Exodus 35:2, commentary and pictures

Six days are given for work, but the seventh day is set apart as holy, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD on which no work is to be done under penalty of death. It commands the definite seventh day of the week, Saturday, the LORD's day from creation, and gives no authority for Sunday observance. The Sabbath was instituted at creation for mankind and was known before Sinai, and it is for Gentiles as well as Jews, though those who held the other position teach it was a special law for Israel not binding as law on other nations. Even the sacred work of building the tabernacle was no excuse to break it, so the command was repeated with its punishment and with the prohibition of kindling fire. The fire restriction and the stoning penalty belonged to the temporary civil order of Israel in the wilderness, which has ceased, while the Sabbath itself of the Ten Commandments remains in force with its penalty in God's final judgment.

Verse Wording and Terms

Six days are allotted for work to be done, but the seventh day is set apart as a holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD, on which work is forbidden and whoever does work in it is to be put to death. The six days precede the seventh, which is identified with Saturday as observed by Israel, and the command carries no basis for transferring the Sabbath to the first day or enjoining Sunday observance. A holy day in this sense is time set apart from work, so to treat every day as holy in the same sense would mean no work could be done on any day, whereas the verse gives a specific work prohibition for the seventh day. The command is to cease usual daily work and ordinary employment for livelihood, not to be idle but to be occupied with work for God because the day is hallowed by Him.

Holy means belonging to the LORD and set apart for His service, distinguished from the other days, not left to people to use as they please, to disregard His prohibition, or to replace His appointed day with another which He did not bless, sanctify, or claim. The seventh-day Sabbath is called holiness to the LORD, not merely a day that is holy, so that to profane it dishonors God Himself. The LORD has but one Sabbath, having blessed and sanctified only the seventh day as His own with solemn command to keep it holy, and it admits no degrees of comparison as more holy or less holy than other holy things because it is not compared with them. Its holiness, blessing, and rest come from God in Christ, who made the Sabbath and rested on the first seventh day after creation, so that holiness is in the day and rest is in it.

The Hebrew word rendered rest is Shabbaththohn, occurring eleven times in the Old Testament and translated rest eight times. Sabbath itself means rest.

The Hebrew has the definite article, so the command means the seventh day, not any seventh day. The seventh day is the Sabbath, the LORD's rest day, and since the LORD rested only on the seventh day no other day is the Sabbath of the LORD. The omission of the article before Sabbath does not make it indefinite, for the same form without the article is used in Exodus 16:23 after the Sabbath had been familiar for months and had been defined and enforced at Sinai, in legal instruction rather than poetry or impassioned prose, showing the article can be omitted even when the Sabbath is well known. In Exodus 35:2 Sabbath is the predicate and has no article, while in Exodus 35:3 where the word is not the predicate it has the article. Those who held the other reading teach that the wording is introduced without the definite article in the original languages as a rest set apart to God rather than naming a previously familiar institution, and profess to quote the original Hebrew wording given to humanity as indefinite.

Tabernacle Setting and Purpose

The command stands at the opening of Moses' call to Israel in the wilderness near Sinai, after the law had been proclaimed from the mount and after he had come down telling of the heavenly sanctuary and the tabernacle God desired built. It belongs to Exodus 33 to 40 on the building and setting up of the sanctuary, which follows in order the sanctuary instruction given in the mount in Exodus 25 to 31 and the events of Exodus 19 to 32 down to the setting up of the tabernacle. It is also part of the law commanded through Moses in Horeb with its statutes and judgments, set forth in Exodus 20 to 40 and in Leviticus, embracing the Ten Commandments together with civil regulations, laws of sacrifices and offerings, laws of conduct between man and man, health laws, ceremonial laws, and moral laws.

In that setting the verse is included among the directions for building the sanctuary and making its furnishings and for carrying out its construction. Those instructions were given by God and were not to be disregarded under penalty of death. The Sabbath itself is there given as a holy day of rest to the Lord on which work is forbidden, with death stated as the penalty for working.

