Saturday (Heb. shabbâth, “rest”, “cessation”; shabbâthôn; both words derive from the verb shâbath, “to cease”, “to rest”, “to keep the Sabbath”; Gr. sábbaton, “Saturday”). The weekly Sabbath, instituted at the end of the creation week* and observed by worshipers of God, both Jewish and Christian, throughout the age of biblical history. When God finished creating the earth, “he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had made” (Gen 2: 1,2). This “rest”* was not a consequence of weariness or fatigue (Isa 40:28), but of the fact that the task was complete and the world was perfect (Gen 1:31). It agreed in every way with his ideal, and it put an end to his work, because his work could no longer be improved. Then “God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it” as a memorial of his creative work (2:3). Since “the Sabbath was made for man” (Mar 2:27) – that is, for the benefit of man – it is logical to conclude that the divine blessing with which the Creator invested the 7th day of the week was to be a channel of happiness for Adam and Eve. Since God also “sanctified” it (Gen 2:3), or set it apart for sacred use, we can be sure that our first parents dedicated those holy hours to God. That the Creator intended the blessing of the Sabbath to be for all men of all time is evident from the statement that “it was made for man” (Mar 2:27), in order that man rest and use it with holy motives. According to this, the 7th day is a day of rest for all who recognize that they are descendants of Adam and Eve, and not only for the Jews. Indeed, these only appeared many centuries after creation, and God never intended for them to monopolize Sabbath observance. 1017 It is evident that our first parents and their descendants understood the meaning of the 7th day, because: 1. God did not carry out the works of the creation week for his own benefit, but for the benefit of man. And since God’s rest on the 7th day was not due to weariness, and since that day was part of the creation week, as its name indicates, it is evident that the blessing and sanctification of the Sabbath were also in benefit of man, particularly for his spiritual and moral good. 2. Since the dawn of history, the 7-day week has been known and accepted as a measure of time (Gen 7:4, 10; 8:10, 12; 29:27). Since its duration does not depend on the movements of any of the heavenly bodies, and there is no way to trace its origin apart from the creation account found in Gen_1 and 2, man’s acceptance of the 7-day week in those early times must be traced back to the fact that God established the 7th day of the week as a day of rest, blessing and sanctification. The 1st occurrence of the word Sabbath in the Scriptures is found in Exo 16:21-30, in connection with the fall of the manna before Israel’s arrival at Mount Sinai. God emphasized the importance of the 7th day of the week, as a day of rest, by providing a double ration on the 6th day and nothing on the 7th. This weekly miracle began in the 2nd month after Israel’s departure from Egypt (vs 1, 14, 15), and lasted 40 years, until the 1st month (Jos 5:10-12; cf Exo 12:2-11; 16 :35), that is, more than 2,000 successive weekly Saturdays. On Mount Sinai, God prescribed the observance of the 7th day rest with the words of the 4th commandment of the Decalogue (Exo 20:8-11). He wrote this law with his own finger on tablets of stone (Exo 31:18; Deu 9:10) and instructed Moses to put it in the ark of the covenant (Deu 10:1-5). The word “remember”, with which the Sabbath commandment begins, does not mean that the observance of the 4th commandment is more important than the other 9, because they are all equal (Jos 2:8-11; Jam 2:10 ,eleven). God’s people had to “remember” the Sabbath because “in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day”; that is, the Sabbath is a memorial to the Creator and creation. Hence, “the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” at the very beginning. God knew that man’s natural tendency would be to worry so much about the things he had done during the 6 days of creation, that he would forget Who had done them, a universal and evident tendency since those distant times (Rom 1: 20-25 ). The OT Scriptures often differentiate the true God from the false gods by his creative power. For example, in Psa 96:5 we read: “All the gods of the peoples are idols; but Jehovah made the heavens.” It was the Lord’s purpose that man should understand “his invisible things, his eternal power and deity” through “things that have been made” (Rom 1:20). In accordance with this, the infinitely wise Creator instituted the Sabbath so that God would not be forgotten and slip into idolatry, and thus be a blessing to man and not a burden. The Lord definitely declared that it would be a permanent “sign” between him and his people, by which they would always recognize that the true God was his God (Exo 31:13). In addition to its universal importance for all men, the Sabbath would have additional significance for Israel as a reminder that the Lord had delivered them from Egyptian bondage and given them rest (Deu 5:12-15). Apart from the weekly Sabbaths (Lev 23:3) there were 7 ceremonial Sabbaths per year, scattered throughout the liturgical calendar: 1 and 2. The 1st and last days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (vs 7, 8). 