Why Not Be Honest? by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 14, 1874

Why Not Be Honest?

By Uriah Smith

A WRITER in a recent number of The Restitution, on the question, “Who are required to keep the Sabbath?” says:— “For two thousand five hundred years after the creation, we hear nothing of the Sabbath. Then God, in fulfilment of his promise to Abraham, took his natural descendants by the hand and led them out of bondage, and on the same day made a covenant with them. Nehemiah says (9:14), ‘And madest known unto them thy holy Sabbath, and commandest them precepts, statutes, and laws, by the hand of Moses thy servant.’ If the Sabbath had been known to, and observed by, Abraham and the fathers, God could not have made it known to them by the hand of Moses.”

A more careful perusal of the record would have revealed to this writer that what Nehemiah speaks of as made known to the children of Israel, was made known at Sinai, not before. Take the verse before, in connection with the one above quoted, and we have this record: “Thou camest down also upon Mount Sinai, and spakest with them from heaven, and gavest them right judgments, and true laws, good statutes and commandments: and madest known unto them thy holy Sabbath, and commandest them precepts, statutes, and laws, by the hand of Moses thy servant.”

The Sabbath is spoken of as here made known, not by Moses, but by God; and when was it? When he came down upon Sinai. Had the people no knowledge of it before this time? We turn to the 16th of Exodus and there learn that one month and three days before they came to Sinai, the people well understood in regard to the Sabbath, and God took the Sabbath commandment as the one by which to test the obedience of the people to his law! Yet the Restitution puts the matter in such a way as to try to mislead the unguarded reader into the idea that previous to the time of which Nehemiah speaks, the people had no knowledge of that institution!

The record of Ex. 16 cannot be ignored. To write upon the Sabbath question without being aware of the events recorded in that chapter, is to treat the subject ignorantly; to be aware of them, and then try to keep the attention of the reader from them, is to treat the subject dishonestly.

Nehemiah says that God made known the Sabbath on Sinai; Moses, in Ex. 16, says that they knew of it more than a month before they came to Sinai. If the position of the Restitution on Nehemiah’s testimony is correct, there is a hopeless contradiction between these two passages.

But before coming to such a hasty and summary conclusion, the candid investigator will ask another question; namely, Does the expression, “madest known,” necessarily signify bringing to one’s knowledge for the first time? If it does, there is a contradiction between Neh. 9, and Ex. 16. If it does not, the argument which the Restitution makes on the point becomes null and void. We prefer to take the ground that the Restitution is wrong, rather than that the Bible contradicts itself.

What, then, is the meaning of the expression, “madest known,” used by Nehemiah in reference to the Sabbath at Sinai? and how was it made known? It was made known in the same way that God made himself known to Israel in Egypt: “Thus saith the Lord God: In the day when I chose Israel, and lifted up mine hand unto the seed of the house of Jacob, and made myself known unto them in the land of Egypt.” Eze. 20: 5. Yet the children of Israel in Egypt were not without a knowledge of God; for the Hebrew midwives feared him, Ex. 1: 17; and the people in their distress cried unto him. Num. 20: 16; Deut 26:7, &c. His making himself known unto them was therefore simply a more full and immediate revelation of himself to them. Just as it was said to the Jews, that Moses gave them circumcision, though this ordinance was established with Abraham.

So of the Sabbath at Sinai; it was unfolded before them in a more formal, impressive, and complete manner than ever before, by the voice of God; and in this sense it was made known to them, though they had a knowledge of it, and kept it before that time.

As to the silence of Genesis respecting the Sabbath, the explicit account we have of the institution of the Sabbath at the beginning, the fact that time was reckoned by weeks, which could come from nothing but the institution of the Sabbath, the fact that the principles of the moral law were well understood, and that Abraham kept God’s statutes, commandments, and laws, is certainly enough in a brief record which condenses the history of 2500 years into fifty chapters, and aims to touch only upon the more important historical points of that time. But however men may attempt to prove the Sabbath not binding because of the silence of Genesis, their efforts are all rendered abortive by the fact that the Sabbath comes to the surface in Ex. 16, as an institution well known, more than a month before the giving of the law on Sinai.

Two facts are exceedingly troublesome to opposers of the Sabbath: 1. The fact that the Sabbath was known and kept before Sinai, as we have shown, and 2. The fact that the disciples of Christ kept it according to the commandment, this side the cross. Luke 23:56. For if the Sabbath was observed before Sinai, it is impossible to show that it was not kept from creation down. And if it was binding upon the disciples the day after the crucifixion, it is impossible to show that it is not binding now. If they could only confine the Sabbath to the period between Sinai and the cross, how they would rejoice. The jubilee of Rev. 11:10, would be acted over again. But they cannot do this; hence this wriggling and chafing, and fretting and twisting, over irrefragable, but unwelcome, facts. But we have no sympathy to waste upon them, till they shall be willing to humble their hearts enough to bow to the cross and accept the truth.

U. S.