewish Sabbath practice. It comes ultimately from Isaiah 58:13, which calls the Sabbath oneg, a delight. But Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (redacted in the 8th century CE) plants the idea of Sabbath delight directly into the Exodus command — centuries before medieval authorities would codify it into law.
What makes Sabbath delightful?
The sages developed a rich catalog. Three festive meals — Friday night, Saturday lunch, the third meal at twilight. White tablecloths. Candles. Wine. Two loaves of challah recalling the double portion of manna. Song. Torah study with family. A nap in the afternoon (yes, the Talmud endorses it — Shabbat 118b). The visiting of friends. The reading aloud together.
The medieval philosopher Maimonides (c. 1170 CE, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Shabbat 30) codified the principle: what is "delight" must be determined by each person's own taste. What brings one person oneg may not bring another. The sign of proper Sabbath observance is not uniformity of pleasure but the honest pursuit of pleasure in the holy.
The deeper teaching of the targum is this: Sabbath is not only abstinence from labor. If it were, it would be a burden. Sabbath is substitution — the exchange of ordinary work for delightful exercises. You do not simply stop. You do something else. You rest by feasting, singing, studying, loving, sleeping. The Sabbath is not an empty day. It is a full day of a different kind of doing.
The Maggid takes this home: do not mistake holy rest for holy absence. The seventh day is not the day nothing happens. It is the day only the right things happen.