And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep. The reason for the fresh inculcation of the fourth commandment at this particular period was, that the great ardour and eagerness with which all classes betook themselves to the construction of the tabernacle exposed them to the temptation of encroaching on the sanctity of the appointed day of rest. They might suppose that the erection of the tabernacle was a sacred work, and that it would be a high merit-an acceptable tribute-to prosecute the undertaking without the interruption of a day's repose; and therefore the caution here given, at the commencement of the undertaking, was a seasonable admonition.
Verse 13. It is a sign between me and you throughout your generations. There is here an allusion to the separation of Israel as a special people to the service of God; and the keeping of the Sabbath was a sign or pledge of their national obligation to obey the whole law. The reference obviously is not to the institution of the Sabbath on the part of God, but to its observance on the part of the people; and the purpose of God in making a faithful performance of the Sabbath duties 'a sign between Him and the Israelites was, that they might become a holy and blessed people.'
Verse 14. Ye shall keep the sabbath ... every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death. It was as the king of Israel, who had made the sanctification of the Sabbath a fundamental law in the civil and political constitution of His kingdom, that He denounced the violation of it as a capital crime (see the notes at Numbers 15:32-36).
Verse 17. It is a sign between me and the children ... for ever. The Sabbath was a sign between God and the people of Israel which they were always to be careful in observing-a national peculiarity evinced by its being always prominently associated with the sanctity of the temple, new moons, and other feasts (Leviticus 19:30; Isaiah 1:13; Isaiah 66:23; Ezekiel 45:17; Hosea 2:11), and by its being one of the pledges which the proselyte had for participating in the blessings of the covenant (Isaiah 56:6-8).
"For ever," of course, means only commensurate with the duration of the Jewish economy (cf. Exodus 12:14; Exodus 12:17; Exodus 12:24; Leviticus 16:34; Numbers 10:8). When the covenant was disannulled, the sign could not remain; and accordingly the seventh-day Sabbath is gone with the covenant (cf. Leviticus 26:15; Leviticus 27:1-34; Deuteronomy 28:1 with Ezekiel 20:1-49; Hosea 2:11): it was a type or shadow of the blessed rest in Christ; "for we who have believed do enter into rest."
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth. Attempts have been made to represent this clause, as well as that in Exodus 22:1-31, to be only a gloss or comment of a transcriber; but the proof has utterly failed, and the unanimous authority of the best MSS. confirms the integrity of the text.