Rest Easy

BySkip Moen, Ph.D.

Also I gave them My sabbaths to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them.  Ezekiel 20:12 NASB

My sabbaths – What is the purpose of the Sabbath?  Is it simply to cease working for a day, to rest up, to renew yourself?  Or maybe its purpose is reflection, to acknowledge God as the Creator and meditate on His handiwork?  Or perhaps it’s about community, sharing God’s word among like-minded believers, studying the Bible, gaining insight into God’s unfailing character.  Most of us opt for one or more of these goals during Shabbat.  And there’s nothing wrong with these goals.  They are all ways to draw closer to God.

But they aren’t what God tells Ezekiel (and the elders of Israel).  Read the verse again.  Notice that the first difference is that the Sabbath belongs to God.  Oh, I don’t mean that it’s merely time set apart for God.  I mean it is His.  He owns it.  It actually isn’t about us at all.  The Sabbaths (plural) are “My sabbaths,” all of them, each one, are God’s days.  Now go read Mark 2:27 again.  Maybe another exegesis is required.

Now notice the next difference.  From God’s point of view, the Sabbath is a sign between God and Israel.  What does this imply?  Well, first it implies that the Sabbath isn’t a universal day of rest.  It is specifically a covenant symbol about God’s relationship to Israel—and no one else!  Like the account of the rainbow in Genesis, the Sabbath is a divinely ordered symbol of God’s unfailing commitment to Israel.  If the Church fathers read Ezekiel and understood this implication, it isn’t surprising that they changed the day of worship to the day of the Sun god.  The Sabbath is uniquely Jewish.

Finally, there is a purpose behind this sign.  The purpose of the Sabbath is “that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them.”  It appears that the purpose of Shabbat is acknowledgement, not just of God as Creator but of God as the One who makes His people qādôš (holy).  Here we must remember the work of Matthew Wilson (The Simplicity of Holiness).  qādôš is about devotion, and, according to Ezekiel, the purpose of God’s shabbats is so that His people will remember that He makes them devoted.  As Wilson would say, His devotion is the basis of our devotion, and the Shabbat is the time when we remember, discover, and experience God’s devotion to us.

Topical Index:  šabbātotay, My sabbaths, qādôš, holy, devotion, Ezekiel 20:12