Eleven Places of Complete Rest

John called the day that began just after Yeshua was laid in the tomb a sabbaton σάββατον sab'-bat-on, and he said it was a high day. To hear that word as his first readers heard it, we have to go back to the Hebrew Scriptures, where it was born.

The Hebrew Scriptures have two words for the sabbath. The first is shabbat שַׁבָּת shab-bawth', the word for the seventh day, the Sabbath that God blessed and made holy. The second is shabbaton שַׁבָּתוֹן shab-baw-thone', a longer form of the same root, which names a complete rest. As we saw in Book 1, shabbaton stands eleven times in the Hebrew Scriptures, in ten verses. This chapter looks at those eleven places again, this time to see what happened to them on their way into English.

Where the Word First Appears

Shabbaton first appears in the wilderness, in the story of the manna, before Israel ever reached Sinai:

Exodus 16:23 And he said to them: "This is what the LORD has spoken: Tomorrow is a Shabbaton, a Shabbat of holiness to the LORD. What you will bake, bake, and what you will boil, boil; and all that is left over lay up for yourselves as a charge (mishmeret מִשׁמֶרֶת mish-meh'-reth) until the morning."

The day after the sixth day of gathering is “a Shabbaton, a Shabbat of holiness to the LORD.” From its first appearance, the word stands beside shabbat and explains it: the sabbath is a day of complete rest, holy to the LORD.

All Eleven, Side by Side

Here are all eleven occurrences, with the day each one names, and how the King James Version and the YLV render them.

Read down the King James column. One Hebrew word has become four English phrasings: rest, sabbath of rest, a sabbath, and year of rest. Each was chosen so that the sentence would read well in English, and each does read well where it stands. Nothing false has been said in any of them. The sense of every verse is carried over.

Only one thing has been lost. A reader who does not look up the Hebrew has no way of seeing that these eleven places hold one and the same word. The YLV renders all eleven as Shabbaton for exactly this reason, so that the connection shows on the page.

The Word on the Feast Days

The days the word names matter as well. Shabbaton is not kept for the weekly sabbath alone. Here is the first day of the seventh month:

Leviticus 23:24 Speak to the sons of Israel, saying: In the seventh month, on the first of the month, shall be to you a Shabbaton, a memorial of trumpet blast, a holy convocation (miqra-qodesh מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ mik-raw').

And here are the first and the eighth days of the Feast of Tabernacles, with the word twice in a single verse:

Leviticus 23:39 But on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you gather in the produce of the land, you shall keep the feast (chag חַג khag) of the LORD seven days; on the first day is a Shabbaton, and on the eighth day a Shabbaton.

The first of the seventh month is a Shabbaton, and so are the first and eighth days of Tabernacles. These days are fixed by the month, not by the week. They fall where the calendar of the appointed times places them, and the Torah calls them by the same word it uses for the seventh day.

Now look at how the Torah describes the weekly sabbath in the same chapter:

Leviticus 23:3 Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day is a Shabbat of Shabbaton, a holy convocation (miqra-qodesh); any work you shall not do; it is a Shabbat to the LORD in all your dwellings.

The seventh day is “a Shabbat of Shabbaton, a holy convocation (miqra-qodesh),” and the feast days are holy convocations too. One word, shabbaton, stands over the seventh day, the Day of Atonement, the day of the trumpet blast, the first and last days of Tabernacles, and the seventh year of the land. It belongs to the weekly sabbath and to the appointed days of holy convocation alike.

Even the Land Rests

The word reaches further still. It is set on the seventh year, when the land itself was to rest:

Leviticus 25:4-5 But in the seventh year shall be a Shabbat of Shabbaton for the land, a Shabbat to the LORD; your field you shall not sow, and your vineyard you shall not prune. The aftergrowth of your harvest you shall not reap, and the grapes of your untrimmed vine you shall not gather; a year of Shabbaton it shall be for the land.

The seventh year is “a Shabbat of Shabbaton for the land,” and in the next verse, “a year of Shabbaton it shall be for the land.” Here shabbaton names not a day but a whole year, and what rests is the land. The King James renders the first “a sabbath of rest” and the second “a year of rest,” and both read well. Again a reader of English cannot see that the land’s year of rest, the Day of Atonement, the feast days, and the seventh day all carry one word.

One Greek Word for Both

When the New Testament was written in Greek, the writers did not reach for a Greek word that meant rest or festival. They used the word Greek-speaking Jews already used, the one the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures had used before them: the Hebrew sound written in Greek letters, sabbaton (σάββατον), number G4521 in Strong’s concordance. It is not a native Greek word. It is the Hebrew carried over, so that a reader of the Greek met the very word of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The New Testament uses this one word for both Hebrew words.

In the days of Yeshua, not only the seventh day of the week but every appointed day of holy convocation was called a sabbaton. The Greek did not replace the word with something else. Because it kept the Hebrew sound as it stood, the weight that shabbat and shabbaton carried in the history of redemption came across with it.

That is why the YLV writes sabbaton in the New Testament with the note “referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23,” and why it writes Shabbaton eleven times in the Hebrew Scriptures. The one transliteration is the hinge that joins the two Testaments.

What the Reader Could Not See

Now return to John 19:31. The King James renders it, rightly, “for that sabbath day was an high day.” A reader of that verse who then opens Leviticus 23:24 finds “a sabbath,” in Leviticus 23:39 “a sabbath,” in Leviticus 16:31 “a sabbath of rest,” and in Exodus 16:23 “the rest of the holy sabbath.” The sense is all there, yet nothing on the page tells him that John’s word and these eleven places are the same word, the word the Torah gives to its appointed days.

This is not a complaint against the translators. They chose the phrase that read best in each place, and generations have read the Scriptures with profit through their work. What this study does is set one more thing beside their work: the plain fact that the high day of John 19:31 and the shabbaton of the feasts belong to one family of words. Put that back, and the Testaments read together. Chapter 44 returns to what may be set beside the familiar renderings without taking anything from them.

With the word in hand, we can go back to the Passover week of the crucifixion and count. If every appointed day of holy convocation was a sabbaton, then how many sabbatons stood between the cross and the empty tomb? The next chapter sets them out in order.