John’s High Day

Part Four ended at the tomb. The body of Yeshua had been taken down from the cross and laid in a new tomb in the afternoon, and the work was finished by late afternoon, before the evening came. Part Five begins in the same hours, with one sentence of John that explains why everything was done in such haste.

It is a sentence that most readers pass over quickly, because it seems to be only a note about Jewish custom. It is much more than that. It names the day that was coming, and it calls that day by a word that will carry us through this whole part of the book.

The Request to Pilate

John 19:31 Then the Jews, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the sabbaton σάββατον sab'-bat-on(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23) 'for that sabbaton(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23) was a high day', asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

John gives two reasons, one inside the other. The first is the day itself: “because it was the day of preparation.” The second is the day that was about to begin: the bodies must not remain on the cross “on the sabbaton(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23),” and John adds at once, “for that sabbaton(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23) was a high day.”

The King James Version renders the same words this way: “for that sabbath day was an high day.” That is a faithful rendering: the Greek reads, word for word, “for great was the day of that sabbaton.” The Greek word for “great” is megale μεγάλη meg'-as. That “great” marks the high day of the fourteenth. The name “the great sabbath of Unleavened Bread,” which this book gives to the fifteenth, belongs to the day that followed it. It was no ordinary sabbath. It was one of the appointed days the Torah itself had set apart.

Which Day Was Coming

Luke records the same moment in a single line, which we read in Chapter 3: “the sabbaton(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23) was about to begin” (Luke 23:54). And John, a few verses after the request to Pilate, gives two reasons side by side for the choice of the tomb: “because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was nearby” (John 19:42).

We have already seen what this day of preparation was. John calls it “the preparation day for the Passover” (John 19:14). It was the daytime of Nisan 13, the day on which Yeshua was nailed at the third hour and died at the ninth. So the sabbaton that “was about to begin” while He was being laid in the tomb was the day that began with the evening that followed: Nisan 14, the Passover.

The Torah itself names this day. Among “the appointed times (moadim מוֹעֵד mo-ade') of the LORD” it names this one: “In the first month, on the fourteenth of the month, between the evenings, is a Passover to the LORD” (Leviticus 23:4-5). That is the high day of John 19:31. It was not a day chosen by the calendar of the week. It was the fourteenth of the first month, fixed by the LORD among His appointed times, and it would come on that date whatever day of the week it happened to be.

The Day That Followed It

The high day did not stand alone. The very next verses of Leviticus name the day that followed it:

Leviticus 23:6-7 And on the fifteenth day of this month is the feast (chag חַג khag) of unleavened bread to the LORD; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day a holy convocation (miqra-qodesh מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ mik-raw') shall be to you; any work of service (avodah עֲבֹדָה ab-o-daw') you shall not do.

The fifteenth is the day of the feast (chag) of unleavened bread. It is a holy convocation, and on it “any work of service (avodah) you shall not do.” This is the great sabbath of Unleavened Bread. The Passover of the fourteenth and the feast (chag) of the fifteenth stand together as one festival season. The seven days of unleavened bread began the moment the daytime of the thirteenth passed into the evening of the fourteenth, and that evening was the door into it.

So when the Jews went to Pilate, they were not thinking of one quiet day of rest. They stood at the threshold of the crowded and solemn days of the feast. Jerusalem was full of pilgrims, every household was ready for the Passover, and the appointed days of the LORD were about to follow one another.

A Sabbath Set by a Date

Some readers find it strange that a feast day should be called a sabbath at all. We usually think of the sabbath as the seventh day of the week, and that is right, for the seventh day is the first appointed time named in Leviticus 23. But the Torah also sets sabbaths by the date of the month.

The clearest example is the Day of Atonement, which falls on the tenth day of the seventh month (Leviticus 23:27, 32). Here the Torah calls a day a “Shabbat of Shabbaton,” and it fixes that day not by the week but by the month. It even says when it begins: “on the ninth of the month in the evening, from evening to evening.” A sabbath of this kind is proclaimed by its appointed time, whether or not it falls on the seventh day of the week.

Leviticus 23 opens by saying the same of every feast it lists. All of them are “the appointed times (moadim) of the LORD,” and all are to be proclaimed as “holy convocations (miqra-qodesh)” (Leviticus 23:2). This is why the YLV marks every sabbaton of the Greek New Testament with the same note: “referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23.” A moed מוֹעֵד mo-ade' is an appointed time, and the sabbaton of John 19:31 was one of them.

John did not stop to explain that a sabbaton could be fixed by its date as well as by the week. He told his readers which sabbaton it was: the one that “was a high day.”

Why This Matters for the Count

The traditional picture of these days has room for only one sabbath between the cross and the empty tomb. A death late in the week, a single day of rest, and a morning after it: that is the shape most of us were taught, by people who loved the resurrection and wanted to honor it.

John’s sentence opens a wider view. The day that began just after Yeshua was laid in the tomb was a sabbaton fixed by its date, not by the week. It was Passover, a high day, the first of the appointed days of that season, and the great sabbath of Unleavened Bread came right behind it. Once that is seen, the question changes. It is no longer “What happened after the sabbath?” but “How many sabbatons stood in a row that week, and on which of them did He rise?”

That question cannot be answered until we look more closely at the word itself. The Hebrew Scriptures use two words for the sabbath, shabbat שַׁבָּת shab-bawth' and shabbaton שַׁבָּתוֹן shab-baw-thone', and English Bibles have spread the second one across several different phrases. The next chapter gathers all eleven places where it stands, and shows how the New Testament carries both words in one.