The Sabbath | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 8, 1867

The Sabbath.

Gen. ii, 2, 3. And on the seventh day God ended 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.

SABBATH, rest. God, having created the world in six days, ‘rested’ on the seventh, Gen. ii, 2, 3; that is, he ceased from producing new beings in this creation; and because he had rested on it, he ‘blessed’ or sanctified it, and appointed it in a peculiar manner for his worship.

We here have an account of the original institution of the day of rest. Like the institution of marriage, it was given to man for the whole race. Those who worshiped God seem to have kept the Sabbath from the first, and there are tokens of this in the brief sketch the Bible contains of the ages before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. Noah sent forth the raven from the ark, and the dove thrice, at intervals of seven days. Gen. viii. The account of the sending of manna in the desert proves that the Sabbath was already known and observed. Ex. xvi, 22-30. The week was an established division of time in Mesopotamia and Arabia, Gen. xxix, 27; and traces of it have been found in many nations of antiquity, so remote from each other, and of such diverse origin, as to forbid the idea of their having received it from Sinai and the Hebrews.

The re-enactment of the Sabbath on Mount Sinai, among the commandments of the moral law, was also designed not for the Jews alone, but for all who should receive the word of God, and ultimately for all mankind. Christ and his apostles never speak of the decalogue but as of permanent and universal obligation. ‘The Sabbath was made for man.’ The fourth commandment is as binding as the third and the fifth. Certain additions to it, with specifications and penalties, were a part of the Mosaic civil law, and are not now in force.—Am. Tract Society’s Bible Dictionary.