MEANING OF THE SABBATH

     We are often asked if there is Scriptural authority for observing the first day of the week, or Sunday, as the Sabbath. If we answer in the affirmative we are usually Challenged at once to produce the authority. The question has been raised anew of late, and by some who are perplexed and honest inquirers after light. Complete discussion of the question would require a more pretentious volume and cannot be attempted within the limits here allowed. An outline of the proofs in support of the First-day Sabbath as divinely authorized may, however, be of value to some who are in perplexity, and such an outline we venture herewith to present.

     The meaning of the Sabbath is the first thing to be determined in order to an intelligent discussion of the subject. Is the term Sabbath the name of a particular and an unchangeable sacred day, or is it the name of a sacred institution with which the association of a particular day as appropriate for its celebration is incidental rather than essential? That Sabbath is to be understood in the latter sense is our firm belief, and for reasons which we now proceed to show.

     I. The term Sabbath contains nothing in its orthography which limits its meaning to that of a particular sacred day. Dr. Young, in his Analytical Concordance, gives the meaning of the Hebrew word Shabbath as "cessation." Dr. Smith, in his Dictionary of the Bible, says the term is from Shabbath, "to cease to do, to rest." Canon Faussett, in his Bible Cyclopaedia, defines it as "rest." This being the root idea of the word it will readily be seen that its orthography does not carry with it any thought or suggestion of a particular day, but, abstractly considered, Sabbath is a name which applies to any rest observed at any time.

     2. There is nothing in the original scriptural use of the term Sabbath which limits its meaning or application to any particular day. At its institution the Sabbath was enforced by divine example, rather than by divine command. "God rested on the seventh day" (Genesis 2: 2). But that Jehovah's Sabbath was not limited to the seventh day of twenty-four hours is evident from the fact that the divine Sabbath still continues. With him all days are Sabbaths since he concluded his creative works. The seventh day was "blessed" and "sanctified" as a Sabbath of rest at the beginning because of its special fitness to memorialize the completion of God's work as Creator and the Sabbath upon which he then entered, but this was incidental rather than essential to the existence of the Sabbath itself. On the very face of the record the Sabbath appears as an institution distinguishable from the day of its celebration. In other words, there was a Sabbath before there was an appointment of a Sabbath day, just as American Independence was a fact before Independence Day was established.

     3. The way in which the term Sabbath is applied to various sacred festivals and festival days in scripture is proof that its meaning is not limited to any particular day. In the twenty-third chapter of Leviticus the term is applied to various Hebrew festivals. There were Sabbath days, sabbatic months and sabbatic years. Besides the regular septenary Sabbath there were other Sabbaths as follows:

     (1) The great day of atonement, which fell on the tenth day of the seventh month. This was ordained of God to be a Sabbath of solemn rest to the people of Israel throughout their generations. But according to the Hebrew calendar, as revised at the exodus, the first, eighth, fifteenth, twenty-second and twenty-ninth of the seventh month were the regular septenary Sabbaths. The great day of atonement, then, falling as it always did between the eighth and the fifteenth of the month, is one instance of a divinely appointed Sabbath, and that so sacred that we are told the Septuagint calls it "the Sabbath of the Sabbaths," which occurred between the regular septenary Sabbath days.

     (2) The festival of Pentecost. This was a day of sacred rest and religious observance to which the Sabbath law forbidding all "servile work" applied, and which therefore was, to all intents and purposes, a divinely authorized Sabbath. The day of Pentecost, however, always occurred the next day after the completion of the seventh weekly Sabbath, or on the first day of the week (Lev. 23: 15-21), and so out of the regular septenary order.

     (3) The scale of Hebrew sabbatic observance. Not alone was the seventh day sacred, but the seventh month, the seventh year and the year of jubilee, with the septenary Sabbaths, formed a scale or series of Sabbaths, all of divine appointment, all of a most hallowed character and all of binding authority upon the whole people of Israel. Every seventh month was sacred (Lev. 23). Every seventh year was designated as "a Sabbath unto the Lord" (Lev. 25:1-7), and every fiftieth year as a jubilee Sabbath (Lev. 25:8-17). ALL the days of the sabbatic year were certainly Sabbaths unto the Lord, and it should be particularly noted that the day of atonement, the holiest of all the Hebrew Sabbaths, came but once a year and then wholly out of the septenary order.