Sabbath Rest · The Types of Christ
Sabbath Rest
God rested on the seventh day, told Israel to do the same, and then — centuries later — Hebrews says the real rest is still out ahead of us, and reaches for a word that appears nowhere else in the Bible to say so.
In the Order It Comes
— creation, then a chapter about bread, then Sinai — and two different reasonsTHE ARTWORKSamuel Hirszenberg was a Polish Jewish painter, and The Sabbath Restis a picture of his own people’s seventh day from inside it: men slumped against a wall, hands still, the whole street gone quiet. It is here because it shows restrather than ritual, which is this page’s subject — and because a page setting out Christian arguments about the sabbath should be looking at the people whose day it has been for three thousand years, not at a diagram.
Genesis 2 is quieter than most people remember. God finishes, and rests, and blesses the seventh day, and makes it holy — and no one is told to do anything. There is no command in the passage at all. What Genesis reports is what God did, and a day He set apart.
The word for a sabbath observance then turns up for the first time in Scripture in a place nobody expects: Exodus 16, the chapter about manna, before Israel ever reaches Sinai. A double portion falls on the sixth day, none falls on the seventh, and the pattern is established by bread before it is written on stone.
Then the command itself — twice, with two different reasons. Exodus 20 grounds it in creation: God rested, therefore rest. Deuteronomy 5 grounds the identical command in the exodus: you were slaves in Egypt and He brought you out, therefore give your servants a day. Both are Scripture. Neither cancels the other.
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. And by the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on that day He rested from all His work. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on that day He rested from all the work of creation that He had accomplished.He rested, blessed the day and made it holy — and commanded no one anything.
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, on which you must not do any work—neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant or livestock, nor the foreigner within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.The command at Sinai, and its reason: because God rested on the seventh day.
Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, on which you must not do any work—neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox or donkey or any of your livestock, nor the foreigner within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. That is why the LORD your God has commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.The same command as Exodus 20, grounded not in creation but in the exodus.
A precision worth having
The noun shabbat — “sabbath,” the institution — does not occur in Genesis 2 at all. What Genesis 2 has is the verb shabath, “he rested,” at verses 2 and 3. The related noun shabbathon makes its first appearance in the Bible at Exodus 16:23.
That is an observation about vocabulary, offered because it is checkable and most treatments skip it — not an argument for or against anybody’s position. Readers on every side of the question below can use it.
The sabbath day is a blessed day, for God blessed it, and that which he blesses is blessed indeed. God has put an honour upon it, has appointed us, on that day, to bless him, and has promised, on that day, to meet us and bless us. The sabbath day is a holy day, for God has sanctified it.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Puritan
Genesis 2:3
On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much food—two omers per person—and all the leaders of the congregation came and reported this to Moses. He told them, “This is what the LORD has said: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of complete rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake, and boil what you want to boil. Then set aside whatever remains and keep it until morning.’” So they set it aside until morning as Moses had commanded, and it did not smell or contain any maggots. “Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a Sabbath to the LORD. Today you will not find anything in the field. For six days you may gather, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, it will not be there.”The sabbath pattern taught by bread, before Sinai — and the word's first appearance in Scripture.
What Jesus Did With It
— Mark 2:27-28 — one paragraph, and then the page that owns itWalking through grainfields on a sabbath, His disciples pick heads of grain, and He is challenged for it. His answer is two sentences, and both are enormous: the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath — and the Son of Man is Lord even of the sabbath.
The sabbath controversies in the Gospels — the healings, the accusations, what the Pharisees were actually objecting to — are a page of their own, and it is a good one. This page takes only what it needs: whatever the day is for, it is for people, and He holds the authority over it.
Lord of the SabbathEvery sabbath confrontation in the Gospels, worked out at length.One Sabbath Jesus was passing through the grainfields, and His disciples began to pick the heads of grain as they walked along. So the Pharisees said to Him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” Jesus replied, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? During the high priesthood of Abiathar, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which was lawful only for the priests. And he gave some to his companions as well.” Then Jesus declared, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”Made for man, not man for it — and the Son of Man is Lord of it.
The sabbath is a sacred and divine institution; but we must receive and embrace it as a privilege and a benefit, not as a task and a drudgery. First, God never designed it to be an imposition upon us, and therefore we must not make it so to ourselves. Man was not made for the sabbath, for he was made a day before the sabbath was instituted.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Puritan
Mark 2:27
The Rest That Remains
— Hebrews 3-4 — and the one word the letter reaches for at the endHebrews runs a three-stage argument, and this page simply follows it. First: there was a rest Israel was offered and failed to enter, and Psalm 95 says so — they shall not enter my rest.Second: Joshua’s conquest was not that rest, because if it had been, God would not have gone on speaking of another day centuries later. Therefore, third: a rest remains.
