2. See Gerhard von Rad,
“Das theologische Problem des alttestamentlichen Sch6pfungsglaubens,” in
Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament, 1958, pp. 136-147.
3. A. T. Lincoln notes this double function of the Sabbath. He writes:
“As regards the work of creation God’s rest was final, but as that rest was meant for humanity to enjoy, when it was disturbed by sin, God worked in history to accomplish his original purpose” (
“Sabbath, Rest and Eschatology in the New Testament,” in
From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical and Theological Investigation, D. A. Carson, ed., 1982, p. 205).
4. Herbert W. Richardson rightly emphasizes the connection between the sanctification of the creation Sabbath and the incarnation of Christ. He writes, for example,
“God created the world so that the Sabbath guest, Jesus Christ, might come and dwell therein. That is, the world was created for the sake of ‘Emmanuel, God with us.’ The incarnation is, therefore, not a rescue operation, decided upon only after sin had entered into the world. Rather, the coming of Christ fulfills the purpose of God in creating the world. Sanctification, not redemption, is the chief work of Jesus Christ—‘God with us’ rather than ‘God for us’” (
Toward an American Theology, 1967, p. 139). Richardson is right in emphasizing the sanctification function of the Sabbath but wrong in doing so at the expense of redemption. To be a symbol of a divine-human relationship the Sabbath does not have to cease being a symbol of redemption. Sanctification and redemption are not mutually exclusive but equally included, both in the meaning of the Sabbath and in the work of Christ. A valuable critique to Richardson’s book is offered by Roy Branson, Fritz Guy and Earle Hilgert,
“Toward an American Theology: A Symposium on an Important Book,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 7 (1969): 1-16.
5. S See C. K. Barrett, in
“The Eschatology of the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in
The Background of the New Testament and its Eschatology, D. Daube and W. D. Davies, eds., 1956, p. 365. The tension can be seen, for example, in the description of the church as living
“at the end of the age”(9:26; 1:2) and yet
“eagerly waiting for him [Christ]” (9:28; 2:10).
6. Note that the term
katapausis is used in the Septuagint to designate the rest of the Sabbath. Cf. Ex. 35:2; II Macc. 15:1.
7. Plutarch,
De Superstitione 3 and
Moralia 166a; Justin Martyr,
Dialogue with Trypho 23, 3; Epiphanius,
Adversus haereses 30, 2, 2;
Martyrium Petri et Pauli 1; Constitutions of the Holy Apostles 2, 36, 2. For a treatment of the question, see 0. Hofius,
Katapausis, Tiibingen, 1970, pp. 103-105.
8. W. Rordorf emphasizes the Christological implication of
“Today”:
“We shall misunderstand the burden of the passage if we do not hear in it the decisive significance of the ‘Today.’ The new day of the ‘Today’ has dawn in Christ (v. 7). On this new day it is possible to enter into the rest, and yet more: on this new day this rest has become a reality for those who believe”(
Sunday, 1968, p. 112). Note also the similarity with the
“Today” of Luke 4:21 and John 9:4.
9. Gerhard von Rad,
“There Remains Still a Rest for the People of God,” in
The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, 1965, p. 102. A similar view is expressed by Karl Barth:
“From creation—preceding and superseding every human decision of obedience or disobedience— there remains (apoleipetai) for the people of God the Sabbath rest (sabbatismos), the divinely willed and ordered fellowship, relationship and agreement between His own and human freedom as the goal and determination of the way to which this people continually have to be recalled, to which God never wearies to recall them, and to which, at the end and climax of that intercourse, He has definitively recalled them in His Son (Heb. 4:9)” (Church Dogmatics ET, 1958, III, part 1, p. 227).
10. Abraham Joshua Heschel,
The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man, 1952, p. 23.
11. Gerhard von Rad traces the development of the theme of
“rest” in the OT from national-political to personal-spiritual experience (see n. 9, pp. 94-102). Ernst Jenni maintains that the Sabbath contributed to the development of the theme of Israel’s rest (
Die theologische Begriindung des Sabbatgebotes im Alten Testament, 1956, p. 282).
12. Theodore Friedman,
“The Sabbath: Anticipation of Redemption,” Judaism 16 (1967): 445. Friedman notes that
“at the end of the Mishnah Tamid (Rosh Hashanah 31a) we read: ‘A Psalm, a song for the Sabbath day—a song for the time-to-come, for the day that is all Sabbath rest in the eternal life.’ The Sabbath, the Gemara asserts, is one-sixtieth of the world to come”(ibid., p. 443).