The building work described from the first verse to the thirty-fifth is the work of every one whose heart was stirred and whose spirit was made willing, both men and women, as many as were willing-hearted. They came freely without asking what pay they would receive, and the builders did not hire help from among the heathen. That willing service measures Christian young men today by whether they would have taken part then and will take part now, and it frames college-building work as sacred service rather than ordinary wage-seeking labor. The same chapters call for real heart communion with God and for being a willing giver for His sanctuary.

Even the sacred religious work of building the tabernacle and making its furnishings for worship was no excuse to work on the Sabbath. The command is repeated here to prevent that mistaken conclusion and to state the punishment for breaking the Sabbath, which had not been specified earlier. The adjoining prohibition against kindling a fire reinforces the strictness of the rest requirement. In that account of Israel's tabernacle building at Sinai, obedience to the commands given brought lessons of life and disobedience brought lessons of death.

Fire Restriction and Wilderness Limit

Together with the next verse the passage gives the Bible's only prohibition of fire on the Sabbath, forbidding the kindling of fire in dwellings on that day. Those who held the opposite taught that this rule for keeping the Sabbath, with its death penalty for work and its ban on fires, cannot be kept where fires in dwellings are necessary, so the Sabbath as commanded there is not binding now.

The fire prohibition is not part of the fourth commandment, the grand law of the Sabbath, nor part of the original Sabbatic institution or the universal moral law from Eden in the heart of the Decalogue, but a local, temporary wilderness statute for Israel, distinct from the Sabbath law for all people and times. It belongs with all the statutes given between the second tables of stone and the close of Exodus, like the laws for the show-bread on the Sabbath, the Sabbath burnt-offering, the manna, and the building and encamping of the tabernacle. The death penalty mentioned there belongs to the Hebrews' particular regulations connected with the tabernacle, not to the universal Sabbath law.

In the warm climate of the wilderness of Sinai, ten hundred miles south of Jerusalem, no fire was needed and the manna was prepared the day before the Sabbath, so to build a fire on the Sabbath was a direct and daring act of presumption against God. Gathering sticks in defiance of the command was treated as presumptuous, daring sin. In colder climates such as Palestine, where part of the year fires are necessary to prevent suffering, fires needed for warmth, comfort and health are consistent with the lasting principle of abstaining from unnecessary work and with the mercy in the fourth commandment, just as rescuing an animal on the Sabbath is an act of mercy. The Sabbath was made for refreshment, delight and blessing, not distress and ruin of health.

Its temporary character is shown because unlike other laws called perpetual statutes to be kept after entering the land it has no such hint, and it was co-existent with and adapted to the manna, in force only while the manna fell in the unproductive desert wilderness where Israel had nothing except what was sent to them. It ceased when Israel reached abundantly yielding Canaan, which was not an unproductive wilderness, where the manna was no longer needed and did not fall. If extended to the promised land it would every few years conflict directly with the law requiring each family to roast the passover on the evening after the fourteenth day of the first month when that falls on the Sabbath, a conflict avoided in the wilderness where the passover was not regularly observed until Canaan.

Opponents emphasize this fire prohibition and often use it as a reason to argue the Sabbath should not be kept. They challenge whether Sabbath keepers also avoid food prepared by such work, while the law requiring burnt offerings is distinguished as ceremonial and no part of the moral code, and Isaiah 58:13-14 is given as explaining how to keep the Sabbath with promised reward. Under a strict reading of the Sabbath laws the objector's position argues that even harnessing and driving a team to church would be forbidden.

Sabbath Origin and Scope

Exodus 35:2 does not prove that the Sabbath began at Sinai or was given only to Israel, for the Sabbath was instituted at creation when God rested on the seventh day and blessed and set it apart for humanity, and the later command to keep it holy recalls that creation rest. The obligation to keep it existed before Israel's deliverance from Egypt, with deliverance supplying a special reason to enforce it as with other moral duties. The Sabbath command in Deuteronomy 5 points to the commandments given at Sinai rather than back to Exodus 16.

The Sabbath was already known and observed before Sinai, since its first mention in Exodus 16 came one month after leaving Egypt and one month before reaching Sinai with no institution of the Sabbath and no new law for its observance. It stands as one of fifteen mentions of the Sabbath in Exodus, together with Exodus 16:23, 25-27 and Exodus 20:8, 10-11 and Exodus 31:13-16. That pre-Sinai knowledge came down from creation through few steps from Adam to Moses, as Adam was contemporary with Methuselah 243 years, Methuselah with Noah 599 years, Noah with Shem 448 years, Shem with Abraham 150 years, Abraham was Jacob's grandfather, and Moses was only fourth in descent from Jacob.

