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This is the mystery of the words "And on the seventh day, He refrained (from work) and
'Vayinafash' -- He rested..."

The Creator stopped His work, on account of this -- 'Vayinafash' -- "and He rested" ac-
cording to its simple meaning, but actually a form of the word is 'nefesh' meaning soul:
for the secret contained within these words is that when the Holy One stopped the process
of creation, in so doing, "vayinafash" -- the nefesh, the life-force was brought down into
each level of creation and became fixed there within in a permanent fashion. Before the
Sabbath came, the world literally stood by like a body without a soul, and every aspect of
creation was devoid of the inner essence of life. The holy SABBATH day became the
soul of all creation, and through it, existence became whole (ibid.).

It is also mentioned, in the Encyclopedia Biblica, that "the Hebrew Sabbathon conveys the
idea of propitiation or appeasement of divine anger and [it] is...the opinion [of Professor Jastrow]
that the Hebrew Sabbath (i.e. CREATION SABBATH) was originally a Sabbathon -- i.e. a day of
propitiation and appeasement; marked by atoning rites...it was celebrated at intervals of seven
days, CORRESPONDING WITH CHANGES IN THE MOON'S PHASES, and was identical in
character with the four days in each month, i.e. 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th! (The MacMillan Com-
pany, 1899. P. 4180).

The same encyclopedia adds (p. 4173) that

The word "Sabbath" is a feminine form/word. The ROOT (of Sabbath) has NOTHING to
do with resting in the sense of enjoying repose; in transitive forms and applications, it
means: "to sever"; "to put an end to"; intransitively, it means "to desist" -- "to come to an
end." In a transitive sense -- "the divider" -- indicates the Sabbath as dividing the month.
It certainly cannot be translated 'The Day of Rest.'"

Adam and the Lunar Sabbath

When God "HALLOWED" the seventh day of the week (Exodus 20:11) He made it HOLY.
It is, as the scriptures show, HOLY to God. Now the Sabbath is a day -- it is the particular seventh
day of the week God brought into being in Genesis 1 and 2 (Matthew 28:1). Therefore what God
did was to make future TIME holy!

The Sabbath is a space of time that God set apart from the sixth day of the week at sunset to
the seventh day of the week at sunset. Whenever that time comes to us -- and this is the topic of this
article -- we are in holy time! It is God's time, not ours! God made it holy and the Ten Command-
ments back this up; and He commanded us to keep it holy!

It is a fact that since the very inception of the world -- from the dawn of man's history --
there has never been even one Sabbath which was not kept to some extent. This world has never
been without these "righteous pillars," the Sabbath observers, and every generation has, to at least
some degree, seen each Sabbath observed.

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