Some have contended that the Sabbath was not instituted until the law was given to Moses at Mount Sinai. But there are serious difficulties in the way of this belief. In the second chapter of Genesis, after giving an account of the creation, the sacred historian says:
“On the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.”
Now, if any part of this narrative is to be construed literally, the whole of it must be; and if we may not venture to deny or explain away the account which Moses has given of the creation, then we may not deny or explain away this unequivocal statement regarding the original institution of the Sabbath in Paradise. The blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day is mentioned in connection with the first seventh day in the order of time, and it is so mentioned as most forcibly to impress the reader that the Sabbath was then instituted. God’s resting on the day is given as the reason for its sanctification, and it cannot be supposed that this reason existed 2,500 years before the institution. We conclude, therefore, that the Sabbath was enjoined immediately after the close of the work of creation.
This opinion is corroborated by some facts recorded in the Scriptures. There are frequent and early notices of reckoning by sevens. Noah observed a period of seven days in sending the raven and dove from the ark; the term “week” is used in the contract between Jacob and Laban; Joseph mourned seven days for his father; and Job and his friends observed the term of seven days.
Nor is it only in the sacred volume or among the Jews that such facts are found. Nearly all the nations of antiquity were acquainted with the weekly division of time. The Assyrians, Egyptians, Indians, Arabians—in short, all the nations of the East—have in all ages made use of a week of seven days. And we find that these nations not only divided time thus, but also regarded as holy the very day that had been sanctified as a Sabbath, even though they had forsaken the true worship of God.
Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus say, “The seventh day is holy.” Theophilus of Antioch states regarding the seventh day, “The day which all mankind celebrate.” Josephus asserts, “No city of Greeks or barbarians can be found which does not acknowledge a seventh day’s rest from labor.” And Philo says that “the Sabbath was a festival not peculiar to any one people or country, but so common to all mankind that it might be called a public and general feast of the nativity of the world.”
These authors, who lived in different ages and were of different nations, cannot be supposed to have written thus in order to please the Jews, who were generally despised and persecuted. This universal reverence for the seventh day cannot be accounted for upon any other supposition than that the Sabbath was instituted at the close of creation and handed down by tradition to all the descendants of Adam.
If additional proof of this early institution of the Sabbath is needed, it may be drawn from the manner in which it was revived in the wilderness. Before the children of Israel came to Mount Sinai, we find them voluntarily making provision for the Sabbath by gathering on the sixth day a double portion of manna.
“And all the rulers came and told Moses. And he said unto them, ‘This is that which the Lord hath said: Tomorrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord.'”
“And it came to pass that there went out some of the people on the seventh day to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘How long refuse ye to keep My commandments and My laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore He giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days.'”
The rebuke—”How long refuse ye to keep My commandments and My laws?”—implies the previous appointment of the Sabbath. The positive assertion—”The Lord hath given you the Sabbath”—ought to settle the question in any mind disposed to understand the sacred historian.
