Genesis 2:3

2:3 God blessed the seventh day and made it holy ¹  because on it he ceased all the work that he ²  had been doing in creation. ³ 

Exodus 16:29

16:29 See, because the Lord has given you the Sabbath, that is why ⁴  he is giving you food for two days on the sixth day. Each of you stay where you are; ⁵  let no one ⁶  go out of his place on the seventh day.”

Exodus 20:8-11

20:8 “Remember ⁷  the Sabbath ⁸  day to set it apart as holy. ⁹  20:9 For six days ¹⁰  you may labor ¹¹  and do all your work, ¹²  20:10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on it ¹³  you shall not do any work, you, ¹⁴  or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident foreigner who is in your gates. ¹⁵  20:11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.

Exodus 35:2

35:2 In six days ¹⁶  work may be done, but on the seventh day there must be a holy day ¹⁷  for you, a Sabbath of complete rest to the Lord. ¹⁸  Anyone who does work on it will be put to death.

Leviticus 23:3

The Weekly Sabbath

23:3 “‘Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there must be a Sabbath of complete rest, ¹⁹  a holy assembly. You must not do any work; it is a Sabbath to the Lord in all the places where you live.

Leviticus 23:24

23:24 “Tell the Israelites, ‘In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you must have a complete rest, a memorial announced by loud horn blasts, ²⁰  a holy assembly.

Leviticus 23:32

23:32 It is a Sabbath of complete rest for you, and you must humble yourselves on the ninth day of the month in the evening, from evening until evening you must observe your Sabbath.” ²¹ 

Leviticus 23:39

23:39 “‘On ²²  the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you gather in the produce of the land, you must celebrate a pilgrim festival of the Lord for seven days. On the first day is a complete rest and on the eighth day is complete rest.

Leviticus 25:4

25:4 but in the seventh year the land must have a Sabbath of complete rest ²³  – a Sabbath to the Lord. You must not sow your field or ²⁴  prune your vineyard.

Deuteronomy 5:12-15

5:12 Be careful to observe ²⁵  the Sabbath day just as the Lord your God has commanded you. 5:13 You are to work and do all your tasks in six days, 5:14 but the seventh day is the Sabbath ²⁶  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, ²⁷  so that your male and female slaves, like yourself, may have rest. 5:15 Recall that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there by strength and power. ²⁸  That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to observe ²⁹  the Sabbath day.

Nehemiah 9:14

9:14 You made known to them your holy Sabbath; you issued commandments, statutes, and law to them through ³⁰  Moses your servant.

Mark 2:27-28

2:27 Then ³¹  he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for people, ³²  not people for the Sabbath. 2:28 For this reason the Son of Man is lord ³³  even of the Sabbath.”

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 –

[2:3]  ¹ tn The verb is usually translated “and sanctified it.” The Piel verb קִדֵּשׁ (qiddesh) means “to make something holy; to set something apart; to distinguish it.” On the literal level the phrase means essentially that God made this day different. But within the context of the Law, it means that the day belonged to God; it was for rest from ordinary labor, worship, and spiritual service. The day belonged to God.

[2:3]  ² tn Heb “God.” The pronoun (“he”) has been employed in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[2:3]  ³ tn Heb “for on it he ceased from all his work which God created to make.” The last infinitive construct and the verb before it form a verbal hendiadys, the infinitive becoming the modifier – “which God creatively made,” or “which God made in his creating.”

[16:29]  ⁴ sn Noting the rabbinic teaching that the giving of the Sabbath was a sign of God’s love – it was accomplished through the double portion on the sixth day – B. Jacob says, “God made no request unless He provided the means for its execution” (Exodus, 461).

[16:29]  ⁵ tn Heb “remain, a man where he is.”

[16:29]  ⁶ tn Or “Let not anyone go” (see GKC 445 §138.d).

[20:8]  ⁷ tn The text uses the infinitive absolute זָכוֹר (zakhor) for the commandment for the Sabbath day, which is the sign of the Sinaitic Covenant. The infinitive absolute functions in place of the emphatic imperative here (see GKC 346 §113.bb); the absolute stresses the basic verbal idea of the root – remembering. The verb includes the mental activity of recalling and pondering as well as the consequent actions for such remembering.

[20:8]  ⁸ tn The word “Sabbath” is clearly connected to the verb שָׁבַת (shavat, “to cease, desist, rest”). There are all kinds of theories as to the origin of the day, most notably in the Babylonian world, but the differences are striking in so far as the pagan world had these days filled with magic. Nevertheless, the pagan world does bear witness to a tradition of a regular day set aside for special sacrifices. See, for example, H. W. Wolff, “The Day of Rest in the Old Testament,” LTQ 7 (1972): 65-76; H. Routtenberg, “The Laws of Sabbath: Biblical Sources,” Dor le Dor 6 (1977): 41-43, 99-101, 153-55, 204-6; G. Robinson, “The Idea of Rest in the OT and the Search for the Basic Character of Sabbath,” ZAW 92 (1980): 32-42; and M. Tsevat, “The Basic Meaning of the Biblical Sabbath,” ZAW 84 (1972): 447-59.