And here is the detail the whole page turns on. Through chapters 3 and 4 the letter uses the ordinary Greek word for rest, katapausis, nine times. Then at the climax it switches to sabbatismos — a word that occurs once in the entire Bible, right there, because no one had needed it before.
Creation
Genesis 2And by the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on that day He rested from all His work.
Hebrews 4:4 quotes this very verse, and argues from it that the invitation is still open.
Canaan
Joshua 21 · Psalm 95And the LORD gave them rest on every side, just as He had sworn to their fathers. None of their enemies could stand against them, for the LORD delivered all their enemies into their hand.
Hebrews 4:8 says Joshua did not give it. (The “Jesus” of that verse in the King James is Joshua — the same name in Greek.)
The rest that remains
Hebrews 4There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
Still ahead, and entered by faith rather than by a calendar. This is where the letter has been going the whole time.
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from His. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following the same pattern of disobedience.Joshua did not give it; therefore a sabbath rest remains for the people of God.
He did not say "rest," but "sabbath-keeping," using precisely the kind of term that both delighted his listeners and was fully understandable to them. Thus he refers to the Kingdom of Heaven. For just as on the Sabbath the law commanded abstaining from all fleshly …
Theophylact of Ohrid· Commentary on Hebrews, 1107Eastern Orthodox
Hebrews 4:9
Answer to the objection which might be made to his reasoning, namely, that those brought into Canaan by Joshua (so "Jesus" here means, as in Ac 7:45) did enter the rest of God.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Hebrews 4:8
"For if Joshua had given them rest he would not afterward have spoken of another day." It is evident, that he says these things, as of persons who are to attain some recompense.
John Chrysostom· Homily on Hebrews 6, 407Church Father
Hebrews 4:8
Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be deemed to have fallen short of it. For we also received the good news just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, since they did not share the faith of those who comprehended it. Now we who have believed enter that rest. As for the others, it is just as God has said: “So I swore on oath in My anger, ‘They shall never enter My rest.’” And yet His works have been finished since the foundation of the world.The promise of entering His rest still stands — which is the premise the rest of the chapter argues from.
For we only that have believed enter into the rest - The proposition is, There remains a rest for us. This is proved, ver. 3- 11, thus: That Psalm mentions a rest: yet it does not mean, 1. God's rest from creating; for this was long before the time of Moses.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Hebrews 4:3
The rest Israel was offered and did not enterPsalm 95:7-11 · Hebrews 3:16-19
Stage one of the argument, in the two passages it rests on. The psalm is the older voice: they shall not enter my rest. Hebrews takes it up, asks who it was that heard and rebelled, and answers its own question — the people who came out of Egypt. They could not enter, the letter says, because of unbelief.
For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep under His care. Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, in the day at Massah in the wilderness, where your fathers tested and tried Me, though they had seen My work. For forty years I was angry with that generation, and I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known My ways.” So I swore on oath in My anger, “They shall never enter My rest.”Today, if you hear His voice — and the oath that followed a generation that did not.
For who were the ones who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was God angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would never enter His rest? Was it not to those who disobeyed? So we see that it was because of their unbelief that they were unable to enter.Hebrews' own reading of the psalm: they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
A third rest, beyond the first twoPhotios of Constantinople on Hebrews 4:9
The Greek Fathers read the letter’s logic the same way a modern reader does, and said so more compactly.
Just as the first "rest" did not prevent there being a second rest, so neither does the existence of a second rest prevent the existence of a third and more perfect rest.… Then it is clear that there is a certain other rest beyond those …
Photios I of Constantinople· Fragments on the Epistle to the Hebrews 4.3-11, 893Eastern Orthodox
Hebrews 4:9
Hebrews' warnings are handled on their own pageHebrews 3:7-4:13 · one page, one place
Chapters 3 and 4 carry one of the five great warning passages of Hebrews, and the argument about what those warnings mean for assurance is a large one on which the founder has planted a flag. It belongs where it is answered in full, not compressed into a paragraph about a Greek noun.
Eternal Security — the five warnings, the readings, and where Marcus lands →
Shadow and Body
— Colossians 2:16-17 — and the thing the New Testament never saysPaul puts sabbaths in a list with food, drink and festivals, calls the whole list a shadow of what was coming, and says the body — the substance that casts the shadow — belongs to Christ. Every reading on this page has to deal with that sentence, and they deal with it differently, which is the honest situation.
Therefore let no one judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a feast, a New Moon, or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body that casts it belongs to Christ.A shadow of the things to come; the substance belongs to Christ.
Which are a shadow of things to come - See the notes at Heb 8:5; Heb 10:1, note. They were only a dim outline of future things, not the reality. But the body is of Christ - The reality, the substance. All that they signified is of or in Christ. Between those things themselves which are in Christ, and those which only represented or prefigured them, there is as much difference as there is between a body and a shadow; a solid substance and a mere outline.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832-1869Presbyterian
Colossians 2:17
For these are only a shadow of what is to come, that is, of Christ. And when the truth comes, the shadow should cease, but the substance belongs to Christ. When someone sees a shadow, he expects the body or substantial reality to follow. Now …
Thomas Aquinas· Commentary on Colossians, 1274Scholastic
Colossians 2:17
Where Scripture is silent
The New Testament never commands Christians to keep a particular day, and never abolishes one in so many words. It records no apostolic ruling on the question. That silence is worth saying out loud, because it is the reason honoured brothers still differ — and saying it is what turns the section above from a stand-off into an honest account.
