In “Sabbath 7th Day (1)”, we examined the 7th day sabbath, beginning at Creation. This Part 2 is a continuation and supplement to Part 1. Part 1 contains the primary verses; so it should be read first. Also, steps in the change from Saturday to Sunday observance are outlined in “Sabbath Day Became Sunday in Rome”. That topic includes early church background and meeting custom. Regarding the change to Sunday, here’s a few statements by theologians from the Roman Catholic Church (RCC):
Irish RCC Father Stephen Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism, 1851, p.174 “She [RCC] substituted the observance of Sunday the 1st day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the 7th day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.”
Father Peter R. Kramer, Catholic Church Extension Society (1975), Chicago “Regarding the change…to the Christian Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts: That Protestants, who accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should by all means go back to the observance of the Sabbath. We Catholics do not accept the Bible as the only rule of faith. Besides the Bible we have the authority of the Church, as a rule to guide us. We accept her change of the Sabbath to Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the Church made this change, made this law, as she made many other laws; for instance, the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood…and a thousand other laws. It is always somewhat laughable to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit and legislation, demand the observance of Sunday, of which there is nothing in their Bible.” The RCC admits the RCC instituted the change.
Jesuit Father Martin J. Scott, Things Catholics Are Asked About, 1927, p.136 “Nowhere in the Bible is it stated that worship should be changed from Saturday to Sunday. The Church…instituted, by God’s authority, Sunday as the day of worship.”
Notwithstanding the RCC change of the 7th day to the 1st day for worship, God made holy at Creation the 7th day…before there was any Israel/Jews or RCC. Ge.2:3 LXX “God blessed the 7th day and sanctified [hagiázo Strongs g37, Greek verb] it.” God sanctified/made holy the 7th day. cf. Mt.6:9 where Jesus prayed, “Our Father who is in heaven, holy [g37 hagiazo] be Your Name.” God made the 7th day holy, even as the Father’s great Name is holy!
In scripture, the 7th day is the first thing God made holy! The 7th day (not the 1st day) is holy time which God Himself ordained. If there was no sabbath, there would exist no holiness of time in the world.
“Sabbath” is a holy day/period of cessation from certain activities. Greek Bible scholar Spiros Zódiates, “Hagiazo means to separate or withdraw from fellowship with the world”. As holy time, the sabbath isn’t just time spent in leisure pursuits or entertainment away from work. The Lord said in Is.58:13, “Turn your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day. Call the sabbath a delight.” The sabbath is God’s time. Our life consists of only so much time, and resting on the 7th day reflects our commitment & obedience to God, and where our heart is. It’s a time for praise, prayer, Bible reading/study, meditation, church preaching/teaching, doing good and mercy to others.
The Lord said in Ex.20:8, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”. Le.23:3 “On the 7th day is a sabbath, a holy convocation. You shall not do any work. It is a sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.” The sabbath is a holy assembly, it takes place during holy time. JFB Commentary Le.23:3 “It was to be ‘a holy convocation’, observed by families ‘in their dwellings’; where practicable, by the people repairing to the door of the tabernacle; at later periods, by meeting in the schools of the prophets, and in synagogues.” Pulpit Commentary Le.23:3 “Elsewhere it was observed only by the holy convocation and rest from all labor. It commenced at sunset on Friday evening, and continued till sunset on Saturday evening.” Poole Commentary Le.23:3 “The sabbath was to be kept in all places, where they were, both in synagogues, which were erected for that end, and in their private houses.”
{Sidelight: The 7th day sabbath (shabáwth h7676, Hebrew) differs from the pilgrim feasts of ancient Israel, which were to be kept solely near the tabernacle/temple. The sabbath day is an appointed time (móed h4150). But the sabbath isn’t a feast (chag h2282) in scripture. God’s pilgrim feasts were shabathón (h7677), or sabbatoids, but weren’t sabbaths (h7676). There’s a difference. Benson Commentary Le.23:3 “In all your dwellings’. Other feasts were to be kept before the Lord in Jerusalem only, where all the males were to come for that end; but the sabbath was to be kept in all places, in synagogues, and in their private houses.” Ellicott Commentary Le.23:4 “The feasts of the Lord’. Because the following are the festivals proper as distinguished from the Sabbath.” Pilgrim feasts weren’t made holy time at Creation; they’re appointed later for the Holy Land. see “Feasts of the Lord and the Jews”.}
The 7th day sabbath, and the Decalogue/Ten Commandments for that matter, isn’t about ‘works’. It takes no ‘work’ to refrain from murder, theft, adultery, making images of pagan gods! No work is required to rest on the sabbath! Attempting to blend the concepts of work and rest here is nonsense.
Evangelist Dwight L. Moody Weighed and Wanting, p.47 “The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word ‘remember’, showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away when they will admit the other nine are still binding?” Re.11:19 the ark containing the Decalogue (Ex.25:21) is in heaven…the 7th day sabbath is part of the Decalogue! However, Jewish rabbinism added many burdensome rules to God’s sabbath guidelines.
