ARTICLE IV. THE WEEKLY SABBATH. BY J. C. MURPHY, LL.D., T.C.D., PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, BELFAST, IRELAND. 1. THE weekly Sabbath has its ground, not in the periodical motions of the solar system, but in the history of the human race. Hence, in the first place, it leaves no mark on the outward course of nature. The beast of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea are not sensibly affected by its recurrence. So far, indeed, as labor is concerned, life is to them a perpetual sabbath. They know no toil, properly so called, but spend their time in a constant round of instinctive enjoyment; for the fruits of the earth are ready for their use without any preparation of art. But, with regard to the spiritual engagements of a sacred leisure, they may be truly said to have no sabbath, inasmuch as they want the higher nature which is susceptible of such delights. It follows, in the next place, that the origin and import of the sabbath are to be sought, not in the history of matter, or of brute nature, but in that book which alone contains the true and complete account of man. We propose, in the present Article, to examine three of the texts bearing upon the sabbath (Lev. xxiii. 3; Col. ii. 16, 17; Mark ii. 27, 28), and to ascertain what light they throw, I. On the Nature of the Sabbath; II. On the Change of the Dispensation of Grace; I. The Nature of the Sabbath. 2. This is brought before us in Lev. xxiii. 3: "Six days shall work be done; but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, a holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein; it is the sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings." This is one of the most interesting verses in the Old Testament. It stands at the head of this chapter on holy seasons. It reiterates and explains an institution of incalculable value for the preservation of religious feeling in the households of Israel. After a prefatory clause, it enumerates four characteristics of the sabbath-a sabbath of rest, a holy convocation, a cessation from all work, a sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings. The preface to this ordinance is: "Six days shall work be done." This involves at once an allusion to history, an appeal to the memory of the past. It raises the thoughts to the six days of creative work, of which we have a record in the first chapter of Genesis. There is an admirable symmetry in the proceedings of these six days. They consist of two counterparts, or periods, of three days each. In the former, we begin with light, and go on to the creation of plants. The latter commences with the centres of light, and advances to the creation of the animal world. After the inhabitants of air, water, and earth are called into being, man himself appears with wonderful dignity upon the stage of existence. He is created after the image and in the likeness of God, the Eternal Spirit. Hence he is a spiritual being, having reason, will, and power, capable of knowing, loving, and obeying his Maker, and of holding sway over this nether sphere. When the Almighty contemplated the works of his hand, they were all, man included, pronounced to be very good. It is manifest that these six days are to be had in everlasting remembrance by the race of man. As long as memory lasts, rational, godlike man will look back with wondering interest to the fountain-head of his being. Accordingly, the six days come up for historical notice in the fourth commandment (Ex. xx. 8-11): "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work. .... For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is." Hence it is evident that the six days of work have their ground in the six days of creation, and consequently in the constitution of man, the head of whose race was then called into being. And man is not the mere instinctive recipient of the blessings of life, but the rational agent, who understands motives, devises plans, and performs actions for which he cannot but feel himself responsible to the Author of his being. Hence the permission, as well as injunction, "Six days shall work be done." In this sentence the term "work" means business, rational occupation, the putting forth of the active powers of our nature for the attainment of an end. It is the term employed to denote the activity of God, when it is said that he "rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made" (Gen. ii. 2). It is, therefore, suitable to man, who was made in the image of God. He has an end in view; he contrives the means by which it may be attained; and he puts forth the powers requisite for carrying them into effect. This last is properly called work. But we observe in the fourth commandment another term, employed in conjunction with work: "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work." It is important to distinguish labor from work. Labor is hard toil the exertion of hand and foot, the organs of physical power, by the individual in pursuance of his object. Work is a more comprehensive term, including not only labor, but business, such as the routine of domestic activities, the training of youth, the exchange of commodities, and other operations that do not require hard labor. All these are allowable on the six days of the week. The example set by the Creator, the primeval institution of the week, and the reason assigned for six days of work in the fourth commandment, combine to show that the intervention of a seventh day of rest between every six days of labor was suitable to the nature of man antecedent to the