The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign. Joseph Bates
is claimed as the father of the Jews was born. John says, the old commandment was from the beginning – 1; ii: 7.
There is pretty strong inference that the antideluvians measured time by weeks from the account given by Noah, when the waters of the deluge began to subside. He "sent out a dove which soon returned." At the end of seven days he sent her out again; and at the end of seven days more, he sent her out a third time. Now why this preference for the number seven? why not five or ten days, or any other number? Can it be supposed that his fixing on upon seven was accidential? How much more natural to conclude that it was in obedience to the authority of God, as expressed in the 2d chap. of Gen. A similar division of time is incidentally mentioned in Gen. xxix; "fulfil her week and we will give thee this also; and Jacob did so and fulfilled her week." Now the word week is every where used in Scripture as we use it; it never means more nor less than seven days (except as symbols of years) and one of them was in all other cases the Sabbath. But now suppose there had been an entire silence on the subject of the Sabbath for this twenty-five hundred years, would that be sufficient evidence that there was none. If so, we have the same evidence that there was no Sabbath from the reign of Joshua till the reign of David, four hundred and six years, as no mention is made of it in the history of that period. But who can be persuaded that Samuel and the pious Judges of Israel did not regard the Sabbath. What does God say of Abraham? that he "obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws." (See what he calls them in Exo. xvi: 27, 30.) This, of course, includes the whole. Then Abraham reverenced God's Sabbath. Once more, there is no mention of the circumcision from the days of Joshua till the days of Jeremiah, a period of more than eight hundred years. Will it be believed that Samuel and David, and all those pious worthies with the whole Jewish nation, neglected that essential seal of the covenant for eight hundred years? It cannot be admitted for a moment. How then can any one suppose from the alleged silence of the sacred history that Adam, Enoch, Noah and Abraham, kept no Sabbath because the fact was not stated? If we turn to Jer. ix: 25, 26, we find that they had not neglected this right of circumcision, only they had not circumcised their hearts; so that the proof is clear, that silence respecting the keeping any positive command of God, is no evidence that it is not in full force.
Again, if the Sabbath was not instituted in Paradise, why did Moses mention it in connection with the creation of the world? Why not reserve this fact for two or three thousand years in his history, until the manna fell in the wilderness, (see Exo. xvi: 23) and then state that the seventh day Sabbath commenced, as some will have it? I answer, for the very best of reasons, that it did not commence there. Let us examine the text. "And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread as on any preceding day, and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. And he said unto them this is that which the Lord hath said, to-morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath, bake that which ye will bake, &c. &c." If this had been the establishing of the holy Sabbath and Moses had said to-morrow shall be the Sabbath, then would it have been clear; but no, he speaks as familiarly about it as we do when we say that to-morrow is the Sabbath, showing conclusively that it was known before, or how could the people have known that they must gather two day's manna on Friday the sixth day, unless they had had some previous knowledge of the Sabbath? for Moses had already taught them not to "leave any of it until the morning" – v. 19. The 20th verse shows that the Sabbath had not yet come since their receiving the manna, because it spoiled and "bred worms by the next morning;" whereas, on the Sabbath morning it was found sweet and eatible – 24th v. This was the thirtieth day after leaving Egypt (1st v.) and twenty days before it was given on Sinai. The weekly Sabbath then was appointed before this or before the days of Moses. Where was it then? Answer in the second chapter of Genesis and no where else; and the same week on which the manna fell, the weekly Sabbath was revived among or with God's chosen people. Grotius tells us "that the memory of the creation's being performed in seven days, was preserved not only among the Greeks and Italians, but among the Celts and Indians." Other writers say Assyrians, Egyptians, Arabians, Britons and Germans, all of whom divide their time into weeks. Philo says "the Sabbath is not peculiar to any one people or country, but is common to all the world." Josephus states "that there is no city either of Greeks or barbarians or any other nation, where the religion of the Sabbath is not known." But as they, like the great mass of God's professed people in christendom, paid little or no heed to what God had said about the particular day, (except the Jews, and a few others) they (as we are informed in history) adopted peculiar days to suit themselves, viz: the christian nations chose to obey the Pope of Rome, who changed the seventh day Sabbath to the first day, and called it the holy Sabbath; the Persians selected Monday; the Grecians Tuesday; the Assyrians Wednesday; the Egyptians Thursday; the Turks Friday, and the Jews the seventh day, Saturday, as God had commanded. Three standing miracles a week, for about forty years annually, ought to perpetuate the Sabbath. 1st, double the quantity of manna on the sixth day; 2d, none on the seventh; 3d, did not spoil on the seventh day. If it does not matter which day you keep holy to the Lord, then all these nations are right. Now reflect one moment on this, and then open your bible and read the commandment of the God of all these nations! "REMEMBER! (what you have been taught before) the Sabbath day to keep it holy;" (which day is it Lord?) "the SEVENTH is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger, that is within thy gates." Who is the stranger? (Gentiles.) Now the reason for it will carry us back to paradise. "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is; and rested on the SEVENTH; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." "Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant; it is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever." (Why is it Lord?) "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the SEVENTH day he rested and was refreshed." Exo. xx and xxxi. – Which day now will you choose? O, says the reader, the seventh if I knew which of the days it was. If you don't know, why are you so sure that the first day is right? O, because the history of the world has settled that and this is the most we can know. Very well then, does not the seventh come the day before the eighth? If we have not got the days of the week right now, it is not likely that we ever shall. God does not require of us any more than what we know; by that we shall be judged. Luke xxii: 55, 56.
Once more; think you that the spirit of God ever directed Moses when he was giving the history of the creation of the world, to write that he (God) "blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work." unless he meant it to be dated from that very day? Why, this is as clear to the unbiassed mind as it is that God created man the sixth day. Would it not be the height of absurdity to attempt to prove that God only intended Adam should be created at some future period, or that the creation of the heavens and earth was not in the beginning, but some twenty five hundred years afterwards? All this would be as cogent reasoning as it would be to argue that God did not intend this day of rest should commence until about twenty-five hundred years afterwards. (The word Sabbath signifies rest.)
It follows then irresistibly, that the weekly Sabbath was not made for the Jews only, (but as Jesus says, for 'man') for the Jews had no existence until more than two thousand years after it was established. President Humphrey in his essays on the Sabbath says, "That he (God) instituted it when he rested from all his work, on the seventh day of the first week, and gave it primarily to our first parents, and through them to all their posterity; that the observance of it was enjoined upon the children of Israel soon after they left Egypt, not in the form of a new enactment, but as an ancient institution which was far from being forgotten, though it had doubtless been greatly neglected under the cruel domination of their heathen masters; that it was re-enacted with great pomp and solemnity, and written in stone by the finger of God at Sinai; that the sacred institution then took the form of a statute, with explicit prohibitions and requirements, and has never been repealed or altered since; that it can never expire of itself, because it has no limitation."
In Deut. vii: 6-8, God gives his reasons for selecting the Jews to keep his covenant in preference to any other nation; only seventy at first – x: 22. God calls it his "Sabbath," and refers us right back to the creation for proof. "For in six days the Lord made heaven