The Sabbath, Israel, and the Nations
Biblical quotations: JPS 1917 (public domain). The original Hebrew is provided for reference.
At the conclusion of creation, the Torah tells us about the first Sabbath:
And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it He rested from all His work which God in creating had made.
וַיְכֻלּוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ וְכָל צְבָאָם. וַיְכַל אֱלֹהִים בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וַיִּשְׁבֹּת בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מִכָּל מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה. וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱלֹהִים אֶת יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֹתוֹ כִּי בוֹ שָׁבַת מִכָּל מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים לַעֲשׂוֹת. (בראשית ב' א-ג)
According to the chronology of Seder Olam, God waited 2,448 years, from the creation of the world until the revelation at Mount Sinai, before commanding the Israelites in particular to observe the Sabbath in remembrance of creation:
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
זָכוֹר אֶת יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת לְקַדְּשׁוֹ. שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תַּעֲבֹד וְעָשִׂיתָ כָּל מְלַאכְתֶּךָ. וְיוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי שַׁבָּת לַה' אֱלֹהֶיךָ לֹא תַעֲשֶׂה כָל מְלָאכָה אַתָּה וּבִנְךָ וּבִתֶּךָ עַבְדְּךָ וַאֲמָתְךָ וּבְהֶמְתֶּךָ וְגֵרְךָ אֲשֶׁר בִּשְׁעָרֶיךָ. כִּי שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים עָשָׂה ה' אֶת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת הָאָרֶץ אֶת הַיָּם וְאֶת כָּל אֲשֶׁר בָּם וַיָּנַח בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי עַל כֵּן בֵּרַךְ ה' אֶת יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת וַיְקַדְּשֵׁהוּ. (שמות כ' ח-יא)
Rabbinic literature even contains statements that strictly prohibit a non-Jew from observing the Sabbath. One example is Resh Lakish’s interpretation:
Resh Lakish said: A gentile who rests is liable to death, as it is written that day and night shall not cease (וְיוֹם וָלַיְלָה לֹא יִשְׁבֹּתוּ). (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 58b)
Yet the fact that the Sabbath was given specifically to Israel is far from self-evident. Why did God wait so long, until the emergence of the people of Israel, to command Sabbath observance? And why is the Sabbath linked to Israel in particular? After all, it completes the creation of the entire world and predates humanity’s division into different nations. Many other commandments given to Israel also rest on historical events: circumcision, the commandments associated with the Exodus, and the prohibition against eating the displaced sinew, for example. But those events have a distinctive connection to the nation’s ancestors and to Israel’s history. The Sabbath, by contrast, is the only commandment given to Israel that is based on an event with no particular connection to Israel. The existence of Sabbath-observing Christian communities, numbering millions, illustrates that the Sabbath is not exclusively Israel’s concern. For these Christians, it is a gift God gave all humanity at creation. They therefore continue to mark their day of rest on Saturday, as was customary in early Christianity, rather than on Sunday, as is customary today.
Why, then, was the Sabbath not established as a day of rest for Adam and for all humanity, in remembrance of God’s rest at the conclusion of creation?
One possible answer is that God chose to give commandments only to Israel because He has demands only of them. That would explain why He commanded only them to observe the Sabbath. But this answer does not withstand scrutiny: even before Israel came into being, God had already made demands of human beings and established them as commandments. He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and commanded them to tend and keep it (לְעָבְדָהּ וּלְשָׁמְרָהּ; Genesis 2:15). He forbade them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17), commanded them to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28), and permitted them to eat only plants. Later, He permitted Noah’s descendants to eat animals but forbade them to kill one another (Genesis 9:1–7), and He continued to command them afterward. We refer to this group of injunctions as the “Seven Noahide Laws.”