Keep the sabbath rightly and a man will “take delight in the Lord” (Is.58:13-14). Barnes Notes Is.58:14 “There is no intimation that the Sabbath was to be abolished. We are to refrain from ordinary traveling and employments; we are not to engage in doing our own pleasure; we are to regard it with delight, and to esteem it a day worthy to be honored; and we are to show respect to it by not performing our own ordinary works, or pursuing pleasures, or engaging in the common topics of conversation. Under the gospel, assuredly, it is as proper to celebrate the Sabbath in this way, as it was in the times of Isaiah, and God doubtless intended it should be perpetually observed in this manner.” JFB Commentary Is.58:14 “As we ‘delight’ in keeping God’s Sabbath, so God will give us ‘delight’ in Himself.” Pulpit Commentary Is.58:14 “A right use of the sabbath will help to form in men habits of devotion, which will make religion a joy.”
In the LXX & New Testament (NT) Greek, the word for sabbath is sábbaton g4521. It occurs 60 times in the NT. There’s no NT example of any Christian working on the sabbath. Although Israel & the Jews were to keep the sabbath, in scripture it’s never called the ‘Jewish sabbath’, the ‘sabbath of the Jews’, or the ‘sabbath of Israel’. Rather, God says it’s His sabbath, e.g. Ex.31:13 & Ne.9:14. It’s the “sabbath of the Lord” (Ex.20:10). Mk.2:27-28 Christ the Lord said the sabbath was made for humanity (not just for the Jew or Israel). God made His sabbath for man at Creation…the Jews didn’t, not the RCC, nor any man. Physical circumcision was required for men to fully be of ancient Israel. But it wasn’t required for the sabbath day! This is unlike a pilgrim “feast of the Jews” (Jn.7:2); the feasts weren’t authorized for physically uncircumcised men (Ex.12:48). The 7th day sabbath is for everyone.
Ac.17:1-2 & 18:4, Paul went to synagogue on the sabbath. Ac.16:12-15 in Phílippi, there were few Jews and no synagogue; yet Paul and Luke (possibly a gentile) still worshiped by the riverside with a few people on the sabbath! Lk.4:16 Jesus attended synagogue on the sabbath. Christ as the primordial Word of God (Jn.1:1-3, 14) had also ceased (shabáth h7673 verb) on the 7th day of Creation (Ge.2:1-3).
The 7th day sabbath is time dedicated to God, a temporary rest (anápausis g372, e.g. LXX Ex.31:15) from our work. It’s from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday generally. Days were reckoned beginning at sunset, when the fowls come home to roost, the first stars appear. Le.23:32 “From evening until evening.” Evening began the new date. In the NT, Luke uses similar reckoning of the night preceding the day in Ac.27:27, 33, 39…where the 14th night preceded the 14th day.
Prior to when Christ gave Israel the Decalogue (Ex.20:1-17), He miraculously confirmed which day is the sabbath in Ex.16:4-5, 15-31. Only on the 7th day did He not provide them manna food to gather. And only on the 6th day did He provide them a double portion. It wasn’t just any one day in seven! And Ne.13:15-19 reaffirms that buying & selling food/merchandise, business, isn’t to be done on the sabbath rest. Nehemiah ordered the city gates be shut as it grew dark to begin the sabbath. Faith is needed to believe our needs will be provided as we cease from work on the 7th day. (I’m not 7th Day Adventist.)
Jesus, Paul, and others in the NT kept the sabbath (e.g. Lk.23:54-56). Since Creation, there’s no verse indicating Christ changed the 7th day holy time. Christ the Lord viewed willful sabbath-breaking as a very serious sin (Nu.15:29-36)! Judaism devised many man-made directives for the sabbath day. In the NT, neither Jesus nor Paul prescribed do’s and don’ts for the sabbath. That’s caused some to not view the sabbath as holy time which comes & goes every week since Creation. But the NT also didn’t address acts like beastiality, cannibalism, fathers marrying their own daughters. Just because the NT is silent on those wrongs doesn’t mean they’re okay for Christians after the cross! Christ forbad them in the Old Testament (OT). It is written! He.13:8 “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Yet there are a few NT passages referring to the first day of the “week” (mía ton sábbaton g4521) that some use in claiming the 7th day sabbath is abolished. (Although no man, not Paul or anyone, has the authority to change God’s holy time. We’re mere mortals, unable to alter night and day.)
The Greek LXX term for “week” is hebdomás (g1439.1 Vanderpool). ref LXX: Ex.34:22, Le.23:15-16, Nu.28:26, De.16:9, 10, 16, 2Ch.8:13, Da.9:24-27, 10:2-3. The Greek hebdomas/week corresponds to the Hebrew shabuwá/week (h7620, occurring 20 times in the OT). Yet no NT writer used the term hebdomas to indicate “week”! In the 1st century Roman Empire, the 8-day market week (among nones, ides, kálends) was still being used. Concurrently, use of the heathen 7-day planetary week was starting to spread. At the time, most converts were Jewish Christians and gentile Godfearers who’d learned about the true God in synagogues. There they’d gained knowledge of the Decalogue and 7th day sabbath (ref Ac.15:21). Sabbath observance was known in all nations, as per Philo and Josephus (see Part 1).
