Was the Sabbath a Purely Jewish Institution?

I.

IT has been confidently asserted by anti-Sabbatarians that the Sabbath was a purely Jewish institution and passed away with the shadows and types of the Old Dispensation. A careful study of the matter, however, will reveal that the Sabbath law, while given to the Jews with the other Commandments at Sinai, was not an institution meant for the Jews only. 1. It will be seen from the words recorded in Genesis: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made: and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made” (II., 1-3) that there is a very intimate connection between these words and those used in the Fourth Commandment. The above is the primal Sabbath instituted by God in Eden, and so clearly do the words and the reason assigned in the Fourth Commandment point to it; “for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Exod. xx. 11) that no one reading these words could come to any other conclusion than that the institution referred to in Exodus was the same as that referred to in Genesis. If the Sabbath then was instituted in Eden it follows, as Archdeacon Paley himself admits, that it was not a purely Jewish institution, and its primal, divine authorization makes it universally obligatory. Paley, however, denies that the Sabbath was instituted in Eden for the following reasons: (1) The words in Genesis do not make the institution of the Sabbath coeval with creation and commemorative of it but are proleptical—that is that Moses made an anticipatory use of the words in the Fourth Commandment when he was writing Genesis. In adopting this line of argument in his “Moral Philosophy” Paley was simply taking up the position advocated by Gomarus in the famous Netherlands Controversy. This argument is so far fetched that instead of helping anti-Sabbatarians it only reveals how desperate their plight is when they resort to it.

1. Another argument advanced with great plausibility is the silence of Scripture on the Sabbath from its institution at the beginning until its republication at the giving of the manna in the wilderness (Exod. xvi). Paley has argued that such silence cannot be accounted for if the Sabbath had been instituted at the beginning. The silence is not quite so profound as Paley would make it to be. (1) In the case of the Deluge the late Dean Burgon in two articles published in the “Guardian” (5th and 12th January, 1887) and afterwards reprinted in his “Life” by Dean Goulburn (vol. ii. pp. 392-401) demonstrated the strict continuous succession of the weeks, in the case of several periods of seven days which are scripturally recorded in the year of the Deluge, at the beginning and at the close of it. The two main points stressed in “The Calendar of the Flood” are (a) That the Antediluvian Patriarchs were demonstrably familiar with the weekly division of time; and, further, (b) That it may be confidently declared that they were acquainted with the Sabbath. (2) The argument from silence, however, may sweep away a good deal more than the Sabbath if followed. The Fall of man is in the same position as the Sabbath. It is traced in the miseries and sufferings of the race, but it is not mentioned after what is said in Gen. iii. during the period in question. Take, again, Creation, how few are the references to it, if Genesis i. and ii. are excepted, from primeval times to the Exodus. Again, the ordinance of circumcision is never alluded to between the times of Joshua and John the Baptist, a period of 1400 years. There is no mention of the Passover from the date of Deuteronomy xvi. 2, to the days of Josiah, a period of 828 years. The Sabbatical year is not mentioned for the space of nine hundred years, and not one of the laws of the Decalogue, except the sixth, is ever formally announced till they are promulgated from Sinai although there is evidence that they were obligatory and known. We read “Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws” (Gen. xxvi. 5); but there is no list of these “commandments” or “laws” in Genesis. And if the other laws could be kept without being quoted why not the Sabbath law? Furthermore, as Dr Baxter has pointed out in his “Sabbath a Divine and Universal Institution”: “The period of the three patriarchs is 330 years, but the period from the death of Moses to the ministry of Elisha covers 557; and in the whole of these 557 years there is no mention of the Sabbath, though its observance all through is quite undoubted” (p. 12). The true explanation of the silence of which so much has been made is that no occasions occurred where the mention of the Sabbath was naturally or necessarily called for. Jonathan Edwards pointed out that the argument from silence to have force would require that some event happened or duty was performed which necessitated the mention of the Sabbath and that it was not referred to. (3) But there are not wanting further corroborations of the Sabbath in primeval and patriarchal times. In the records of heathen nations the division of time into portions of seven days is a well attested fact. But without drawing on these records, meantime, we have certain references in Genesis itself that point in this direction as well as the calendar of the Deluge already referred to. The first recorded worship (Cain and Abel)—”in process of time it came to pass” literally “at the end of days” (Gen. iv. 3) is an instance. The only “days,” previously referred to, are the six of labour ending in one of rest. Jacob and Laban count by weeks. Joseph prescribes a seven days’ mourning for his father. In regard to the foregoing points they are not to be taken singly but cumulatively, and if so treated they will make a good case for the Sabbath being in existence before it was announced to the Jews in the wilderness.

