Exodus 23:12

23:12 For six days you are to do your work, but on the seventh day you must cease, in order that your ox and your donkey may rest and that your female servant’s son and any hired help ¹  may refresh themselves. ² 

Deuteronomy 5:14

5:14 but the seventh day is the Sabbath ³  of the Lord your God. On that day you must not do any work, you, your son, your daughter, your male slave, your female slave, your ox, your donkey, any other animal, or the foreigner who lives with you, ⁴  so that your male and female slaves, like yourself, may have rest.

Nehemiah 9:13-14

9:13 “You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven. You provided them with just judgments, true laws, and good statutes and commandments. 9:14 You made known to them your holy Sabbath; you issued commandments, statutes, and law to them through ⁵  Moses your servant.

Isaiah 58:13

58:13 You must ⁶  observe the Sabbath ⁷ 

rather than doing anything you please on my holy day. ⁸ 

You must look forward to the Sabbath ⁹ 

and treat the Lord’s holy day with respect. ¹⁰ 

You must treat it with respect by refraining from your normal activities,

and by refraining from your selfish pursuits and from making business deals. ¹¹ 

Ezekiel 20:12

20:12 I also gave them my Sabbaths ¹²  as a reminder of our relationship, ¹³  so that they would know that I, the Lord, sanctify them. ¹⁴ 

Ezekiel 20:20

20:20 Treat my Sabbaths as holy ¹⁵  and they will be a reminder of our relationship, ¹⁶  and then you will know that I am the Lord your God.”

Luke 6:9

6:9 Then ¹⁷  Jesus said to them, “I ask you, ¹⁸  is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save a life or to destroy it?”

John 7:23

7:23 But if a male child ¹⁹  is circumcised ²⁰  on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken, ²¹  why are you angry with me because I made a man completely well ²²  on the Sabbath?

John 7:1

The Feast of Tabernacles

7:1 After this ²³  Jesus traveled throughout Galilee. ²⁴  He ²⁵  stayed out of Judea ²⁶  because the Jewish leaders ²⁷  wanted ²⁸  to kill him.

Colossians 3:21-22

3:21 Fathers, ²⁹  do not provoke ³⁰  your children, so they will not become disheartened. 3:22 Slaves, ³¹  obey your earthly ³²  masters in every respect, not only when they are watching – like those who are strictly people-pleasers – but with a sincere heart, fearing the Lord.

Colossians 3:2

3:2 Keep thinking about things above, not things on the earth,

Colossians 4:15

4:15 Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters ³³  who are in Laodicea and to Nympha and the church that meets in her ³⁴  house. ³⁵ 

Colossians 2:16

2:16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you with respect to food or drink, or in the matter of a feast, new moon, or Sabbath days –

[23:12]  ¹ tn Heb “alien,” or “resident foreigner.” Such an individual would have traveled out of need and depended on the goodwill of the people around him. The rendering “hired help” assumes that the foreigner is mentioned in this context because he is working for an Israelite and will benefit from the Sabbath rest, along with his employer.

[23:12]  ² tn The verb is וְיִּנָּפֵשׁ (vÿyyinnafesh); it is related to the word usually translated “soul” or “life.”

[5:14]  ³ tn There is some degree of paronomasia (wordplay) here: “the seventh (הַשְּׁבִיעִי, hashÿvi’i) day is the Sabbath (שַׁבָּת, shabbat).” Otherwise, the words have nothing in common, since “Sabbath” is derived from the verb שָׁבַת (shavat, “to cease”).

[5:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “in your gates”; NRSV, CEV “in your towns”; TEV “in your country.”

[9:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “by the hand of.”

[58:13]  ⁶ tn Lit., “if you.” In the Hebrew text vv. 13-14 are one long conditional sentence. The protasis (“if” clauses appear in v. 13), with the apodosis (“then” clause) appearing in v. 14.

[58:13]  ⁷ tn Heb “if you turn from the Sabbath your feet.”

[58:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “[from] doing your desires on my holy day.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a supplies the preposition מִן (min) on “doing.”

[58:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “and call the Sabbath a pleasure”; KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV “a delight.”

[58:13]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and [call] the holy [day] of the Lord honored.” On קָדוֹשׁ (qadosh, “holy”) as indicating a time period, see BDB 872 s.v. 2.e (cf. also Neh 8:9-11).

[58:13]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and you honor it [by refraining] from accomplishing your ways, from finding your desire and speaking a word.” It is unlikely that the last phrase (“speaking a word”) is a prohibition against talking on the Sabbath; instead it probably refers to making transactions or plans (see Hos 10:4). Some see here a reference to idle talk (cf. 2 Sam 19:30).

[20:12]  ¹² sn Ezekiel’s contemporary, Jeremiah, also stressed the importance of obedience to the Sabbath law (Jer 17).

[20:12]  ¹³ tn Heb “to become a sign between me and them.”