Furthermore, even if God did not explicitly command Sabbath observance, humanity ought to have observed it as an acknowledgment of creation and an imitation of God’s example of resting after six days of work. God’s demands of humanity are not always formulated as explicit commandments. Sometimes, instead of an express command, we find only His expectation that people act in a certain way. We do not hear that God commanded Cain and Abel to offer sacrifices, yet they understood for themselves that this was appropriate. Nor do we see God commanding people to act fairly and modestly. Nevertheless, when their wickedness increased until the earth was filled with violence because of them (מָלְאָה הָאָרֶץ חָמָס מִפְּנֵיהֶם; Genesis 6:13), He brought the Flood upon them. When they gathered in one place and built a tower, God scattered them across the earth. When He heard the outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah, He descended to see whether their conduct matched it (הַכְּצַעֲקָתָהּ… עָשׂוּ כָּלָה; Genesis 18:21). We might therefore expect Adam to have recognized the appropriateness of Sabbath observance even without an explicit command, especially since God eventually did command it. It would not be unreasonable to expect a person to understand that resting on the Sabbath acknowledges creation, and that sanctifying it elevates him and connects him to the God who ceased from all His work on the seventh day. Had this happened, the Sabbath would have become universal, the inheritance of all humanity. Why, then, was it given only to Israel?
The answer is that, according to the creation story as it appears in Genesis, the Sabbath is indeed fundamentally universal and was given to all humanity.
The Week
In the creation account in Genesis, the Sabbath is the weekly day of rest. A person works for a livelihood for six days, then rests on the seventh from the week’s labor and gathers strength to continue. This pause also allows people to connect with themselves, their families, and their communities. Unlike natural cycles such as day and night, the lunar month, and the solar year, the seven-day cycle as we know it is not grounded in any natural phenomenon; it rests on human agreement. In Genesis, living according to a seven-day cycle and maintaining a weekly day of rest acquire religious meaning because they acknowledge the world’s creation by its Creator in seven days.
In his commentary on the opening of Genesis, Umberto Cassuto explains that the Sabbath was known before it was given to Israel, but carried a different meaning. The earlier Sabbath was associated with lunar worship at the four quarters of the moon’s cycle and was regarded as a day of bad luck. According to Cassuto, the Israelite Sabbath offers a model opposed to that earlier conception:
[…] In Israel, the Sabbath will not be like the Sabbath of foreign peoples; it will not be the day of the full moon, nor another day dependent on the moon’s appearances and thereby connected to lunar worship, but the seventh day […] seventh in a continuous sequence, independent and free of any connection to heavenly signs or astrological concepts; not a day devoted to worship of the heavenly host, but a day consecrated to the One who created the heavenly host and the entire world […] in remembrance of creation; not a day of affliction and ill fortune, but a day of blessing […] not a day intended to appease an angry deity, but a day of cessation from divine work, fit to serve as an example for human beings, who are charged with following God’s attributes. It can therefore become a day of rest for people who toil and suffer under the burden of hard labor, and for animals as well […] a day that will consequently serve as a remembrance of Israel’s liberation from the house of bondage […]. (Cassuto, From Adam to Noah, commentary on Genesis, p. 43; translated from the Hebrew quotation)
Judah Halevi, too, assumes in the Kuzari that the seven-day week was known from the dawn of humanity. He uses the fact that the entire world observes a seven-day week, rather than a ten-day week, for example, to support the truth of the creation account:
The rabbi said: Have you heard of a nation that disagrees about the familiar week, which begins on the first day and ends on the Sabbath? Could the people of China and those of the western islands agree about this without a common beginning, gathering, and agreement? (Judah Halevi, Kuzari 1:57; translated from Hebrew)
Following Cassuto and Halevi, we can argue that, when the Sabbath accounts in Genesis and Exodus are read together, the innovation in the commandment concerning Israel’s Sabbath in Exodus was neither the creation of a seven-day week nor the establishment of a weekly day of rest. These already existed in one form or another. The innovation was God’s command that Israel sanctify the Sabbath (זָכוֹר אֶת יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת לְקַדְּשׁוֹ; Exodus 20:8), adding the dimension of holiness to an already existing day.