2. In regard to the contention that the Fourth Commandment is purely Jewish we ask: What is there so strikingly Jewish about this Commandment as distinguished from the others? And the candid answer must be—nothing. But we go a step further and say that there are references in the Fourth Commandment which make it clear that it was not meant for the Jews only. (1) There are six days of labour; (2) one of rest to be kept holy; (3) man servants, maid servants and strangers were to observe the day; (4) the very cattle had the privilege of rest extended to them. Now, what in all these is so peculiarly Jewish as to make this Commandment to be singled out as the most Jewish in the Decalogue? It has been pertinently asked in regard to the “cattle”—”Would a Jew’s ‘cattle’ have ceased to need rest if sold to a Gentile. The Sabbath law resembles the covenant made with Noah which was with every living creature as well as with man.” If the Sabbath was a purely Jewish institution no “stranger” would have been asked to keep it. The “stranger” could not keep the Passover until he was circumcised and thus received into the Jewish community. He was not required to become a proselyte to observe the Sabbath. (5) It has been argued from Deut. v. 12-15, where Moses, in rehearsing the Decalogue in the hearing of the people, reminds the people instead of using the words in Exodus xx. 11, says: “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath Day”—that this gives the Sabbath a distinctly Jewish colouring. To this Dr Baxter already quoted answers:—”He [Moses] virtually says: ‘You were once bond-servants to Pharaoh yourselves: and, under his oppression, your Sabbath-keeping was an impossibility: other commandments you might observe, but the sanctifying of one day in every seven, by rest and worship, was beyond your power: not till God brought you forth by a mighty hand could this ancient privilege be re-enjoyed by you. Remember that experience, in dealing with your own bond-servants now: do not grind them by Sabbath labour, as you were yourselves once wrongously ground in Egypt: remember the golden rule, and do now to them as you once vainly wished that Pharaoh should have done to you.’ Such an appeal, instead of implying that the Sabbath was originated at the exodus, would lose all its tenderness and force, unless the Sabbath were an ancient birthright, of which their Egyptian bondage had long deprived them: the appeal confirms, instead of invalidating, the Sabbath’s primeval origin. Further, the appeal is not a constituent part of the commandment at all: it is a mere hortatory enforcement, added by Moses, when rehearsing the on-goings at Sinai, forty years after they had transpired. The words, “as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee” (in verse 12), are also obviously not a part of the commandment: they are a comment, added by Moses, pointing the people back to a prior delivery at Sinai; and, when we go to that prior delivery, we find the blessing of the Sabbath dated from Creation. It was an almost invariable habit with Moses to enforce Israel’s duties by a consideration of God’s deliverance of them from Egypt; but that does not imply that these duties were previously non-existent. The Third Commandment is enforced from a reminder that the Lord “had brought the people out of the land of Egypt” (Lev. xxii. 32, 33); but surely that does not imply that the duty of hallowing God’s name sprang into being at the exodus! The duty of “loving the stranger” is enforced, from the people’s own experience of having been “strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exod. xxiii. 9; Deut. x. 19): does that imply that the duty of “loving the stranger” was not in force from the beginning? Endless similar illustrations from all Scripture might be given. And we have shown that the special enforcement of the Fourth Commandment, from the memory of Egypt, necessarily involves a suspension of the people’s Sabbath privilege, under Pharaoh’s rule” (The Sabbath a Divine and Universal Institute, pp. 23, 24.)

(To be continued).

Qualifications for a Minister.

Every preacher should have these three qualifications:—(1) a little good sense in his head; for God does not employ foolishness in His service. (2) Plenty of good grace in his heart. Nothing will do without this; for a man cannot preach about what he knows not and has not. (3) A good, competent knowledge of the Word of God. A man must study the things of God and give himself wholly to them. And we have reason to thank God that there are now so many precious helps, good commentaries, and other works, which give abundant information.—Rowland Hill.