[20:8]  ⁹ tn The Piel infinitive construct provides the purpose of remembering the Sabbath day – to set it apart, to make it distinct from the other days. Verses 9 and 10 explain in part how this was to be done. To set this day apart as holy taught Israel the difference between the holy and the profane, that there was something higher than daily life. If an Israelite bent down to the ground laboring all week, the Sabbath called his attention to the heavens, to pattern life after the Creator (B. Jacob, Exodus, 569-70).

[20:9]  ¹⁰ tn The text has simply “six days,” but this is an adverbial accusative of time, answering how long they were to work (GKC 374 §118.k).

[20:9]  ¹¹ tn The imperfect tense has traditionally been rendered as a commandment, “you will labor.” But the point of this commandment is the prohibition of work on the seventh day. The permission nuance of the imperfect works well here.

[20:9]  ¹² tn This is the occupation, or business of the work week.

[20:10]  ¹³ tn The phrase “on it” has been supplied for clarity.

[20:10]  ¹⁴ sn The wife is omitted in the list, not that she was considered unimportant, nor that she was excluded from the rest, but rather in reflecting her high status. She was not man’s servant, not lesser than the man, but included with the man as an equal before God. The “you” of the commandments is addressed to the Israelites individually, male and female, just as God in the Garden of Eden held both the man and the woman responsible for their individual sins (see B. Jacob, Exodus, 567-68).

[20:10]  ¹⁵ sn The Sabbath day was the sign of the Sinaitic Covenant. It required Israel to cease from ordinary labors and devote the day to God. It required Israel to enter into the life of God, to share his Sabbath. It gave them a chance to recall the work of the Creator. But in the NT the apostolic teaching for the Church does not make one day holier than another, but calls for the entire life to be sanctified to God. This teaching is an application of the meaning of entering into the Sabbath of God. The book of Hebrews declares that those who believe in Christ cease from their works and enter into his Sabbath rest. For a Christian keeping Saturday holy is not a requirement from the NT; it may be a good and valuable thing to have a day of rest and refreshment, but it is not a binding law for the Church. The principle of setting aside time to worship and serve the Lord has been carried forward, but the strict regulations have not.

[35:2]  ¹⁶ tn This is an adverbial accusative of time.

[35:2]  ¹⁷ tn The word is קֹדֶשׁ (qodesh, “holiness”). S. R. Driver suggests that the word was transposed, and the line should read: “a sabbath of entire rest, holy to Jehovah” (Exodus, 379). But the word may simply be taken as a substitution for “holy day.”

[35:2]  ¹⁸ sn See on this H. Routtenberg, “The Laws of the Sabbath: Biblical Sources,” Dor le Dor 6 (1977): 41-43, 99-101, 153-55, 204-6; G. Robinson, “The Idea of Rest in the Old Testament and the Search for the Basic Character of Sabbath,” ZAW 92 (1980): 32-43.

[23:3]  ¹⁹ tn This is a superlative expression, emphasizing the full and all inclusive rest of the Sabbath and certain festival times throughout the chapter (see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 155). Cf. ASV “a sabbath of solemn rest.”

[23:24]  ²⁰ tn Heb “a memorial of loud blasts.” Although the term for “horn” does not occur here, allowing for the possibility that vocal “shouts” of acclamation are envisioned (see P. J. Budd, Leviticus [NCBC], 325), the “blast” of the shofar (a trumpet made from a ram’s “horn”) is most likely what is intended. On this occasion, the loud blasts on the horn announced the coming of the new year on the first day of the seventh month (see the explanations in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 387, and B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 160).

[23:32]  ²¹ tn Heb “you shall rest your Sabbath.”

[23:39]  ²² tn Heb “Surely on the fifteenth day.” The Hebrew adverbial particle אַךְ (’akh) is left untranslated by most recent English versions; however, cf. NASB “On exactly the fifteenth day.”

[25:4]  ²³ tn Heb “and in the seventh year a Sabbath of complete rest shall be to the land.” The expression “a Sabbath of complete rest” is superlative, emphasizing the full and all inclusive rest of the seventh year of the sabbatical cycle. Cf. ASV “a sabbath of solemn rest”; NAB “a complete rest.”

[25:4]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and.” Here the Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) has an alternative sense (“or”).

[5:12]  ²⁵ tn Heb “to make holy,” that is, to put to special use, in this case, to sacred purposes (cf. vv. 13-15).

[5:14]  ²⁶ 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]  ²⁷ tn Heb “in your gates”; NRSV, CEV “in your towns”; TEV “in your country.”

[5:15]  ²⁸ tn Heb “by a strong hand and an outstretched arm,” the hand and arm symbolizing divine activity and strength. Cf. NLT “with amazing power and mighty deeds.”

[5:15]  ²⁹ tn Or “keep” (so KJV, NRSV).

[9:14]  ³⁰ tn Heb “by the hand of.”

[2:27]  ³¹ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

[2:27]  ³² tn The Greek term ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpos) is used twice in this verse in a generic sense, referring to both men and women, thus “people.”

[2:28]  ³³ tn The term “lord” is in emphatic position in the Greek text.