An important clarification is needed: the Torah is not a history book in the scientific sense. Whether a weekly Sabbath actually existed before Israel emerged is a secondary question. I am not arguing that a Sabbath of some kind was historically observed by every culture preceding Israel, nor that such a Sabbath was connected to the creation account. Such claims would not accord with our knowledge of history and human culture. My argument is that the biblical story of God’s rest on the seventh day of creation in Genesis, together with the command in Exodus to sanctify the Sabbath – that is, to sanctify something already existing – rests on a conception in which the story of creation in six days and God’s rest on the seventh was known to all humanity. In other words, when the Israelites were commanded to observe the Sabbath after the Exodus, they understood this as adding a layer of holiness to the seventh day of the week, an institution that already existed in some form, even if few people actually observed it beforehand.
If we accept this premise, we can say that at its basic level, as a day of rest concluding a seven-day week, the Sabbath was given to all humanity in remembrance of creation. Yet although Genesis presents it as universal and belonging to all humanity, Exodus says that only Israel was actually commanded to observe it. Why? What distinguishes Israel such that it alone received this command?
The Sabbath and Israel
The Sabbath has several layers. The first, discussed so far, is the very existence of the week: a seven-day cycle ending with a day of rest that acknowledges creation. The second is distinctive to Israel: the Sabbath’s own blessing and holiness, expressed in this verse:
And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it He rested from all His work which God in creating had made.
וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱלֹהִים אֶת יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֹתוֹ כִּי בוֹ שָׁבַת מִכָּל מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים לַעֲשׂוֹת. (בראשית ב' ג)
In his essay The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel explains that the Sabbath expresses the sanctity of time, Judaism’s distinctive contribution to human culture. It is a “sanctuary in time,” created through observance of an extensive system of laws, injunctions, and restrictions beyond formal law that give it its unique character. It creates a foretaste of the world to come within this world: a day of rest amid the rush of material life, and a pause for spiritual elevation and connection with the source of creation and holiness. Observing the Sabbath therefore requires holy conduct – being holy.
The Torah’s first mention of holiness, in the positive sense of the term, concerns the Sabbath (וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱלֹהִים אֶת יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֹתוֹ; Genesis 2:3). Its second mention concerns Israel. On the eve of the revelation at Sinai, as God prepares to establish a covenant with Israel, He tells Moses that they are to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (וְאַתֶּם תִּהְיוּ לִי מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹשׁ; Exodus 19:6). This is the demand made of Israel, its founding principle, its reason for existence and its vocation, as Leviticus states:
And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them: Ye shall be holy; for I the LORD your God am holy.
וַיְדַבֵּר ה' אֶל מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר. דַּבֵּר אֶל כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי ה' אֱלֹהֵיכֶם. (ויקרא י"ט א-ב)
Only Israel, commanded to be holy, can observe the Sabbath that God sanctified at the dawn of creation and thereby fulfill its vocation. The command to observe the Sabbath and sanctify it (שָׁמוֹר אֶת יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת לְקַדְּשׁוֹ; Deuteronomy 5:12) is therefore a covenantal sign specifically between Israel and God.
“A People Who Sanctify the Seventh Day”
The idea that the Sabbath’s distinctiveness and its connection to Israel lie in its holiness appears in the Sabbath morning Amidah. This passage describes the Sabbath as a gift given to Israel, rather than to the nations:
You did not give it, Lord our God, to the nations of the lands;
You did not bequeath it, our King, to idol worshippers;
Nor do the uncircumcised dwell in its rest;
For You gave it in love to Your people Israel,
To the descendants of Jacob whom You chose.
Those who keep the Sabbath and call it a delight will rejoice in Your sovereignty,
A people who sanctify the seventh day.
All will be satisfied and delight in Your goodness.
You favored the seventh day and sanctified it;
You called it the most cherished of days.
God’s distinctive gift to Israel is not the weekly day of rest. That was given to all humanity at the conclusion of creation. The particular gift to Israel is the holiness of the Sabbath. Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein, author of Arukh HaShulchan, explains:
The holy Sabbath is the great sign between the Holy One, blessed be He, and His people Israel, as expressed in Exodus 31:13 (כִּי אוֹת הִוא בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵיכֶם לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶם לָדַעַת כִּי אֲנִי ה’ מְקַדִּשְׁכֶם).