[20:12]  ¹⁴ tn Or “set them apart.” The last phrase of verse 12 appears to be a citation of Exod 31:13.

[20:20]  ¹⁵ tn Or “set apart my Sabbaths.”

[20:20]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and they will become a sign between me and you.”

[6:9]  ¹⁷ tn Here δέ (de) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

[6:9]  ¹⁸ sn With the use of the plural pronoun (“you”), Jesus addressed not just the leaders but the crowd with his question to challenge what the leadership was doing. There is irony as well. As Jesus sought to restore on the Sabbath (but improperly according to the leaders’ complaints) the leaders were seeking to destroy, which surely is wrong. The implied critique recalls the OT: Isa 1:1-17; 58:6-14.

[7:23]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “a man.” See the note on “male child” in the previous verse.

[7:23]  ²⁰ tn Grk “receives circumcision.”

[7:23]  ²¹ sn If a male child is circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken. The Rabbis counted 248 parts to a man’s body. In the Talmud (b. Yoma 85b) R. Eleazar ben Azariah (ca. a.d. 100) states: “If circumcision, which attaches to one only of the 248 members of the human body, suspends the Sabbath, how much more shall the saving of the whole body suspend the Sabbath?” So absolutely binding did rabbinic Judaism regard the command of Lev 12:3 to circumcise on the eighth day, that in the Mishnah m. Shabbat 18.3; 19.1, 2; and m. Nedarim 3.11 all hold that the command to circumcise overrides the command to observe the Sabbath.

[7:23]  ²² tn Or “made an entire man well.”

[7:1]  ²³ sn Again, the transition is indicated by the imprecise temporal indicator After this. Clearly, though, the author has left out much of the events of Jesus’ ministry, because chap. 6 took place near the Passover (6:4). This would have been the Passover between winter/spring of a.d. 32, just one year before Jesus’ crucifixion (assuming a date of a.d. 33 for the crucifixion), or the Passover of winter/spring a.d. 29, assuming a date of a.d. 30 for the crucifixion.

[7:1]  ²⁴ tn Grk “Jesus was traveling around in Galilee.”

[7:1]  ²⁵ tn Grk “For he.” Here γάρ (gar, “for”) has not been translated.

[7:1]  ²⁶ tn Grk “he did not want to travel around in Judea.”

[7:1]  ²⁷ tn Or “the Jewish authorities”; Grk “the Jews.” In NT usage the term ᾿Ιουδαῖοι (Ioudaioi) may refer to the entire Jewish people, the residents of Jerusalem and surrounding territory, the authorities in Jerusalem, or merely those who were hostile to Jesus. (For further information see R. G. Bratcher, “‘The Jews’ in the Gospel of John,” BT 26 [1975]: 401-9.) Here the phrase should be restricted to the Jewish authorities or leaders who were Jesus’ primary opponents.

[7:1]  ²⁸ tn Grk “were seeking.”

[3:21]  ²⁹ tn Or perhaps “Parents.” The plural οἱ πατέρες (Joi patere", “fathers”) can be used to refer to both the male and female parent (BDAG 786 s.v. πατήρ 1.a).

[3:21]  ³⁰ tn Or “do not cause your children to become resentful” (L&N 88.168). BDAG 391 s.v. ἐρεθίζω states, “to cause someone to react in a way that suggests acceptance of a challenge, arouse, provoke mostly in bad sense irritate, embitter.”

[3:22]  ³¹ tn On this word here and in 4:1, see the note on “fellow slave” in 1:7.

[3:22]  ³² tn The prepositional phrase κατὰ σάρκα (kata sarka) does not necessarily qualify the masters as earthly or human (as opposed to the Master in heaven, the Lord), but could also refer to the sphere in which “the service-relation holds true.” See BDAG 577 s.v. κύριος 1.b.

[4:15]  ³³ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:2.

[4:15]  ³⁴ tc If the name Nympha is accented with a circumflex on the ultima (Νυμφᾶν, Numfan), then it refers to a man; if it receives an acute accent on the penult (Νύμφαν), the reference is to a woman. Scribes that considered Nympha to be a man’s name had the corresponding masculine pronoun αὐτοῦ here (autou, “his”; so D [F G] Ψ Ï), while those who saw Nympha as a woman read the feminine αὐτῆς here (auth", “her”; B 0278 6 1739^[*^] 1881 sa). Several mss (א A C P 075 33 81 104 326 1175 2464 bo) have αὐτῶν (autwn, “their”), perhaps because of indecisiveness on the gender of Nympha, perhaps because they included ἀδελφούς (adelfou", here translated “brothers and sisters”) as part of the referent. (Perhaps because accents were not part of the original text, scribes were particularly confused here.) The harder reading is certainly αὐτῆς, and thus Nympha should be considered a woman.

[4:15]  ³⁵ tn Grk “the church in her house.” The meaning is that Paul sends greetings to the church that meets at Nympha’s house.