fall. This disastrous event only enhanced the necessity of the weekly arrangement of time. The self-same reasons prompt us to beware of the not uncommon error that the six days are profane, and the seventh day alone holy, or that the secular is opposed to the sacred. The six days' work of God and the seventh day's rest are equally holy; and so it is with man. The fundamental distinction is not a moral, but a physical one; not that of the sacred and the profane, but that of work and rest. And work, the rational employment of means to an end, has been consecrated and elevated to its proper dignity by the example and the command of the Creator of man. 3. The first characteristic of the seventh day is "a sabbath of rest." This very important phrase occurs six times in scripture. It is once applied to the sabbatical year (Lev. XXV. 4), twice to the day of atonement (Lev. xvi. 31; xxiii. 32), and three times to the weekly sabbath (Ex. xxxi. 15; xxxv. 2, and in the passage now before us). The first term, "sabbath," is the ordinary name for the seventh day and for the sabbatical year (Lev. xxv.). It is also applied to the day of atonement, but to no other festival. The sabbath mentioned in Lev. xxiii. 11 is the weekly sabbath in the feast of unleavened bread, which lasted seven days, and therefore included a sabbath. This will be evident to any one who examines Lev. xxiii. 15, 16, notwithstanding the statement of Josephus to the contrary. And the word 1 The sabbath mentioned in Lev. xxiii. 11 is commonly supposed to be the first day of unleavened bread; which was a day of holy convocation, on which no servile work was to be done. Josephus, Antiq. iii. 10, 5, states indeed that the wave-sheaf was presented on the second day of unleavened bread, which implies that "the sabbath" here means the first day of unleavened bread. And the Septuagint by the phrase, "On the morrow of the first day" (r raúpiov Tîs púτns), and Onkelos by the rendering "after the good day," are supposed to concur with him in this statement. Nevertheless it is clearly erroneous. 1. The term "sabbath" is not elsewhere applied to any day but the weekly sabbath and the day of atonement. 2. The institution of the wave-sheaf is a new communication distinct from that of the feast of unleavened bread (Lev. xxiii. 9), and hence it is natural to understand the "sabbath" here of the weekly sabbath. 3. The feast of weeks was to be held on the morrow after the seventh sabbath, counted from the sabbath on the morrow after which the wave-sheaf was offered (Lev. xxiii. 15, 16); and as this seventh sabbath can only be a weekly sabbath, that from which it was counted must be the same. 4. Josephus is by no means accurate or consistent in all his statements. On this very point in Antiq. xiii. 8, 4, he expressly states that the pentecost was immediately after the sabbath (ἐνέστη γὰρ ἡ Πεντηκοστὴ ἑορτὴ μετὰ τὸ σάββατον); which is a clear indication of the ancient usage, and determines the sabbath, on the morrow of which the rendered sabbath in vs. 24, 39 of the above chapter simply means a rest, as it is rendered in the phrase "sabbath of rest." The second term, "rest," occurs only cleven times -six, as we have seen, in the phrase "sabbath of rest"; once in pointing out the nature of the sabbath (Ex. xvi. 23); once in describing the first day of the seventh month, the original new-year's day; twice in reference to the first and the eighth days of the feast of tabernacles; and once in reference to the sabbatical year, which is called the year of rest. The combination of these two terms in the phrase "sabbath of rest," is very emphatic. It indicates a perfect rest as the right and duty of man on the weekly sabbath and the day of atonement, and as the right of the land in the seventh year. But leisure does not imply idleness, as liberty does not mean licentiousness. It leaves man free to attend to the higher relations of fellowship in which he stands with his Maker and his fellow-men. It suspends, as far as possible, the labors of the field and of earth, that he may realize in a special measure the joys of home and of heaven. This day is a season of rest, and therefore of liberty, of peace, of joy, of memory, and of hope. It is the poor man's day of release from the toil and moil of life, but no less the rich man's interval of relief from the engrossing and often exhausting wear and tear of the hunt after earthly pleasure, wealth, power, or fame; the day of freedom from the bondage under which man labors in consequence of the fall; the day of peace and joy, of refreshment, of that inexwave-sheaf was presented, to be the weekly sabbath. The Septuagint and Onkelos also describe the pentecost as the day after the seventh week, which is most simply interpreted as the day after the weekly sabbath which closed the week. 5. The Baithuseans or Sadducees, whose later representatives are the Karaites, who were zealous for scripture against tradition, regard the day in question as the weekly sabbath. 6. In the New Testament the only sabbath mentioned in connection with the feast of unleavened bread is the weekly sabbath. At the passover during which the Messiah was crucified, the weekly sabbath fell on the second day of unleavened bread (John xix. 31). The first day is hence called "the preparation," which was a day of only partial rest, as a trial and an execution took place on it, not to speak of other things that were inconsistent with a total rest. The second and third of the above reasons are decisive of the question; and the others corroborate this conclusion. |