Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/140

 sanctified] The day is blessed and sacred in itself and from the beginning; to say that the remark is made in view of the future institution of the Sabbath (Dri.), does not quite bring out the sense. Both verbs contain the idea of selection and distinction (cf. Sir. 36 [33]$11$), but they are not synonymous (Gu.). A blessing is the effective utterance of a good wish; applied to things, it means their endowment with permanently beneficial qualities (Gn. 27$7-9$, Ex. 23$27$, Dt. 28$25$). This is the case here: the Sabbath is a constant source of well-being to the man who recognises its true nature and purpose. To sanctify is to set apart from common things to holy uses, or to put in a special relation to God.—which God creatively made] see the footnote.—Although no closing formula for the seventh day is given, it is contrary to the intention of the passage to think that the rest of God means His work of providence as distinct from creation: it is plainly a rest of one day that is thought of. It is, of course, a still greater absurdity to suppose an interval of twenty-four hours between the two modes of divine activity. The author did not think in our dogmatic categories at all.

The origin of the Hebrew Sabbath, and its relation to Babylonian usages, raise questions too intricate to be fully discussed here (see Lotz, Quæst. de hist. Sabbati [1883]; Jastrow, AJTh. ii. [1898], 312 ff.; KAT$12$, 59$3$; Dri. DB, s.v., and Gen. 34; Sta. BTh. § 88, 2). The main facts, however, are these: (1) The name šab[p]attu occurs some five or six times in cuneiform records; but of these only two are of material importance for the Sabbath problem, (a) In a syllabary (II R. 32, 16 a, b) šabattu is equated with ûm nûḫ libbi, which has been conclusively shown to mean 'day of the appeasement of the heart (of the deity),'—in the first instance, therefore, a day of propitiation or atonement (Jen. ZA, iv. 274 ff.; Jast. l.c. 316 f.). (b) In a tablet discovered by Pinches in 1904, the name šapattu is applied to the fifteenth day of the month (as full-moon-day?) (Pin. PSBA, xxvi. 51 ff.; Zimmern, ZDMG, lviii. 199 ff., 458 ff.). (2) The only trace of a Babylonian institution at all resembling the Heb. Sabbath is the fact that in certain months of the year (Elul, Marchešvan, but possibly the rest as well) the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days, and also the 19th (probably as the 7 x 7th from the beginning of the previous month), had the character of dies nefasti ('lucky day, un-