History of the Sabbath and First Day of the Week (eBook)

Chapter III.
The Sabbath Committed to the Hebrews.

Object of this chapter—Total apostasy of the human family in the antediluvian age—Destruction of mankind—The family of Noah spared—Second apostasy of mankind in the patriarchal age—The apostate nations left to their own ways—The family of Abraham chosen—Separated from the rest of mankind—Their history—Their relation to God—The Sabbath in existence when they came forth from Egypt—Analysis of Ex. 16—The Sabbath committed to the Hebrews.

We are now to trace the history of divine truth for many ages in almost exclusive connection with the family of Abraham. That we may vindicate the truth from the reproach of pertaining only to the Hebrews—a reproach often urged against the Sabbath—and justify the dealings of God with mankind in leaving to their own ways the apostate nations, let us carefully examine the Bible for the reasons which directed divine Providence in the choice of Abraham’s family as the depositaries of divine truth.

The antediluvian world had been highly favored of God. The period of life extended to each generation was twelve-fold that of the present age of man. For almost one thousand years, Adam, who had conversed with God in paradise, had been with them. Before the death of Adam, Enoch began his holy walk of three hundred years, and then he was translated that he should not see death. This testimony to the piety of Enoch was a powerful testimony to the antediluvians in behalf of truth and righteousness. Moreover the Spirit of God strove with mankind; but the perversity of man triumphed over all the gracious restraints of the Holy Spirit. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Even the sons of God joined in the general apostasy. At last a single family was all that remained of the worshipers of the Most High.48

Then came the deluge, sweeping the world of its guilty inhabitants with the besom of destruction.49 So terrible a display of divine justice might well be thought sufficient to restrain impiety for ages. Surely the family of Noah could not soon forget this awful lesson. But alas, revolt and apostasy speedily followed, and men turned from God to the worship of idols. Against the divine mandate separating the human family into nations,50 mankind united in one great act of rebellion in the plain of Shinar. “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” Then God confounded them in their impiety and scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth.51 Men did not like to retain God in their knowledge; wherefore God gave them over to a reprobate mind, and suffered them to change the truth of God into a lie, and to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. Such was the origin of idolatry and of the apostasy of the Gentiles.52

In the midst of this wide-spread apostasy one man was found whose heart was faithful with God. Abraham was chosen from an idolatrous family, as the depositary of divine truth, the father of the faithful, the heir of the world, and the friend of God.53 When the worshipers of God were found alone in the family of Noah, God gave up the rest of mankind to perish in the flood. Now that the worshipers of God are again reduced almost to a single family, God gives up the idolatrous nations to their own ways, and takes the family of Abraham as his peculiar heritage. “For I know him,” said God, “that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment.”54 That they might preserve in the earth the knowledge of divine truth and the memory and worship of the Most High, they were to be a people walled off from all mankind, and dwelling in a land of their own. That they might thus be separated from the heathen around, God gave to Abraham the rite of circumcision, and afterward to his posterity the whole ceremonial law.55 But they could not possess the land designed for them until the iniquity of the Amorites, its inhabitants, was full, that they should be thrust out before them. The horror of great darkness, and the smoking furnace seen by Abraham in vision, foreshadowed the iron furnace and the bitter servitude of Egypt. The family of Abraham must go down thither. Brief prosperity and long and terrible oppression follow.56

At length the power of the oppressor is broken, and the people of God are delivered. The expiration of four hundred and thirty years from the promise to Abraham marks the hour of deliverance to his posterity.57 The nation of Israel is brought forth from Egypt as God’s peculiar treasure, that he may give them his Sabbath, and his law, and himself. The psalmist testifies that God “brought forth his people with joy, and his chosen with gladness: and gave them the lands of the heathen: and they inherited the labor of the people: that they might observe his statutes, and keep his laws. And the Most High says, “I am the Lord which hallow you, that brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God.”58 Not that the commandments of God, his Sabbath and himself, had no prior existence, nor that the people were ignorant of the true God and his law; for the Sabbath was appointed to a holy use before the fall of man; and the commandments of God, his statutes and his laws, were kept by Abraham; and the Israelites themselves, when some of them had violated the Sabbath, were reproved by the question, “How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?”59 And as to the Most High, the psalmist exclaims, ”Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.”60 But there must be a formal public espousal of the people by God, and of his law and Sabbath and himself by the people.61 But neither the Sabbath, nor the law, nor the great Law-giver, by their connection with the Hebrews, became Jewish. The Law-giver indeed became the God of Israel,62 and what Gentile shall refuse him adoration for that reason? but the Sabbath still remained the Sabbath of the Lord,63 and the law continued to be the law of the Most High.

In the month following their passage through the Red Sea, the Hebrews came into the wilderness of Sin. It is at this point in his narrative that Moses for the second time mentions the sanctified rest-day of the Creator. The people murmured for bread:

This narrative...