That is: although the Sabbath commemorates creation, as Exodus 31:17 states (כִּי שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים עָשָׂה ה’ אֶת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת הָאָרֶץ וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי שָׁבַת וַיִּנָּפַשׁ), and God therefore blessed and sanctified the seventh day, as written in the creation account, it consequently belongs to all the world’s creatures. It differs from the festivals, which commemorate the Exodus and have no connection to the other nations, who did not leave Egypt. In creation, however, all were created.
Nevertheless, God gave the holiness of the Sabbath to Israel alone. This is the meaning of Exodus 31:13: Israel is holy to God, as expressed in the command to be holy (קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ; Leviticus 19:2), and He therefore gave Israel the Sabbath’s holiness. The Sabbath and Israel are the purpose of creation.
This is what we mean in the prayer when we say that He did not give it to the nations or bequeath it to them, even though it apparently has a connection to everyone.
It is also the meaning of the statement in the first chapter of tractate Shabbat: “I have a good gift in My treasury, and its name is Sabbath; go and tell Israel” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 10b). That is, even though He could have given it to all creatures. Consider this carefully.
(Arukh HaShulchan, Orach Chayim, beginning of section 242; translated from the Hebrew quotation)
Israel and the Nations
Although the holiness of the Sabbath is a distinctive sign and covenant between God and Israel, we must remember that, according to the creation account, Israel’s particular Sabbath rests essentially on the universal foundation belonging to all humanity. This foundation is the existence of a week with six working days and a weekly day of rest, a universal week whose seventh day is the Israelite Sabbath. Moreover, worldwide recognition of the seven-day week, traditionally understood as continuing without interruption from creation until today, makes Israel’s Sabbath observance possible. Without it, observing the Sabbath would be almost impossible. Imagine a world with a ten-day week, as was attempted in France after the French Revolution, or one that adopted a calendar in which dates always fell on the same day of the week, such as the World Calendar proposed in the United States in the 1930s. Under that calendar, January 1 would always fall on Sunday, and at the end of each year, immediately after Saturday, December 30, a “World Day” would be added outside the weekly cycle. Such calendars would make life very difficult for Sabbath observers: the original Sabbath of creation would shift over the years, falling on different weekdays, preventing a fixed day of rest. Ultimately, humanity rejected these attempts to change the weekly framework, thereby reaffirming its acknowledgment of creation.
Humanity’s agreement on a seven-day cycle is therefore the foundation that allows Israel to observe the Sabbath. Without the nations’ recognition of the seven days of creation, Israel could not do so. This insight illuminates the Torah’s understanding of the relationship between Israel and the nations. Balaam depicts Israel as a people dwelling apart, not reckoned among the nations (הֶן עָם לְבָדָד יִשְׁכֹּן וּבַגּוֹיִם לֹא יִתְחַשָּׁב; Numbers 23:9), thus presenting it as detached from them. But this is not how the Torah understands Israel’s role. As noted earlier, its vocation is to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹשׁ; Exodus 19:6): the world’s priestly tribe, just as the priests function within Israel. In this conception, Israel is an integral part of the family of nations. Judah Halevi expresses this in the Kuzari through the image “Israel among the nations is like the heart among the organs” (Kuzari 2:36). Humanity is one organism, within which Israel fulfills the central role of the heart.