So the NT writers identified a day of the week by its proximity to the 7th day sabbath…ton sabbaton. Even though “sabbath” doesn’t specifically mean “week” in either the Greek LXX or OT Hebrew! Thus the NT writers avoided parlance of the 8-day market week and the 7-day planetary god week. The 7th day sabbath provided a holy day NT reference point amid the coexistent 7-day and 8-day weeks. (Use of the 8-day market/núndinal week gradually faded. The 7-day week was made official in 321 AD.)
It is meaningful, the NT writers used the term sabbath (sabbaton g4521) to denote “week”. A Pharisee declared in Lk.18:12, “I fast twice in the week [sabbaton]”. To mean, I fast twice on the sabbath, wouldn’t make sense. The 1st day of the week (Sunday) was called the 1st (day) of/to the sabbath. The practice of observing the 7th day sabbath is apparent…and there’s no reference to heathen planetary gods!
We see a glimpse of this mode of expression using sabbaton g4521 in the LXX: Ps.23:1 “A psalm of David on the 1st of/to the sabbath [sabbaton].” Ps.47:1 “A psalm of praise for the sons of Core on the 2nd of/to the sabbath.” Ps.93:1 “A psalm of David to/of the 4th of the sabbath. Ps.92:1 “For the day before the sabbath.” (prosábbaton g4315, cf. Mk.15:42) Israelites, unlike Rome, had known the 7-day week from much older times (so had Babylonians). Their days of the week were called: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th or preparation, 7th or sabbath. Each week, Israelites looked forward to the 7th day sabbath. Following are sources which attest to this Jewish & NT writers’ manner of denoting days in a week:
Johann Jahn Biblical Antiquities, p.51 “The Jews, in designating the successive days of the week, were accustomed to say, The first day of the Sabbath (that is, of the week), the second day of the Sabbath; that is, Sunday, Monday, etc.” From soc.culture.jewish FAQ Observance “Judaism doesn’t make much distinction between the days of the week, except for Shabbát. In fact, the days of the week are called Yom Ríshon, Yom Shéni…(i.e., 1st day, 2nd day,….), and then Shabbat. The philosophical oddity is that not only is day 7 called ‘Shabbat’, but each day is ‘of the Shabbat’. In other words, ‘the first day’ (Sunday) is liturgically called ‘yom ríshon beshabbát’ when introducing the day’s psalm.”
R.C.H. Lenski The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel, p.1148 “The Jews had no names for the weekdays. They ‘designated them with reference to their Sabbath’. Thus, mia ton sabbaton means ‘the first (day) with reference to the Sabbath’, or ‘the first day of the week.” John Lightfoot A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica “The Jews reckon the days of the week thus; One day (or the first day) of the sabbath: two (or the second day) of the sabbath.”
The Didaché (‘Teaching’) dates ca 100 AD. Didache 8:1 “Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the 2nd and 5th day of the week.” The Greek Didache says disbelieving Jews fasted on the “deuterá” (2nd) and the “pémpte” (5th) day of the “sabbaton” (week). The 7th day sabbath was still evident!
The KJV expression “first (day) of the week” occurs 8 times: Mt.28:1, Mk.16:2, 9, Lk.24:1, Jn.20:1, 19, Ac.20:7, 1Co.16:2. The term used there by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul…is sabbaton/sabbath. It is significant they used sabbaton (and not hebdomas) for “week”! God-fearing gentiles knew the sabbath. Ac.13:42-44 the whole city of Pisídian Antioch in Galatia (!) came to hear Paul on the sabbath.
Ac.20:6-11 Christians at Troás met to break bread with Paul on the night of the 1st (day) of the week (mia ton sabbaton g4521) until daybreak, before Paul left town. Many think it was a Saturday night meeting to begin the 1st day; that Luke reckoned time starting with evening, as he did in Ac.27:27, 33 and Lk.23:54-56. Ellicott Commentary Ac.20:7 “The Jewish mode of reckoning would still be kept…Saturday evening.” It is said the early Christians’ meetings were Saturday night following the Jews’ synagogue service, at the end of the sabbath. Thus Jewish Christians became distinct from disbelieving Jews.
1Co.16:1-3 circa 55 AD Paul told the Corinthians to lay up funds which he would collect for the needy saints on the 1st (day) of the week/sabbaton. Jewish Christians wouldn’t have done financial exchanges on the sabbath day. Pulpit Commentary 1Co.16:2 “This verse can hardly be said to imply any religious observance of the Sunday.” Meyer’s NT Commentary “It does not follow from this passage in itself that the Sunday was already observed at that time by assemblies for the worship of God.” Not yet.
Methodist theologian Harris F. Rall Christian Advocate, 1942, p.26 “Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the NT how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day.”
However, in the decades to follow, Sunday would become the church‘s common meeting day. (see “Sabbath Day Became Sunday in Rome” for the transition from the 7th day to the 1st day.) But meeting days don’t alter God’s holy sabbath time!
This series is continued and concluded in “Sabbath 7th Day (3)”.
Bible Topic Exposition 