The Sabbath in Egypt by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jun 20, 1912

The Sabbath in Egypt

By F. M. W.

THE sojournings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob among the nations served to spread abroad in the earth a knowledge of the true God. While many had lost this knowledge and were bowing down to idols of their own making, there were doubtless many outside of the families of the chosen seed who were worshipers of the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and who remembered from week to week the regularly recurring memorial of his great work.

In the providence of God the seed of Abraham went down into Egypt. Joseph was sent before them to prepare the way for their reception. For his sake they were kindly received. After his death, however, there began the long years of bondage and servitude to which they were subjected until the exodus. They were afflicted for more than four hundred years. Their cries of anguish and distress ascended to heaven, and God in compassion remembered his covenant with Abraham, his promise unto Isaac and Jacob. For their deliverance he raised up Moses and Aaron, and sent them to Pharaoh with the request that he let his people Israel go. It is not unreasonable to suppose that during this Egyptian captivity the children of Israel in a large measure lost their living connection with the God of their fathers. In intermingling with the Egyptians, they imbibed their spirit, adopted their customs, and to a considerable extent lost the purity and simplicity of their religious faith.

When the time came for their deliverance, it was necessary for the Lord, through his chosen servants, to prepare them for emancipation not only from the physical bondage of Egypt, but from the spiritual bondage into which they had fallen. The efforts of Moses and Aaron were attended by a work of reformation. They sought to bring their brethren to that place in their experience where once more they could take hold of the mighty power of God, and through faith in his promises claim deliverance for themselves and for their children. Forgetting God in their idolatrous surroundings, they naturally forgot the memorial of his great power. Hence Moses and Aaron sought to bring the people back to Sabbath observance. This is very clearly indicated in the answer returned to them by Pharaoh when they requested that Israel might go into the wilderness to spend time in the worship of the God of heaven:—

“And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let [hinder] the people from their works? get you unto your burdens. And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.”

Reference here could not surely be made by the king of Egypt to their resting during the customary rest hours of each day—the hours of the night. But here was some unusual rest to which the people had been called through the efforts of Moses. It is very natural to conclude that this was none other than the rest of the holy Sabbath.

That the children of Israel were well acquainted with the Sabbath before it was spoken from Sinai, or before their attention was called to it by the falling of the manna in the wilderness, is very evident from the record found in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus. When some of the Israelites went out to gather manna on the Sabbath, contrary to the command of the Lord, “the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?” Verse 28.

This disobedience in their experience was not a new thing. Repeatedly had they violated God’s holy rest day, and by this question the Lord directly charges them with having long refused to obey him in the matter of Sabbath observance.

We are glad to note that other writers, even those who argue a change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, take this same position with reference to the knowledge and observance of the Sabbath during the Egyptian bondage. In “The Sabbath Viewed in the Light of Reason, Revelation, and History,” by Rev. James Gilfillan, published by the American Tract Society, page 284, we find this statement regarding Sabbath observance during this period:—

There are incidents in the history of Israel in Egypt which give indication of a preexisting Sabbatism. Moses and Aaron, by the direction and in the name of Jehovah, asked of Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go, that they might hold a feast unto God into the wilderness. What the feast was appears from the answer of the king of Egypt to their demand: “Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works? get you unto your burdens. Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest [Sabbatize] from their burdens;” and more decisively from the fact that no sooner had the people gained their liberty than they celebrated “the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord,” feasting on the bread of heaven. Before this time, and on the very eve of the exode, the Passover was instituted, where the Sabbatic circumstances of “seven days,” resting from “all manner of work,” and “holy convocations,” are all mentioned as matters with which it is taken for granted that they were well acquainted. The doctrine of a paradisiacal and patriarchal Sabbath does not depend on the circumstances now reviewed, but however imperfectly they may have been stated, we venture to call for this verdict from our readers, that but for the antecedent institution and continued observance of a sacred seventh day, these circumstances could not have existed.

It is evident, as one closely studies the Bible record, that the children of Israel were required in a specified time to furnish a certain number of bricks. By strenuous labor they were doubtless able to meet the requirement in six days, thus obtaining the seventh day for holy rest. But later, when Moses demanded of Pharaoh that Israel be allowed to go, then, in order that the Israelites might be kept from what the king considered idleness, he ordered that the straw which had been supplied should be no longer furnished, but that they should be required to gather stubble from the fields, but the tale of bricks should in no wise be lessened. Regarding this the following statement in “Patriarchs and Prophets,” pages 257, 258, is to the point:—

Tidings of them and of the interest they were exciting among the people had already reached the king. His anger was kindled. “Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let [hinder] the people from their works?” he said. “Get you unto your burdens.” Already the kingdom had suffered loss by the interference of these strangers. At thought of this he added, “Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.” In their bondage the Israelites had to some extent lost the knowledge of God’s law, and they had departed from its precepts. The Sabbath had been generally disregarded, and the exactions of their taskmasters made its observance apparently impossible. But Moses had shown his people that obedience to God was the first condition of deliverance; and the efforts made to restore the observance of the Sabbath had come to the notice of their oppressors. The king, thoroughly roused, suspected the Israelites of a design to revolt from his service. Disaffection was the result of idleness; he would see that no time was left them for dangerous scheming. And he at once adopted measures to tighten their bonds and crush out their independent spirit.

This oppressive order served greatly to increase the tribulations of the children of Israel. It seemed to them no doubt, as it often seems to us, that the Lord, instead of working for their deliverance, was binding upon them burdens heavier than they had borne before; but in all their trials God was seeking to draw his children nearer to himself. He was seeking to prepare them for a great deliverance from their oppressors, a fitting symbol of the soul liberty and of the escape

from the thralldom of sin which he was seeking to work out in their experience. May we to-day seek the same deliverance from the bondage of sin, and may the Sabbath of Jehovah in our observance represent not only a memorial of God’s mighty creative power, but as well a sign of his re-creative power in our sanctification. F. M. W.