We ought not to pass over this remarkable passage, without observing that Nehemiah, the chief magistrate of the people, acted on this occasion not merely as a Jew, but in the more comprehensive character of a servant of God. He was endeavouring to maintain a divine law long anterior in date to the Mosaic code, and essential to the civil as well as religious welfare of mankind. But the duties of the Sabbath were not merely negative. The Israelites were required, on that day especially, to delight themselves in the Lord. It was because of its being dedicated to the salutary and joyful purpose of worship, that they were to call that sacred day a delight and honourable. That the Jews, after their return from captivity, were accustomed to assemble in their synagogues on the Sabbath-day, for the purpose of public worship, is a fact familiar to every reader of the New Testament. But, even from the first promulgation of their law, the duty of social worship was understood to be inseparably connected with the Sabbath. Like the high days of their great festivals, each recurring seventh day was to be a holy convocation. The people were to meet in a large assembly; not surely, as some persons have imagined, for the mere purpose of feasting, but for the holier one of prayer and praise and listening to the words of the law. Speak unto the children of Israel," said the Lord to Moses,... concerning the feasts of the Lord which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these 66 The are my feasts. Six days shall work be done; but the seventh is a Sabbath of rest, a holy convocation;" Lev. 23: 3. That on these solemn occasions the law was publicly read, appears probable from the testimony of James (the brother of our Lord), who, in addressing the church at Jerusalem, said: For Moses of OLD TIME hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues EVERY SABBATH-DAY;" Acts 15: 21. phrase rendered of old time, signifies FROM THE ANCIENT GENERATIONS,* and denotes the great antiquity of the practice in question. Accordingly Josephus declares, that "Moses commanded the people to remit their other employments every seventh day, and to gather together for the purpose of hearing the law read, and of accurately learning it." A similar assertion is made by Philo. In the second book of Kings, we read of the covert for the Sabbath, which they had built in the house. This covert is generally supposed to have been a splendid awning, erected in connexion with the temple, under which the king sat during the time of public and social worship.|| It appears then, that the ancient Israelites * Από γενεῶν ἀρχαίων. + Εκάστης ἑβδομάδος τῶν ἄλλων ἔργων ἀφεμένους, ἐπὶ τὴν ἀκρόασιν τοῦ νόμου ἐκέλευσε συλλέγεσθαι, καὶ τοῦτον ἀκριβῶς ἐκμανθάνειν. Contra Apion. 2: 17. De Vita Mosis, Lib. 3. Jennings' Jewish Ant. 2, 160. were fully aware, that the religious observance of every seventh day formed a part of that higher class of their duties, which was distinguished, in the very nature of things, from every thing merely civil or ceremonial. The Sabbath was ordained for their spiritual welfare; it was enforced by the most awful sanctions; it was inscribed on the tables of their covenant; it was presented to them as an essential part of the moral law of God. While this point is so plain that it can scarcely fail to be conceded by the impartial examiner of Scripture, we ought not to forget that the Sabbath, under the Mosaic economy, served certain purposes, and was marked by certain characteristics, which had no relation except to that economy. This article of the decalogue was applied to the Israelites on a national, as well as on a more general principle; and in such a form or manner, as suited the peculiar circumstances under which they were placed. 1. The Mosaic Sabbath was intended for a sign, by which the Israelites might be distinguished from all the idolatrous nations which surrounded them. It was a visible and intelligible badge of their loyalty to the King of kings; a public testimony, borne amidst all the heathen, to the authority of Jehovah. Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep," said the Lord by Moses, "for it is a sign be. tween me and you throughout your genera tions, that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth SANCTIFY you.... Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever," Ex. 31: 12—17. So again in the book of Ezekiel, Jehovah says: "And I gave them my statutes, and showed them my judgments. Moreover, also, I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that SANCTIFY them," Ezek. 20: 11-12. 2. As the Sabbath was a means of distinguishing the Israelites as the worshippers of the true God, so it was intended to remind them of the national redemption which Jehovah had wrought for them. As the creation of the world was the first, so the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, was the second event of which it was the appointed memorial. In the repetition made by Moses of the ten commandments, this latter event is alone alluded to in connexion with the Sabbath : "Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God. brought thee out thence through a mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm. Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day," Deut. 5: 15. 3. When JEHOVAH enjoined on the Israelites in the wilderness, the keeping of the Sabbath, he appointed a particular day for the purpose, and distinguished it from other days, by a cessation of the manna, Ex. 16: 23. Since this event took place within a few weeks of the miraculous deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and since that was the national event, which the Sabbath was intended to commemorate, we may reasonably conclude with Patrick, Mede,* and other learned writers, that the day of the week thus selected for the Sabbath, was the day of the passage of the Red Sea. Whether this day corresponded with that of the patriarchal Sabbath, is a question involved in great doubt. On the one hand, it is remarked, that the seventh day of the. Hebrew week was also the seventh-the Saturni sacra dies-of the Greek and Roman week, at the Christian era; a circumstance from which it may be inferred, that the Sabbath of the Jews agreed, as to its day, with that of the patriarchs. On the other hand it is argued, that there might not be the same correspondence between the Hebrew and heathen weeks in more ancient times; and the history of the Israelites in the wilderness, is considered as containing internal evidence, that a new day was appointed for their Sabbath. From Exodus 16: 1 it appears, that the seventh day preceding that on which the manna ceased to fall, was occupied, not by a holy rest, but by a wearisome journey in the wilderness of Sin. Now although the Israelites might have forgotten the Sabbatical institution, yet as their journeys were under the direct command of JEHOVAH, it is presumed that a day thus spent * See Patrick, Ex. 16. Mede's Works, B. I. disc. 15. |