Sabbath Observance in the Future
I have shown that, according to Genesis, the nations also have a connection to the Sabbath: they preserve the foundation on which Israel’s Sabbath rests, the seven-day week with its weekly day of rest. This makes Israelite Sabbath observance possible. With this understanding of the Sabbath’s place in humanity as a whole, we can better understand Isaiah’s prophecy of Sabbath observance among the nations as well. Because non-Jews, too, have a connection to the Sabbath, those who are worthy will in the future be able to join Israel in observing it, as Sabbath-observing gentiles. Isaiah says:
Thus saith the LORD: Keep ye justice, and do righteousness; For My salvation is near to come, And My favour to be revealed. Happy is the man that doeth this, And the son of man that holdeth fast by it: That keepeth the sabbath from profaning it, And keepeth his hand from doing any evil. Neither let the alien, That hath joined himself to the LORD, speak, saying: ‘The LORD will surely separate me from His people’; Neither let the eunuch say: ‘Behold, I am a dry tree.’ For thus saith the LORD Concerning the eunuchs that keep My sabbaths, And choose the things that please Me, And hold fast by My covenant: Even unto them will I give in My house And within My walls a monument and a memorial Better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting memorial, That shall not be cut off. Also the aliens, that join themselves to the LORD, to minister unto Him, And to love the name of the LORD, To be His servants, Every one that keepeth the sabbath from profaning it, And holdeth fast by My covenant: Even them will I bring to My holy mountain, And make them joyful in My house of prayer; Their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices Shall be acceptable upon Mine altar; For My house shall be called A house of prayer for all peoples.
כֹּה אָמַר ה' שִׁמְרוּ מִשְׁפָּט וַעֲשׂוּ צְדָקָה כִי קְרוֹבָה יְשׁוּעָתִי לָבוֹא וְצִדְקָתִי לְהִגָּלוֹת. אַשְׁרֵי אֱנוֹשׁ יַעֲשֶׂה זֹּאת וּבֶן אָדָם יַחֲזִיק בָּהּ שֹׁמֵר שַׁבָּת מֵחַלְּלוֹ וְשֹׁמֵר יָדוֹ מֵעֲשׂוֹת כָּל רָע. וְאַל יֹאמַר בֶּן הַנֵּכָר הַנִּלְוָה אֶל ה' לֵאמֹר הַבְדֵּל יַבְדִּילַנִי ה' מֵעַל עַמּוֹ וְאַל יֹאמַר הַסָּרִיס הֵן אֲנִי עֵץ יָבֵשׁ. כִי כֹה אָמַר ה' לַסָּרִיסִים אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁמְרוּ אֶת שַׁבְּתוֹתַי וּבָחֲרוּ בַּאֲשֶׁר חָפָצְתִּי וּמַחֲזִיקִים בִּבְרִיתִי. וְנָתַתִּי לָהֶם בְּבֵיתִי וּבְחוֹמֹתַי יָד וָשֵׁם טוֹב מִבָּנִים וּמִבָּנוֹת שֵׁם עוֹלָם אֶתֶּן לוֹ אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִכָּרֵת. וּבְנֵי הַנֵּכָר הַנִּלְוִים עַל ה' לְשָׁרְתוֹ וּלְאַהֲבָה אֶת שֵׁם ה' לִהְיוֹת לוֹ לַעֲבָדִים כָּל שֹׁמֵר שַׁבָּת מֵחַלְּלוֹ וּמַחֲזִיקִים בִּבְרִיתִי. וַהֲבִיאוֹתִים אֶל הַר קָדְשִׁי וְשִׂמַּחְתִּים בְּבֵית תְּפִלָּתִי עוֹלֹתֵיהֶם וְזִבְחֵיהֶם לְרָצוֹן עַל מִזְבְּחִי כִּי בֵיתִי בֵּית תְּפִלָּה יִקָּרֵא לְכָל הָעַמִּים. (ישעיהו נ"ו א-ז)
Isaiah addresses humanity as a whole, human beings simply as human beings: אֱנוֹשׁ and בֶן אָדָם. He addresses those who keep the Sabbath without profaning it (שֹׁמֵר שַׁבָּת מֵחַלְּלוֹ) and refrain from doing evil. In verses 6–7, the prophet promises foreigners (בְנֵי הַנֵּכָר) who attach themselves to God to serve Him – those who refrain from profaning the Sabbath and keep His covenant – that He will bring them to His holy mountain and make them joyful in His house of prayer. Their offerings will be accepted on His altar, because His house will be a house of prayer for all peoples (לְכָל הָעַמִּים).