[Continuing Chapter 2 of James Tabor’s Restoring Abrahamic Faith: THE WAY; first posted July 2, 2012.—Admin1.]
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Remembering the seventh day (Saturday) Sabbath is a vital part of the restoration of true BIBLICAL FAITH. This fourth commandment is not a minor statute or ordinance to be changed or abrogated with the passing of time. It is an essential part of the TESTIMONY and every bit as important, and as universal, as the commandments regarding murder, idolatry, or adultery. To our human way of thinking this statement sounds extreme and even absurd. But God’s “thoughts” are not our “thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8). The Sabbath Day is vitally connected to knowng and understanding God as Creator and experiencing His Presence, as well as providing essential physical and spiritual rejuvenation to our busy lives. Our loss of this vital pillar of the Faith has probably contributed more to our disconnection from the people of Israel, and thus to the Hebraic roots of BIBLICAL FAITH, than any other single factor.
The very fact that the Sabbath commandment is one of these great Ten “Matters” of YHVH clearly sets it apart as a major component of the WAY of YHVH. It would not be included as part of this great Code, this awesome TESTIMONY of YHVH Himself, unless it was an indispensable part of God’s WAY for humankind. Two of the Ten are stated in positive form:
- Remember the Sabbath and
- Honor your father and your mother; the remaining eight are prohibitions.
These two positive commandments are linked together in Leviticus 19:2-3 as an introduction to the description of true Holiness. Notice:
You shall be holy, for I YHVH your God am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths; I am YHVH your God.
One is the foundation of God’s relationship with humans, the other the foundation of human relationships with one another.
There are two accounts of the TEN WORDS recorded in the TORAH. The first is the original scene recorded in Exodus 20. The second is in Deuteronomy 5, forty years later, where Moses reminds the new generation of that awesome face-to-face encounter with YHVH Himself at Sinai. It is instructive to compare these two accounts of the Sabbath commandment side by side:
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of YHVH your God; in it you shall do no work . . . for in six days YHVH made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them and rested the seventh day. Therefore YHVH blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11)
Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as YHVH your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of YHVH your God, in it you shall not do any work . . . And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and YHVH your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore YHVH your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day (Deuteronomy 5:12-15).
The concluding phrases in both accounts are quite interesting. In the Exodus account we are told why YHVH blessed the Sabbath and made it holy. In Moses’ summary account in Deuteronomy we are told why YHVH commanded the people of Israel to observe or keep the Sabbath day. Both concepts are important to an understanding of this Commandment and its essential rationale.
Let’s begin with the point made in the Exodus account—that the Sabbath day goes back to Creation Week of Genesis 1:1-2:3. l There we find the same essential thought: Thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work that He had done, and He rested (Hebrew verb Shabbat)—
on the seventh day form all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because in it He rested from all His work that God had created to make (Genesis 2:1-3).
Here we see that the Sabbath day is grounded in the patterned activity of God Himself. Just as God blessed humankind on the sixth day, telling them to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), He also blessed the seventh day at the time of Creation, and made it holy. He set it apart from the six other days of the week, sanctifying it as a sabbath or “rest” day. The Sabbath is a memorial of Creation. It testifies to YHVH’s unique activity as the Creator of all things. It is as universal as humankind. YHVH, through Isaiah the prophet, declares:
Blessed is the man . . . who keeps the Sabbath from profaning it and keeps his hand from doing any evil (Isaiah 56:2).
In this section of Isaiah all humanity is addressed and the observance of the Sabbath is tightly linked with following the WAY of Righteousness more generally. To remember the Sabbath day is to acknowledge YHVH as our great Creator and we humans as His creatures. It is a fundamental step in the path of justice, love, and righteousness.
It is noteworthy that the Sabbath day itself is the reason that many human cultures, from antiquity to the present, observe a seven-day week. Our other cycles of time—days, months, and years, are controlled by the movement of earth and moon in relationship to one another and to the sun. Yet there is no such seven-day cycle, or week, associated with our solar system. The seven-day week is actually created by the cycle of the seventh day Sabbath. This weekly cycle, signified by the Sabbath day, is reflected in the earliest narratives of the Hebrew Bible. Cain and Abel bring their offerings at the end of days, probably referring to the seventh day Sabbath (Genesis 4:3 literal translation). Noah and his family enter the ark precisely seven days before the flood begins (Genesis 7:4,10). Later, when the Flood is over, Noah sends out the raven and the doves over a period of several weeks, following the same seven day weekly cycle (Genesis 8:10, 12).
Throughout the world, from ancient through modern times, the seven-day week has been known. In fact, there is interesting linguistic evidence that the seventh day, from ancient times, was even called the “Sabbath” in most of the major language groups of humankind.
[Footnote: Hundreds of languages, spread throughout the globe, actually name the seventh day of the week with some derivative form of the Hebrew word shabbat. There are too many examples to cite here, but a selective sample would include :
Assyrian sabatu; Persian shambid; Caucasus region samat; Central Africa assebatu; North Africa assebt: West Africa essbi: Hungary szombat; Abyssinia sanbat; Java saptu; Afghanistan shamba; Malta issibt‘ Turkey essabt; Borneo sabtu; Arabic assbt. Even the Romance languages of Europe, though eventually Christianized, still maintain this ancient “Jewish” designation for Saturday, the seventh day:
Latin sabbatum; French samedi; Italian sabbato; Romania sambata; German samstag.]