13. For examples, see Theodore Friedman (n. 12): cf.
Rosh Hashanah 31a;
Mekilta Ex. 31:13;
Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 19;
A both de R. Nathan I.
14.
Sanhedrin 97a.
15.
Vita Adae et Evae 51:1, 2, in
The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, R. H. Charles, ed., 1913, II, p. 153. Cf.
Apocalypsis of Mosis 43 :3. A similar view is found in
Genesis Rabbah 17:5:
“There are three antitypes: the antitype of death is sleep, the antitype of prophecy is dream, the antitype of the age to come is the Sabbath.” Cf.
Genesis Rabbah 44:17.
16. R. Longenecker points out that in the OT
“greater emphasis is given to a description of the Age itself than to God’s anointed instrument who will usher in that Age. While sections and chapters are devoted to the former (e.g., Is. 26-29; 40ff.; Ezek. 40-48; Dan. 12; Joel 2:28-3:21), definite references to the latter are confined, in the main, to a few specific verses (e.g., Is. 9:6f; Micah 5:2; Zech. 9:9)” (
The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity, 1970, pp. 63-64).
17. II Baruch 29:3, in Charles (n. 15), p. 497, emphasis supplied. Similarly in IV Ezra 8:52, the seer is assured:
“For you is opened Paradise, planted the Tree of life; the future Age prepared, plenteousness made ready; a City builded, a Rest appointed” in Charles (n. 15), p. 598, emphasis supplied. See also references above, n. 13.
18.
Mishna Tamid 7:4. The viewing of the Sabbath as the symbol and anticipation of the Messianic age gave to the celebration of the weekly Sabbath a note of gladness and hope for the future. Cf.
Genesis Rabbat 17; 44;
Baba Berakot 57f. Theodore Friedman shows how certain Sabbath regulations established by the school of Shammai were designed to offer a foretaste of the Messianic age (n. 12, pp. 447-452).
19. Harold H. P. Dressler aptly remarks:
“Trained by the regular recurrence of this gracious gift, Israel was able to stand in freedom, responsibility, trust and gratitude before her Creator on the Sabbath day, worshipping him, the Lord of the Sabbath, and looking forward with joy and anticipation to the coming of the final rest” (
“The Sabbath in the Old Testament,” [n. 3], p. 32).
20. Niels-Erik Andreasen argues that the
“remembrance clause” (
“you shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt”—Deut. 5: iSa) does not constitute the real reason for Sabbathkeeping since structurally the sentence is not preceded by the preposition
“for” (as in Ex. 20:lla) but is placed in parallelism with the previous sentence of vv. 13-14 (
Rest and Redemption, 1978), pp. 49-50). Nicola Negretti, though he recognizes the
“parallelistic arrangement,” shows in his structural analysis that the conclusion
‘therefore’—
‘al ken’ does represent
“the conscious effort to link the Sabbath to the theme of the exodus” (
Il Settimo Giorno, Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1973, p. 132). Negretti’s conclusion is supported by the fact that the same
“remembrance clause” is explicitly given in Deuteronomy as the reason for emancipating slaves in the sabbatical year (15:15), for celebrating the feast of weeks (16:12), and for doing justice to the underprivileged (24:17-18, 21-22).
21. Hans Walter Wolff,
“The Day of Rest in the Old Testament,” Concordia Theological Monthly, 43 (1972): 500.
22. Niels-Erik Andreasen (n. 20), p. 52.
23. Ibid.
24. In a passage of the Talmud, the seventh day, the seventh year and the seventh millennium are interrelated as follows: R. Kattina said:
“Six thousand years shall the world exist, and one [thousand, the seventh], it shall be desolate, as it is written, And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day∙∙∙Just as the seventh year is one year of release in seven, so is the world: one thousand years out of seven shall be fallow, as it is written, A Psalm and a song for the Sabbath day [Ps. 92:1], meaning the day that is altogether Sabbath” (Sanhedrin 976, trans. by H. Freedman, 1935, II, p. 657).