3. Pentecost (v 21). 4. The 1st day of the 7th month (v 24). 5. The Day of Atonement (v 27). 6 and 7. The 1st and last days of the Feast of the Cabins (vs 34-36). Ceremonial Sabbaths could fall on any day of the week, occasionally coinciding with the weekly Sabbath. In addition to the weekly and annual Sabbaths, every 7 years there was a sabbatical year,* during which the land was not worked (25:3-7). Every 50 years a jubilee* was proclaimed, lasting one year, during which properties returned to their original owners. By imposing the suspension of work, the 4th commandment provided time for physical rest and spiritual refreshment. However, that time was not to be spent in idleness, for God instructed his people to meet together in “holy convocation” (Lev 23:3; cf Eze 46:3). The pre-eminence of the Sabbath over the other days of the week was accentuated in the ancient tabernacle and temple ritual by the offering of an additional lamb (Num 28:9, 10) and the renewal on that day of the showbread (Lev 24:5-8; 1Ch 9:32). According to Levitical law, the sanction that the violation of the Sabbath deserved was death (Exo 31:14-16), and at least one case of execution 1018 of someone who violated the Sabbath voluntarily is recorded (Num 15:32- 36). Sabbath breaking was one of the sins that resulted in the Babylonian captivity (Jer 17:19-27). Like Jeremiah, the prophet Ezekiel lamented that in his day the Sabbath was largely ignored (Eze 20:12-24; 22:8; 26:23, 38). Peering into the future, Isaiah foresaw the conversion of the Gentiles and promised a blessing for Sabbath-keepers (Isa. 56:2-6; cf. 58:13). After the captivity the Jews fell into carelessness again regarding Sabbath observance, and Nehemiah pushed through a reform in order to encourage such observance (Neh 10:31-13:15-22). During intertestamental times the Pharisees burdened the Sabbath with a number of trivial regulations that made it a burden rather than a blessing. Those heavy regulations, later codified in the Mishnah, were part of the tradition that Jesus fought so vigorously throughout his ministry (Matt 23:4; Mark 7:1-13). The Mishnah (Shabbath 7.2) lists 39 different jobs that cannot be performed on that day, and there are countless other detailed regulations as well. Indeed, 2 entire treatises of the Mishnah, Shabbath and Erubin, are devoted to enumerating the various regulations concerning the Sabbath. It was forbidden, for example, to undo a knot, to write more than 2 letters of the alphabet or to erase a space greater than the space for 2 letters, to light a fire or put it out. The best known regulation is the one that refers to the “way on a Saturday”, which was more or less 1 km. It was also considered a Sabbath violation to look at yourself in a mirror fixed to the wall. The egg that the hen laid on the Sabbath could be sold to a Gentile, but he could not eat it; a gentile could also be hired to light a candle or the fire on that day: it was considered illegal to spit on the ground, lest a blade of grass be irrigated by it; No one was allowed to wear a kerchief on the Sabbath, unless a corner was sewn into the clothing, in which case it was technically no longer a kerchief, but part of the vestments. In this way the rabbis put emphasis on the negative aspects of its observance, that is, on what should not be done, and in this way they magnified the importance of the forms of religion while detracting from its content. They made the Sabbath an end in itself, and made men its slaves. These negative and minute regulations effectively served to obscure their true purpose. This rabbinic emphasis on its rigid observance reached its height during our Lord’s earthly ministry, and in no other respect did Jesus come into more acute conflict with the leaders of Judaism than with respect to the observance of the Sabbath. He taught that it was instituted for the benefit of man (Mar 2:27, 28), and emphasized the positive aspects of its observance, that is, the kind of activity that can be carried out on that day. Nothing he said or did can be construed as contrary to the Sabbath that appears in the Ten Commandments or in Levitical law. His protest was oriented exclusively against the abuses that the Sabbath had suffered at the hands of the rabbis, and his purpose was to free the day from the heavy regulations with which they had burdened it (Mat 23:13). It was his custom to devote the day to his participation in religious services and religious instruction (Mar 1:21; 3:1; Luk 4:16-27; 13:10), to appropriate social activities (Mar 1:29-31 ; 2:23; Luk 4:1-3) and works of mercy. He performed 7 of the healing miracles on him during the Sabbath (Mar: 21-31; 3: 1-5; Luk 13: 10-17; 14: 1-4; Joh 5: 1-15; 9: 1-7). See…
