God created the first human beings and then rested on the Sabbath, establishing a pattern of work and rest that continues throughout the rest of the Bible. Not only did the Sabbath remind humans that He was the Creator but also that He wanted them to exist in fellowship with Him.
When Adam and Even rebelled against Him, God did not abandon them. Instead, God began revealing to them His plan of salvation and share with them the promise of the Messiah, the Savior. Thus, God’s plan of salvation for the human race immediately began after sin occurred in the garden of Eden. After the Flood, He called Abram to leave his home town and relatives and follow God’s leading. God made a covenant with him as the father of a new nation. Eventually, His people went into Egypt, where the Egyptians placed a heavy workload on them and systematically worked on controlling the size of their population. Due to this mistreatment, Israelites lost the view of who God was. They also abandoned the lifestyle that would represent their special relationship with and status before God.
The Lord had to renew in them a sense of identity as His people. He did that by bringing them out of Egyptian bondage. The exodus from Egypt represented God’s miraculous, merciful, and salvific act toward Israelites. As He led them through the wilderness, He assured them that He would care for them through the regular gift of manna (Exod. 16:13-36). Related to this another miraculous, merciful, and salvific act is God’s reminder about the Sabbath day. Their obedience to the manna cycle and their rest on the Sabbath became a continuing test of their acceptance of God as their Lord and they as His people.
At Sinai, God declared them “a holy nation” (Ex 19:6). Their existence as a special nation was established on God’s salvific act, where He had delivered them from the bondage and the chaos of slavery (Exod. 20:2; Deut. 5:15). There He proclaimed the Ten Commandments, including the Sabbath. Once again, observance of the Sabbath symbolized their acknowledgment of their peoplehood.
Not only was the Sabbath prominent in the formation of God’s people, but it also surfaces in Scripture when they face the threat of destruction, assimilation, or dispersion. For example, 2 Kings 11 tells how Athaliah, the queen mother of Judah’s King Ahaziah and daughter of Ahab and Jezebel of Israel, seized control of Judah after her son’s death. She tried to destroy all members of the royal family. But Ahaziah’s sister, Jehosheba, managed to save Ahaziah’s son, Joash, and hid him in the temple precincts for six years. In the seventh year (an interesting echo of Creation week), Jehoiada, the high priest, staged a coup to remove the queen from power and place Joash on the throne. The coup took place on the Sabbath (2 Kings 11:5-9). After the execution of Athaliah, Jehoiada made “a covenant, between the Lord, the king, and people, that they should be the Lord’s people” (v. 17).
By mentioning the Sabbath along with the establishment of a covenant, the biblical author directs our attention back to the Sinai experience. The people whom Athaliah had almost destroyed through her pagan activities God now reconstitutes and brings back into a renewed relationship with Him.
Amos 8 reports that materialism and economic abuse had become rampant in the northern kingdom. In their desire for gain, they could not wait until the Sabbath had ended to resume their business activities. Scripture contrasts Israel’s covenant with God and with each other, symbolized by the Sabbath, with the self-destructive practices that were now tearing God’s people apart.
The book of Isaiah shows how resident aliens and eunuchs—both regarded as outsiders or at least second-class citizens—can become part of God’s people (Isa. 56) through Sabbath observance. Sabbath observance also forms part of the prophet’s discussion of true worship (Isa. 58), and true worship consists of a proper relationship with God and with fellow humanity. Isaiah also declares that God’s people would go into exile because of their national rebellion, but when He restores them with the rest of humanity in a new earth, they will worship the Lord from Sabbath to Sabbath (Isa. 66:23). Then, just before the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah also emphasizes the Sabbath (Jer. 17:19-27). Judah faced extinction as a nation and even as a people. If they would honor the Sabbath, however, Jerusalem would be inhabited forever (vv. 24-26). But they refused to listen to the prophet and went into captivity.
In Ezekiel, God sketches the history of His people before announcing that He would restore Israel, bringing them back from exile (Ezek. 20). Twice He mentions that the Sabbath was a sign or symbol of His relationship to them as a people (vv. 12, 20). When some did return from Babylon, the Sabbath again made its appearance in Scripture. As Nehemiah worked to rebuild the identity of religious life in Jerusalem (religion was one of the most important aspects of all ancient self-identity), he found that its inhabitants, in league with the pagan people around them, had turned the Sabbath into just another market day (Neh. 13:15-22).
The context of the incident is the danger of assimilation that threatens the people of Jerusalem. Non-Israelites were moving into the city and even the temple precincts (vv. 1-9). Many of God’s people, including one of the sons of the high priest, had non-Israelite wives (vv. 23-30). The children could not even speak their fathers’ language (language is also a vital part of any group’s self-awareness). God’s people were vanishing as an identifiable body. To stop the destructive process, Nehemiah stressed the Sabbath as a symbol of their identity as God’s people and of their allegiance to Him.