But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.
Within thy gates (see the notes at Exodus 20:8-11); that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. One design of the Sabbatic rest was for mental improvement as well as physical refreshment. The Sabbath was to be a season of holy convocation (see the note at Leviticus 23:3) - time was to be afforded for religious meditation, and those devotional exercises to which meditation leads. Cessation from secular work, and privacy, are, if not indispensable, at least very subservient to religious reflection and its attendant exercises. But the securing of the privileged season of rest to a servant, even though a pagan, equally with the master, on every seventh day, was an admirable memento that, in a religious point of view, they were equals.
A different reason is here assigned for the observance of the Sabbath from what is assigned in Exodus 20:1-26, where that day is stated, to be an appointed memorial of the creation. But the addition of another motive for the observance does not imply any necessary contrariety to the other; and it has been thought probable that, the commemorative design of the institution being well known, the other reason was specially mentioned on this repetition of the law, to secure the privilege of Sabbatic rest to servants, of which, in some Hebrew families, they had been deprived.
In this view, the allusion to the period of Egyptian bondage (Deuteronomy 5:15), when themselves were not permitted to observe the Sabbath either as a day of rest or of public devotion, was peculiarly seasonable and significant, well fitted to come home to their business and bosoms at a time when they were about to enter into the rest of the promised land (cf. Hebrews 4:7-9, where this rest is alluded to as typifying the rest of the heavenly Canaan).
Ainsworth and others suppose that the deliverance from the bondage of Egypt was accomplished on the Sabbath. 'It was a new and added reason. Next to the benefit of existence, the Israelites never had received so great a boon as their emancipation from Egyptian bondage. The displays of the divine character which attended that deliverance-of dreadful majesty in regard to the oppressors, and of marvelous compassion in respect to the oppressed-were such as should be kept in everlasting remembrance. To the seed of Jacob it was an exchange of excessive toil for rest, of cruel servitude for freedom, and of dark despair for comfort and joy. Then let them, on every return of the day of holy rest, remember their escape, and give praise to their merciful deliverer' (Bates). (See on the enforcement of the Sabbath by different motives, Exodus 20:8-14; Exodus 31:17.)
'Such supplementary sanctions to the performance of a duty, however well adapted to secure the obedience of the Israelites, are quite consistent with a previous command addressed to all, and upon a principle binding on all' (Blunt's 'Undesigned Coincidences,' p. 21).