The point Moses makes in the second account, recorded in Deuteronomy 5, has to do with why the Sabbath day was specifically given to the people of Israel. Not only does the Sabbath day look back to YHVH as Creator, but it also pictures the mighty redemptive acts of YHVH in releasing or bringing rest to the entire nation of Israel when they were suffering bitter bondage to Egypt. In other words, the Sabbath day reminds us of the two most basic aspects of YHVH’s mighty acts: Creation and Redemption. The Sabbath day is made a special sign between YHVH and the people of Israel, a perpetual covenant throughout their generations (Exodus 31:15-17).
They were to perpetually testify to that TESTIMONY spoken by YHVH Himself at Sinai, giving witness to the nations of the world to the One Creator God who works His redemptive PLAN in history.
There are two basic concepts associated with the Sabbath in these accounts—to remember it, and to observe (lit. “guard”) it, as holy or “set apart” from the rest of the week. The instructions in Scripture on how to keep or observe the Sabbath day holy are few. The literal meaning of the verb is “to stop.” The basic idea is that one ceases (shabbat) from normal “activity,” setting the day apart (it was marked anciently “from evening to evening,” that is, from Friday sunset until Saturday sunset), as a time of physical and spiritual rest and refreshment, for humans as well as their animals. In other words, one “keeps the Sabbath holy” by not treating this day as ordinary time—that is, as just one more day of the week.
Isaiah speaks of calling the Sabbath a delight, a day to be honored. To “pursue one’s own affairs” is considered “trampling” on the day (Isaiah 58:13, see Nehemiah 13: 15-18). The keynote of the Sabbath day is joy. It is a wonderful “sanctuary in time” carved out of the profane and mundane activities and surroundings of our everyday lives. Those who have learned to truly remember and guard this holy day as a Sabbath can testify to the incredible blessing it brings upon family and friends as well as the profound and peaceful sense of the very presence of YHVH.
Imagine a world in which everyone on the planet, region by region, as Friday sunset arrived, simply “stopped” or “shut down,” to participate in a physical and spiritual break from our hectic everyday lives. Anyone who has been in Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon has experienced a tiny taste of what this could be like. The entire city simply shuts down, most traffic ceases, and people take to the streets with family and friends, enjoy special meals, with time for gatherings in synagogues or table conversations centering on the Torah reading for that particular week. The collective effect is rather amazing, both for the individuals and the community as a whole.
The Rabbis say that rather than Israel keeping the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel. There is great truth to this saying. The seventh day Sabbath is the most ancient observance of humankind. It has continued in an unbroken cycle from time immemorial. It has always been a sign or mark between YHVH and His followers, who live in a covenant relationship with Him, testifying that He alone is Creator and Redeemer.
It is worth noting that historical research indicates the early followers of the Nazarene observed the seventh day Sabbath, not Sunday. It was only in the late 2nd century C.E., under the pressure of a strongly anti-Jewish, antinomian, pagan sentiment which had developed in the Western Christian churches, that “Christians” substituted Sunday for the Sabbath and began to lose touch with the Judaic or TORAH roots of the original Nazarene faith. Recent scholarship has carefully documented this transition and the change from “Sabbath to Sunday” is one of the most significant developments in early Christianity.
[Footnote: Samuele Bacchiocchi, Anti-Judaism and the Origin of Sunday (Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University Press, 1975) . . . one of the very best popular accounts of the general departure of Christianity from its early Jewish roots is Hugh Schonfield, Those Incredible Christians (London: Hutchinson, 1968) and subsequent editions.]
In the same way, Mohammed, in the 7th century C.E., substituted Friday for Saturday as the holy day to be observed by his Muslim followers. Observing either Sunday or Friday as a kind of “substitute Sabbath” robs one of the profound and positive impact of YHVH’s original TESTIMONY. The TORAH specifies a specific day, the seventh of the week—not the first or the sixth. It does make a difference which day is the Sabbath. It is interesting to note that when Jeroboam broke with Solomon’s son and established the northern Kingdom of Israel the first thing he did was move the festival observances from the 7th month to the 8th month (1 Kings 12:32). There are obviously profound cultural and social consequences when groups separate and begin to observe alternative festival cycles.
A return to the seventh day Sabbath puts one back in communion with the Jewish people who have kept this Commandment at the center of their religious life through the ages, as well as with multiple thousands of non-Jews who have begun to recover the Hebraic roots of the earliest followers of Jesus. It is a matter of being in tune with the specific cycle of “rest” which represents the oldest religious observance on our planet. In the days of Moses the observance of the Sabbath was a “test”commandment, signifying those who live in covenant relationship with the Creator God (Exodus 16:4, 26-30). It is a vital part of the “restoration of all things” which lovers of the Bible have advocated since the days of the Reformation.
. . . .millions of sincere Christians have never even considered the shift from Sabbath to Sunday in this regard, however, many who read the Ten Commandments have wondered about the reference to honoring “the seventh day as the Sabbath,” rather than Sunday as the first day of the week. However, significant numbers of biblically oriented Christians are increasingly expressing a desire to return to the Hebraic roots of their faith, that would include a recovery of a Jewish Jesus who observed the Sabbath day as well as the other commandments of the TORAH.
The prophet Jeremiah urged his hearers to seek the “ancient paths where the good way is,and walk therein, and you will find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16). Those who have experienced the joy of Shabbat can truly testify that it is the “good way.” Each Sabbath day, week by week, millions are brought together in a worldwide spiritual fellowship and solidarity that stretches back to Eden and forward to the coming Kingdom of God—when the whole world will experience the true Sabbath peace (Isaiah 66:22-23).
Next: TORAH FAITH for Non-Jews?