The Sabbath is for Gentiles as well as Jews, for it was made for man, and God who made the world made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the earth, and Gentiles are men. Strangers who take hold of His covenant and keep His Sabbath receive special promise, and there is no promise to Gentiles except through Israel, for salvation is of the Jews. Israel was reminded of the Sabbath and commanded to observe it after the Exodus because they had been unable to observe it in Egypt and were the people to whom God then delivered His law, which does not make the Sabbath uniquely Jewish. The silence about the Sabbath in Noah's time, during 400 years in Egypt, and for hundreds of years between entering Canaan and David proves nothing, because Genesis and early Exodus are brief history and not books of laws. Days were still reckoned by sevens in Noah's time, and later observance between Canaan and David is undisputed despite the silence.

Those who held the opposite position taught that Exodus 35:2 is a special Sabbath law given to Israel as a nation, distinct from the Sabbath of the Decalogue. On that teaching it did not originate before the Exodus, and its specific legal requirement with death for work on the holy day of rest to the Lord is not binding today as law on other nations, though its underlying principles remain.

Definite Seventh Day Identity

The command concerns the seventh day of the week alone, following six days in which work is to be done, and sets that seventh day apart as a holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. That commanded Sabbath is identified with Saturday, which the children of Israel observed, with varying strictness, and continued to observe. It has no application to the first day of the week, Sunday, and gives no basis for transferring the Sabbath to the first day or for enjoining Sunday observance. All Sabbath commandments and instruction about observance pertain to the seventh day, and to apply them to Sunday wrestles the Scriptures, since there are no Scriptures enjoining Sunday observance. The requirement is to cease from usual daily work and ordinary labor, not a command to observe Sunday.

The civil penalty required Sabbath-breakers who worked on the seventh day to be put to death, and that penalty depended on working on that definite day. Resting on some other day during the preceding six would not satisfy the commandment. The seventh day alone is the LORD's day, recognized by God as His day from the beginning. It belongs to the Lord, set apart from ordinary work for His service and worship, and is associated with the rest that followed the completed work of creation.

The death penalty for doing work on the seventh-day Sabbath was attached at Mount Sinai about four hundred years after Abraham. That proves God knew which day was His and that the people knew without any question which definite day was meant. Any doubt about the identification of the true weekly Sabbath up to that time was thereby dissipated.

Death Penalty and Continuing Obligation

Doing any kind of work on the seventh-day Sabbath was forbidden on pain of death, and the law attached the severest penalty to working on that day. The punishment for Sabbath-breaking was death by stoning. The weekly Sabbath is set forth as a holy day of rest to the Lord and given first place among the commands Moses announced to Israel. The cited example concerns the worker alone who violated the command.

Under the Jewish economy profaning the Sabbath was punished with death, the same punishment as idolatry. Neglecting the Sabbath violated the covenant and rejected God's sovereignty as Creator and Governor, which is idolatry outright. The requirement belonged to that system of carnal ordinances with rigid outward observance, forbidding all common employments lawful on other days, even making a fire. This is shown when a man was put to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath.

Under Moses the death sentence was a temporal, civil punishment under Israel's theocratic government, belonging to the Sabbath law as incorporated into Israel's civil code in addition to its place in the ethical code. Temporal rewards and punishments were annexed to obedience and disobedience where otherwise only moral results would follow. Breaking the Sabbath was both gross impiety against God as supreme moral Governor and daring rebellion against Him as theocratic King, a public open violation of social and civil law punishable like treason against the state, no more to pass with impunity than transgression of the law of the land in any well-ordered state. The penalty was righteous and not greater than the offense, because the transgression was willful and presumptuous against plain positive enactments, committed in the very presence of God enthroned among the people. It was against a Sovereign with unique claims of majesty and mercy through stupendous deliverance from the degradation of slavery in Egypt and exaltation from no people to the people of the Most High with adoption and glory and covenants and law and service and promises, and against a law fixed as a special sign of the solemn tender relation between Jehovah and that nation.

