What's up with all these Sabbath memes? Let's go to the source and find the truth.
Firstly, Torah does not mean law it means guidance/flow through/point out/journey. The guidance from a chaotic life into an ordered life as YHWH took the chaos of Genesis and brought it into order.
Secondly, command is not a good translation, it implies domination and control. The word "mits'wah" is a direction or instruction in a similar vein to "Torah". The title "The 10 Commandments" is not in the Torah but added later as a title heading with chapter and verse numbers.
Thirdly, to keep the Sabbath as a law, you must remember to begin sunset Friday night and finish sunset Saturday night. If you're going to do it, do it properly.
Historical background.
The Israelites had left Egypt three months before, where they had been slaves. They only had a slave mentality and not an independent societal structure. Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive instructions on how this society would be profoundly different from the tribes and empires surrounding them. It took 40 years for the slaves to become the nomadic tribe of Israel.
(The Sinai stone 349 pictured, is from a series of ancient Hebrew pictogram carvings found at archaeological sites of mines where the slaves worked from about 1480BC)
So why was the Sabbath an important instruction?
They knew no other way than to work seven days! They had been slaves since birth and to have one whole day to stop working was radical. Sabbath or Shabbat translates as "ceasing". They were told that one day a week was to be set apart to cease working for the whole family, servants, slaves, animals and foreigners and to give thanks to YHWH.
So finally, what did Yeshua mean when he said "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath"?
He noticed that added traditions and rules had enslaved people to "The Sabbath Commandment". They could only walk so many miles, not pick fruit and grain from the field to eat and certainly not heal a sick person!
Instead, the Sabbath instruction was given for us to cease.
We were designed for relationships with God and man. We were not designed to work, work, work. So take time with your loved ones, pause, cease and give thanks to God.
Watch The Prince of Egypt to get a rough idea of what was going on.
The story comes from Exodus, second book of the Bible. I suggest a translation that is easy to understand at first, maybe Good News, Message or NIV. To study deeper, I use Bible Gateway to view several different translations and The Mechanical Translation Project and scripture4all - Online Hebrew Interlinear Bible to get a better idea of the original Hebrew text.
