Page 122 - Biblical Backgrounds

Sabbath
God recorded the Fourth Commandment in Exodus 20:8-11

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the
seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your
daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is
within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in
them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”

According to Exodus 20:8–11, the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week, on which the children of Israel
were to rest, in remembrance that God created the universe in six days and then “rested” on the
seventh day. In ancient Israel, the day began in the evening when the sun was setting. That is because
the Genesis account describes each day by the “evening and the morning was the number day.” The
sabbath began at sundown on Friday night (around 6 PM) and ended at sundown on Saturday. It was a
day when Israel was to rest, worship, and set aside their daily work and burdens to concentrate on the
goodness of the Lord. The Pharisees created hundreds of rules that would regulate what could and
could not be done on the Sabbath and accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath because He violated their
rules. He reminded them that He was the Lord of the Sabbath, the One who created the day and made
up the rules! (Matthew 12:8)

High Sabbath Days

Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross
on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might
be broken, and that they might be taken away. (John 19:31)

This Sabbath was NOT the same as the weekly Sabbath. A high day is technically an annual holy day, or
annual Sabbath, as commanded in Leviticus 23. Certainly, the weekly Sabbath is a day to keep holy, but
these annual holy days take precedence if they occur on the seventh-day Sabbath.

The annual Sabbaths are seven: the first and seventh days of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Trumpets
(Rosh Hashanah in Hebrew), Atonement (Yom Kippur), the first day of Tabernacles (Succoth), and the
Last Great Day. The first three occur in the spring, and the last four in the fall. Thus, the high day of
which John was speaking was one of the three spring holy days, and since Jesus crucifixion took place on
the day of Passover (Nisan 14 on the Hebrew calendar), the high day of which he speaks must be the
first day of Unleavened Bread, which falls the day after the Passover (Nisan 15).
This verse also provides some very interesting and definitive proof of when Jesus died, and thus when
He was resurrected. Jesus Himself said several times that His time in the tomb would be three days and
three nights, just as the prophet Jonah had spent three days and nights in the fish's belly (see Matthew
12:38-40; 27:63; Mark 8:31; John 2:18-22). This in itself rules out a Friday crucifixion-Sunday
resurrection because there is no way to cram three days and three nights between sunset on Friday and
sunrise on Sunday.

If Jesus rose exactly three days and three nights after His burial (just before sunset; see Matthew
27:46; Mark 15:34), the only candidate for His resurrection is the very end of the Sabbath at sunset.
Counting back three full days, then, Jesus must have died on the previous Wednesday, which would
have been the day of the Passover (Jesus and His disciples had observed the Passover the evening

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