What is true of the Sabbath here applies equally to all the commandments. Those stoned suffered as violators of the civil code of the Jews, while their responsibility as moral agents and the penalty due for violation of the law as an ethical code were in no way affected. The death penalty imposed by Israel's magistrate belonged to the Jewish national system and ceased with that polity. It is distinct from the law's enduring penalty, which is God's final judgment and eternal death, while the Sabbath commandment remains in force along with the other commandments even though its former civil penalty is no longer imposed.

That temporal penalty was not the full and final penalty for breaking God's law, for the Mosaic system provided no atonement for such transgressors. With Jesus as sacrifice and priest, mercy pleads for the sinner to be spared and turn to life. So the stoning system ended with the other laws of Moses at the cross, while the Sabbath law itself remains in force and its ultimate penalty for sin is eternal death.

The death penalty does not require those who keep the Sabbath now to put Sabbath-breakers to death, any more than the death penalties once joined to idolatry, blasphemy and adultery require execution now. Human execution belonged to the Jewish civil order and is not carried out now, for punishment belongs to God, since death is the wages of all sin. The penalty is not administered now as it was then, but it expresses God's opposition to presumptuous disregard of His commands. Those who willfully break the Sabbath or another requirement must face judgment in the day of God.

The demand that continued binding obligation of the Sabbath requires stoning Sabbath-breakers now is fallacious. The death sentence belonged as part of a separate code in which death was affixed to violation of the other commandments as well, and not to the Sabbath institution itself, so the Sabbath remains binding while the ancient stoning does not continue. The stoning penalty was only the penalty attached to the law and a figure of the real penalty for sin, and that penalty has been modified, postponed and abolished. The Sabbath law itself, as part of the Ten Commandments with no other gods, no graven images, no vain use of the name, remembrance of the Sabbath, honor to parents, and prohibitions of killing, adultery, stealing, false witness and coveting, remains in force and must still be observed.

Those who held the opposite position cited the death penalty and the ban on kindling fire in dwellings as evidence that the law enforcing the Sabbath has been done away. The rule of six days for work with the seventh day a holy Sabbath of rest to the Lord on which whoever does work shall be put to death, with no fire kindled in dwellings, cannot be kept where fires in dwellings are necessary, so the Sabbath as commanded there is not binding now. The death attached to working on the Sabbath was presented as a severe requirement contrary to a dispensation of grace.

Sabbath Observance in Practice

Six days are allotted for the work needed to earn a livelihood, but the seventh day is a holy Sabbath of rest to the Lord on which usual daily work and ordinary employment are to cease. Rest means stopping from one's own work and the world's toil and care, not becoming inactive, but turning to work for God because the day is hallowed by Him. Worship and service to God, acts of mercy, and necessary acts are lawful on that day, while work that can be prepared on the sixth day belongs there instead.

Under ordinary circumstances the strict letter forbade any work on the seventh day, not even work to supply bodily wants, for which care was to be taken beforehand. The fire restriction addressed the warm climate through which Israel was passing, where fire was not needed, and was not a general law for all places or times. Gathering sticks in defiance of the command, as in Numbers 15:32-36, was treated as presumptuous and daring sin subject to death. The prohibition was never directed against works of necessity and mercy or work done for God, which the Sabbath law permitted. The healing of the withered hand and the plucking of corn by hungry disciples who could make no previous provision prove such acts lawful, for the Sabbath was made for man and mercy rather than mere sacrifice is the genius of the ordinance.

A holy day in this sense is time set apart from work, so treating every day as holy in the same sense would mean no work could be done on any day. The verse therefore carries a specific work prohibition for the seventh day rather than making every day holy. It speaks of the weekly Sabbath, the Sabbath of the Lord, distinct from festival sabbaths and land sabbaths. The law requiring burnt offerings is ceremonial and no part of the moral code, while Isaiah 58:13-14 explains how to keep the Sabbath and promises a reward for doing so, even when challenged about food prepared by kindled fire. With the risen Saviour dwelling in the heart the Christian can keep the Sabbath as God commands.