We know that the commandment to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy came to the Israelites in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. Before this, there was no commandment to the Israelites anywhere in the Bible to remember the Sabbath day, and to keep it holy. But I don’t want you to think that God introduced the concept of rest for the first time in Genesis, and he didn’t bring up the concept of rest, or more correctly the principle behind the concept of rest, again until Exodus 20. Because he did.
There was one day when the Israelites roamed in the wilderness, and they grumbled to the Lord. They reminisced how in Egypt they used to sit by pots of meat, and ate bread until they were satisfied. God heard their grumblings, and so he provided them with quails as meat. In addition, he provided a fine flake-like thing as bread on the ground in the mornings. Quails they knew, but not this flake-like thing. And then, this happened.
Exodus 16.22–30
Now on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, then he said to them, “This is what the LORD meant: Tomorrow is a sabbath observance, a holy sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning.” So they put it aside until morning, as Moses had ordered, and it did not become foul nor was there any worm in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field. “Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, the sabbath, there will be none.” It came about on the seventh day that some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. Then the LORD said to Moses, “How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My instructions? “See, the LORD has given you the sabbath; therefore He gives you bread for two days on the sixth day. Remain every man in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day.
God told the Israelites to observe the Sabbath, and not gather bread on that day. But how were they going to be able to do that, and still have something to eat on the seventh day? Well, God had already thought of that. He was going to provide two days’ worth of food on the sixth day. On the sixth day, the Israelites would go off to work, but they would quickly discover there was not the usual amount of bread on the ground, but two days’ worth of bread on the ground. They would find double the amount of bread on the ground on the sixth day so they would have something to eat on the seventh day. That made total sense.
Allow me to make a few points. Firstly, in this passage, we see the word, “Sabbath”, appear for the first time in the Bible. The word comes from the Hebrew word, “shabbat”, which is the common verb meaning, “to stop, to cease, to rest”. The word, “shabbat” first appeared in the Bible in Genesis 2.2, “By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested (“shabbat”) on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.” Then in Exodus 16:23, we find the word, “Sabbath” for the first time in the Bible. Moses used the word in its noun form, to refer to the “seventh day of the week”, because God rested on the seventh day of the week in creation. All to say, God’s rest on the seventh day of creation set the foundation for all future teachings related to the Sabbath.
Secondly, for the first time, the Israelites heard that the Sabbath was holy to the Lord. Because the Sabbath was holy to the Lord, it is to be holy to Israel too. God would explain in later chapters that Israel shall not profane the Sabbath. What does that mean? To profane means to not treat something or someone as sacred. In other words, the man who profanes the Sabbath is the one who treats it as if it was just another day. The Sabbath is not just another day, and it must not be treated so.
Exodus 31.14 Therefore you are to observe the sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people.
Isaiah 56.2 “How blessed is the man who does this,
And the son of man who takes hold of it;
Who keeps from profaning the sabbath,
And keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
Thirdly, God told the Israelites not to go out and gather bread on the seventh day not because there was bread on the ground, and God told them they were not to touch it. There was no bread, period. He told Israel not to go out because there was no need for them to go out. He did not put out any bread. God rested. The Israelites were to rest because God rested.
Even though God had not exactly given the commandment yet to keep the Sabbath holy (that would come eventually in Exodus 20), what God had told the Israelites to do in Exodus 16 resembled the beginnings of the shape and form of the Fourth Commandment. His words were pregnant with the principles of keeping the Sabbath holy. In Exodus 16, God told the Israelites they must not go out and gather bread on the seventh day. As we shall see later in Exodus 20, however, God’s commandment to rest from work would not be limited to gathering bread. God would command Israel to rest from all work. Finally, the commandment would also require servants, beasts and sojourners to rest, and not only Israel.