What day is the Sabbath in the Bible?
The Bible's Sabbath is the seventh day of the week — the day God rested after creation and the day later written into Israel's law — not Sunday, the first day of the week. That raises two questions commentators handle carefully: why the number of the day matters, and what Christians are meant to do with a day that Scripture never transfers.
The seventh day, not any day in seven
Some argue the Sabbath simply means one day of rest in every seven, whichever day that happens to be. One writer answers that this idea empties the day of its whole point.
William KellyIt is no longer the last day of the week; for those who say the Sabbath is a seventh day — that is, any day of the seven — do not speak truly. There might be rest for man all the same, but in that there is no memorial of God at all. A seventh day blots out all record of God's past and all hope of God's future. The very idea of it destroys from the Sabbath every atom of what is divine... I maintain that it is of the very essence of the truth about the Sabbath that it is the last of the week, the seventh day; not a, but the, seventh day, and no other.
God's rest before it was man's duty
The day first appears in Genesis, where nothing is commanded and no one is told to keep it. The record is only that God finished His work and rested.
C J DavisThe Sabbath is a divine institution, as mentioned in the second chapter of Genesis. You read that after the work of six days, God rested on the seventh day, and sanctified it. Carefully note that it was GOD'S rest, not man's. God rested after He had finished His work. It was not that He rested from labour, as man needs to do.
Because sin spoiled that finished scene, the rest God enjoyed could not simply continue undisturbed. Jesus made the point Himself when accused of Sabbath-breaking:
Edward DennettGod could not rest in the presence of sin and of the dishonour done to Him by it, and as a result man could not share it with Him... He shows that the children of Israel were shut out from it because of their unbelief and hardness of heart, that Joshua did not give them rest, that in David's time it was spoken of as still future, and he argues that "there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God."
A sign given to Israel
At Sinai the seventh day became law, and Scripture attaches a particular role to it — not shared with the other nine commandments.
William KellyIt formed part of the law, and was distinctively a sign between God and Israel. The Sabbath was never given to the Gentile as such, whatever the reasonings of men may be... How could it be a sign to one nation if it was the common duty of all? "Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you"... "It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel" (Ex. 31:13, 17).
Commentators differ on how wide the day's original scope was. One writer, weighing Jesus' words that the Sabbath was made for man, holds that it reached beyond Israel from the start: "It was true that the Sabbath was a special sign that Israel was the nation of the LORD; but it was also true that it existed before Israel's day" (The Bible Treasury).
Why Christians meet on the first day
Sunday is often called "the Christian Sabbath." Writers here reject that label, and press for accuracy about where the change came from.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinIf we speak of a Sabbath day then surely it must mean the seventh day, and if we desire to keep the Sabbath day holy we must keep not the first day of the week but the seventh day. But some will say, "the Sabbath has been changed from the last day of the week to the first day." This is often said; but there's no scriptural authority for it. Neither Christ nor His apostles declared such a change... The first day of the week is the Lord's day, the day of resurrection, the day of the new creation.
What marks out the first day is not a commandment but a weight of evidence and a new basis:
J. N. DarbyThe Lord met the disciples on the first day of the week, and again the following week; on the first day of the week the disciples came together to break bread; on the first day they were to set aside money for the poor as God had prospered them; and in Revelation John was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, when it had already clearly acquired its name. It is not a seventh day, as if we worked when God rested and rested when God worked. It is not the Fourth Commandment, for we are in no way under the law, but in the blessed liberty of rest to serve God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The order of the week itself is reversed: "Israel's week worked up to the day of rest. The Christian's week starts from the day of rest, based upon the resurrection of Christ" (F. B. Hole).
Summary
- Seventh. The Sabbath in the Bible is Saturday, the last day of the week — "not a, but the, seventh day, and no other."
- God's. It began as God's own rest over a finished creation, not a rule laid on man; Genesis records no command at all.
- Sign. At Sinai it became a sign marking Israel off from every other nation, which is why it was never laid on the nations as such.
- Spoiled. Sin broke that rest, so the Sabbath now points forward: a rest still remains for the people of God, reached only through Christ.
- Sunday. Scripture never moves the Sabbath; it gives a different day — the first, the Lord's day of resurrection, kept in liberty, not law.