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Page 135

Sabbath

future reign of the Lord all flesh shall come on each sabbath and each new moon to worship Yahweh (Is&. lxvi. 23). Turning to the Hagiographa, the books of Chronicles, besides their parallel reference to II Kings xi. 5 sqq. ( II Chron. xxiii. 1 sqq.), contain a number of allusions to the showbread that was to be placed in the sanctuary on sabbaths and new moons (I Chron. ix. 32, xxiii. 31; II Chron. ii. 3, viii. 13, xxxi. 3); in the Psalms the only reference to the sabbath is the heading of Ps. xcii.; and Lam. ii. 6 mourns that Yahweh has caused feast-day and sabbath to be forgotten in Zion.

Observance with the moon, particularly (in conin Old- tradistinction to the new moon) with

Testament the full moon. This statement is Times. decisively confirmed by the commandments regarding the sabbath (Ex. xx. 9-11, xxiii. 12, xxxiv. 21; Deut. v. 12-15), especially as there is no reason to suppose the Decalogue to be later than Ezekiel, or the other sabbatical commandments to be post-exilic. The character of the day clearly remained practically the same from the time of Moses-a day of gladness, sacred to Yahweh, marked by offering of sacrifice, listening to the discourses of prophets, visiting the sanctuary, and cessation of all ordinary toil. The true reason for the collocation of sabbaths and new moons in the Old Testament seems to be that they were recurrent throughout the year, whereas the other feasts occurred but once annually. While, however, the sabbath thus retained its original character throughout the period between Moses and Christ, the views concerning its proper mode of observance apparently changed. It was indeed held that all work, except what was absolutely necessary for daily life, should cease on that day, but the precise scope of these limitations received varying interpretations. Although exact details are unobtainable, it is evident from the words of Jeremiah and Ezekiel that those Israelites who were little inclined to obey the law had almost wholly secularized the sabbath, especially in troublous times. It is equally impossible to ascertain the precise requirements laid down for the proper observance of the day, but it is at least clear that the priestly class was particularly firm in its demand for the hallowing of the sabbath and that the rules laid down gradually increased in strictness.

Two opinions as to the origin of the sabbath were formerly held-one, that God commanded man to rest as he himself had done after creating the world, and that Moses revved the still Origin lingering observance of the command; of the the other, that the ordinance was

the Jews immediately from the Canasnites; while another hypothesis maintains that the sabbath represents a moon-feast of the nomadic ancestors of the Israelites. The Canaanitic and nomadic theories are both undemonstrable and unnecessary, but with the relation between the Jewish and the Babylonian Sabbath the problem is more complex. The cuneiform inscriptions contain two equations of importance in this connection, ahabattu = " day of appeasing the heart (of the gods)," also ahabattu = "fifteenth day." Consequently the Babylonian sabbath was a day of penance, and the middle of the Babylonian month. It has also been held that the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the month, designated as ill-omened, were the Babylonian sabbaths; but for this argument there is no evidence, and it must accordingly be assumed that the fifteenth day of each month was the sabbath of the Babylonians. This day was reckoned that of the full moon, but since the Hebrew sabbath was not connected with the full moon and was a day of gladness, not of penance, and since the Babylonians had no week of seven days, the assumption that the Hebrews borrowed the sabbath from the Babylonians lacks all foundation. At the same time there is a certain connection between the Hebrew Sabbath and the Babylonian ahabattu, since the root of both means "cease, end." A number of other etymologies have been proposed, as from Babylonian shaba¢u, "to strike" (the day of striking the breast), or 8hapafu, "to judge" (the day of legal decisions), as a Sumerian word, as an Arabic word shabat, "seat" (the alleged pause of the moon at each of its four phases), and as denoting the "perfect moon" (although shabbath never means "to be perfect"), but none of these is satisfactory. Both the Hebrew ahabbath and the Babylonian shabattu must, therefore, mean "rest," and while there is no evidence that the Babylonian sabbath was such a day of rest, it can not be demonstrated that the Babylonian here preserved the original character of the day. The reverse would seem to be the case, especially as the Hebrew sabbath was so much more important than the Babylonian. The reason for resting on the sabbath (according to Ex. xx. 10, xxxi. 15; cf. Lev. xix. 3, 30, xxiii. 3, xxvi. 2; Dent. v. 14) is that the day belongs to Yahweh, so that men may not use it for their own purposes. Ex. xxiii. 12 extends its beneficent effects to dependents and cattle (cf. Dent. v. 14-15). The cause of the special sanctity of the sabbath is that on it Yahweh rested after the six days' work of creation (Gen. ii. 2-3; Ex. xx. 11, xxxi. 17). The association of Sabbath rest with the account of creation must have been very ancient among the Hebrews, and it is noteworthy that no other Semitic peoples, even the Babylonians, have any tradition of the creation in six days. It would appear that the primitive Semites had four chief moon-days, probably the first, eighth, fifteenth, and twenty-second of each month, called sabbaths from the fact that there was a tendency to end work before them so that they might be celebrated joyfully. Among the Babylonians these seventh days through astrological conceptions became ill-omened, while the sabbath in the middle of the month was made a day of