Theological Branch: Eschatology


Topic: The Sabbath as Prophecy

Exo 5:5 KJV And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.

Egypt was generally to the south of Jerusalem, and Babylon was to the north. The king of Babylonia was refered to as the King of the North and the King of Egypt was refered to as the King of the South. 

Exodus 5:5 is a political manifesto from a disgruntled King. His civil service was hinged on slave labor. Moses appears on the scene as a civil rights activists. 

And he meets Pharoah where he is strongest that is on the politico-religious platform.

Interestingly Moses makes a request based on religious grounds:

Exo 5:1 KJV And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may *hold a feast* unto me in the wilderness.

The Hebrew meaning for feast is Hag(חגג)(Arabic cognate is Haj). This word is used not necessarily to point to any specific festival but to a generic festivity.

 Moses(and his deligates) further makes more requests. 

Exo 5:3 KJV And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the LORD our God; lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword.

And the language is now blatantly religious rather than political. There's no mention of any specific religious doctrine, which they felt was being suppressed, all they ever wanted was to exercise their religious liberties. 

Pharoah in his defense appeals to labour and civil legislation. His civil legislation is cultured in religious language.

Exo 5:4-5 KJV 4 And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, *let the people from their works? get you unto your burdens.*

 5 And Pharaoh said, Behold, the *people of the land now are many,* and ye make them _rest_ from their burdens.

For an intended reader the term rest may not strike the same note as it may for us today(the implied readers). To the intended reader the term rest which is Sabbath (shabbath שׁבת) didn't mean to them what it means today (that is Sabbath as a day of religious rest) but it is clear that both Moses(and his deligates) and Pharoah(and his wisemen and his soothsayers, the magicians) understood each other very well.   

That is why Pharoah replies and says Moses makes the people *rest*.

Moses had been in Median where he met a very interesting society of believers that where worshippers of Jehovah. Which happened to Negroes. It is this society that put religion into a prophetic perspective for Moses. Its this society that made Moses to understand the place of the Sabbath, within the prophetic context.

 Hence the commandment also is coined using the same legislative slur which Pharoah millitated against. And the term remember speaks to Moses' experience in Median where he was educated in the religion of Jehovah. 

When God appeared to Moses, His Revelation was based on the grounds of His authority, which is based on the covanent that he made with the Fathers and this prophetic fulfillment of the liberation of the Israelites is what Pharaoh understood as "making the people rest".

The Sabbath commandment therefore became a sign in Egypt to demarcate those who where on Jehovah's side and those that where on the side of Pharaoh. And this demarcation was clearly understood by Both parties. Hence Pharaoh clearly points out that Moses wanted to make the people rest (shabbath). Which pharaoh made a crime.

Therefore the Sabbath in the time of Pharaoh, was used to show who is on the side of Jehova and who is not. 

It is Moses who wrote that:
Exo 31:13 KJV ..., Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you....

The same is true today.
Mal 3:6 KJV For I am the LORD(Jehova), I change not...

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