25. II Chronicles 36:21 mentions the non-observance of the sabbatical years. There are, however, some historical allusions to the keeping of the annual sabbaths (Josephus,
Antiquities 11, 86; 14, 10, 6; 15, 1, 2; I Macc. 6:49-53; Tacitus, Histories 5, 2, 4). Cf. Jer. 34; Neh. 10:32; 2 King 19:29; Is. 37:30. 5. W. Baron argues in favor of the existence and influence of the Sabbath and jubilee legislation (
A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 1952, I, pp. 332-333). Similarly, Edward Neufeld,
“Socio-economic backgrounds Yobel and Shemitta,” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 38 (1958): 119-124; J. H. Yoder,
The Politics of Jesus, 1972, pp. 69-70. We concur with Robert B. Sloan’s statement:
“The popular clamor, prophetic remonstrances, and eschatological appeal surrounding this ordinance serve to illustrate both its continuing fecundity throughout the history of Israel and its apparently simultaneous lack of regular, consistent enforcement” (
The Favorable Year of the Lord. A Study of Jubilary Theology in the Gospel of Luke, 1977, p. 27).
26. Robert B. Sloan (n. 25), p. 37 notes that
“of the approximately fifty instances of aphesis in the LXX, 22 are found in Lev. 25 and 27 where it translates in most cases the Hebrew yobel ‘year of jubilee’ and in other cases, most notably Lev. 25 :10, it is used to translate deror ‘release.’” 27. See, Rudolf Bultmann,
“aphesis,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 1974, I, p. 511:
“The noun aphesis almost always means ‘forgiveness.’” 28. Julian Morgenstern maintains that
“In all likelihood the ‘great trumpet’(Is. 27:13), a blast from which would inaugurate a new and happier era for conquered and dispersed Israel, was a yobel. All this suggests cogently that the ram’s-horn trumpet was of unusual character, used only upon extraordinary occasions and for some particular purpose (cf. Ex. 19:136)∙∙∙ This year acquired its name just because this unique, fiftieth year was ushered in by this blast upon the yobel whereas the commencement of ordinary years was signalized by a blast upon only a shophar (II Sam. 15:10; cf. Lev. 23 :24)” (
The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 1962, s.v.
“Jubilee, Year of,” II, p. 1001).
29. C. D. Ginsburg notes the connection between the Day of Atonement and the inauguration of the jubilee year. In his comment on Leviticus 25:9, he writes:
“On the close of the great Day of Atonement, when the Hebrews realized that they had peace of mind, that their heavenly Father had annulled their sins, and that they had become re-united to Him through His forgiving mercy, every Israelite was called upon to proclaim throughout the land, by nine blasts of the cornet, that he too had given to soil rest, that he had freed every encumbered family estate, and that he had given liberty to every slave, who was now to rejoin his kindred. Inasmuch as God has forgiven his debts, he also is to forgive others” (Leviticus, in
Ellicott’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, I, p. 454). Cf. Robert B. Sloan (n. 25), p. 15.
30. Rousas John Rushdoony,
The Institutes of Biblical Law, 1973, p. 141.
31. Even if one takes the
“seven weeks” of Daniel 9:25 as an independent unit, it would still consist of one jubilee. It is more feasible, however, to take v. 24 as a summary of the whole time period. See Andre Lacocque,
The Book of Daniel, 1979, p. 191.
32. For an excellent exegetical analysis of Daniel 9:24-27, bringing out the Messianic eschatology of the passage, see Jacques Doukhan,
“The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9: An Exegetical Study,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 17 (1979): 1-22.
33. On the rabbinic and Qumranic eschatological interpretation of Isaiah 61:1-3, see James A. Sanders,
“From Isaiah 61 to Luke 4,” in
Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults, Jacob Neusner, ed., 1975, pp. 82-92. Further examples and discussions are provided by I. Howard Marshall,
The Gospel of Luke, 1978, p. 182.
34. The text is translated and analyzed by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, in
“Further Light on Melchizedek from Qumran Cave 11,” Journal of Biblical Literature 86 (1967): 25-41. See also M. Miller,
“The Function of Isa. 61:1-2 in 11Q Melchizedek,” Journal of Biblical Literature 88 (1969): 467-469.
35. The translation is by Fitzmyer (n. 34), p. 28. The dependency upon Daniel 9:25 is explicit in line 18 which reads
“and the herald i[s] [th]at [An]ointed One (about) whom Dani[iel] said∙∙∙” 36.
Sanhedrin 97b. For other references and discussion, see George Wesley Buchanan,
“Sabbatical Eschatology,” Christian News From Israel, 18 (December 1967): 51-54.
37. Abraham Joshua Heschel (n. 10), p. 68. Similarly Jacob Fichman writes
“When the hour of the Sabbath-welcome arrives, there is felt a kind of foretaste of the promised Redemption, even as with every out-going of the Sabbath there is a feeling of the renewal of the enslavement, of the gloom ahead,” (quoted by Abraham E. Millgram,
Sabbath. The Day of Delight, 1944, p. 391).
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