This verse indirectly establishes the obligation of the Sabbath still; for the type continues until the antitype supersedes it: so legal sacrifices continued till the great antitypical Sacrifice superseded it, As then the antitypical heavenly Sabbath-rest will not be till Christ, our Gospel Joshua, comes, to usher us into it, the typical earthly Sabbath must continue till then.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Hebrews 4:9
We are not ordered to keep the sabbath day by a literal corporal abstinence from work, as the Jews observe it—and, indeed, that observance of theirs, because it is so commanded, is considered ludicrous unless it signifies some other spiritual rest. From this we understand that all the truths which are expressed figuratively in the Scriptures are appropriately designed to arouse love. By love we attain to rest. The only commandment that is given figuratively is the one by which rest is enjoined. Rest is universally loved but found pure and entire in God alone.However, the Lord's day was not made known to Jews but to Christians by the resurrection of the Lord, and from that event it began to acquire its solemnity. Doubtless the souls of all the saints prior to the resurrection of the body enjoy repose, but they do not possess that activity which gives power to risen bodies.
Augustine of Hippo· Letter 55, 430Church Father
Exodus 20:8
Those two are printed side by side deliberately. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown argue from Hebrews 4 that the weekly sabbath still stands; Augustine reads the command figuratively. Neither is being corrected here, and neither is the site’s verdict. They are two serious Christian readings of the same texts, and a reader is entitled to see both at full strength.
Come Unto Me
— the invitation the whole argument has been walking towardThere is one more sentence about rest in the New Testament, and it is the one people actually remember. It is not a rule and not a day. It is an offer, made in the first person: come to me, and I will give you rest.
That invitation has its own page, and this one hands it over rather than preaching it a second time. What belongs here is only the shape of the whole thing: creation’s rest, then a land that was not it, then a rest that remains — and a Person who says He is where it is found.
Come Unto MeMatthew 11:28-30 at full length — the yoke, the burden, and what He is actually offering.Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”Not a day and not a rule — an offer, in the first person.
Heaven, too, will be the fulfillment of that sabbath rest foretold in the command: "Be still and see that I am God." This, indeed, will be that ultimate sabbath that has no evening and that the Lord foreshadowed in the account of his creation: "And God rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. And he blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because in it he had rested from all his work that God created and made." And we ourselves will be a "seventh day" when we shall be filled with his blessing and remade by his sanctification. In the stillness of that rest we shall see that he is the God whose divinity we desired for ourselves when we listened to the seducer's words, "You shall be as gods," and so fell away from him, the true God who would have given us a divinity by participation that could never be gained by desertion. For where did the doing without God end but in the undoing of man through the anger of God? Only when we are remade by God and perfected by a greater grace shall we have the eternal stillness of that rest in which we shall see that he is God.
Augustine of Hippo· City of God 22.30, 430Church Father
Genesis 2:3
The artwork
Oppenheim was the first Jewish painter of note in modern Germany, and he spent his career painting Jewish family life with warmth and precision. Here the sabbath is a street scene: neighbours in the doorway, nobody working, an afternoon with nothing in it. It is a picture of the day as it is actually lived, by the people whose day it is — and it is on this page as that, not as an illustration of any of the arguments above.
Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Sabbath Rest — Sabbath-Ruhe auf der Gasse (1866) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Read Further
— the writers quoted above, in their own hands — and where Marcus landsAmong modern teachers, Sir Robert Anderson wrote the book that fits this page best — Types in Hebrews, which works the letter’s own typological method rather than importing one. Chuck Missler taught the same method broadly in Learn the Bible in 24 Hours.
A closing word about tone, since this page has spent a long time on a disputed question. Christians who keep the seventh day, Christians who keep the first, and Christians who keep neither as a matter of law are all reading the same texts carefully and arriving somewhere different. This page names where each of them stands, quotes them directly, and leaves the reader free — which is what the New Testament’s own silence seems to leave him.
Commentary Critical and Explanatory
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · 1871
For the seventh-day argument stated by serious Reformed commentators from Hebrews 4:9 itself — the strongest form of a position many readers have only ever met in caricature.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Letters of St. Augustine
Augustine of Hippo · c. 400
Letter 55 is the classic statement of the figurative reading, and it is a good deal warmer and stranger than the summaries of it.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament
John Wesley · 1755
Wesley on Hebrews 4 lays out the letter's argument in about a hundred words — the fastest way into the chapter for a reader starting cold.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →