Exodus 35:3

Exodus 35:1 opens a new stage of the book. Israel broke the covenant almost as soon as it was made by worshipping the golden calf (Exodus 32), and God said that he would go up with them in their midst no more (Exodus 33:3). In his mercy he renewed the covenant (Exodus 34), and Moses came down from his second forty days on Mount Sinai with new tablets of the Law and his face shining (Exodus 34:29). Now he calls the people together to hear God’s instructions again. The chapters that follow, Exodus 35–40, tell how Israel gave, built and set up the tabernacle, until God’s glory filled it.

This assembly is a fresh start after a great sin. It shows publicly that God is still with his people, it confirms Moses as the one through whom God speaks, and it gives Israel the instructions it needs for worship on the journey ahead.

“Gathered” is qâhal, to convoke, to call people together as an assembly. It is the root of the noun qāhāl, an assembly, and it describes a deliberate, formal gathering for a sacred purpose. The word for congregation, ʻêdâh, means a stated assemblage, a family or a crowd gathered as one, and the KJV also renders it multitude. Moses calls “all” of them, from the elders to the ordinary households, so the whole people hear God’s word together. The commands that follow belong to Israel as a body, and every member has a part in keeping them. Moses would later gather all Israel in the same way to stand before the LORD and enter his covenant (Deuteronomy 29:10–15), and Joshua would call the people to choose whom they would serve, saying “as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:14–15).

The first command Moses gives the gathered people is the Sabbath, and only after it does he call for freewill offerings and skilled workers (Exodus 35:4). The tabernacle was holy work that God himself had commanded. He had said, “And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8). Yet he puts his day of rest ahead of it, so that even the building of his own dwelling stops on the seventh day. God’s holy work and his holy rest each have their place, and he sets their order.

The command repeats what God had already given in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8–11) and again in Exodus 31:12–17, where he calls the Sabbath a sign between himself and Israel for ever. Stating it once more at the start of the work shows how foundational it is to the covenant.

“Six days shall work be done.” God gives work its place and his approval, and six days of every week belong to it. The word for day, yôwm, is the ordinary word for a day, and it can also mean a span of time. Here it counts the days of the week, six for labour and the seventh set apart.

That seventh day is qôdesh, holy, set apart and dedicated to God, distinct from the other six. “A sabbath of rest” translates two related Hebrew words. Shabbâth, the Sabbath, comes from shâbath, to cease or rest, and its sense is an intermission. Shabbâthôwn means a sabbatism or special holiday. Together they name a solemn rest, and the law uses the same words for the ordinary weekly Sabbath in Exodus 31 and Leviticus 23.

The rest is “to the LORD.” The day is consecrated to him, so ceasing from work is itself an act of worship and a confession that he is Lord of our time and labour. God rested on the seventh day after his work of creation (Genesis 2:2–3), and his people’s week follows his own. Through Ezekiel he later says that he gave Israel his Sabbaths as a sign between him and them, that they might know he is the LORD who sanctifies them (Ezekiel 20:12). The weekly Sabbath was Israel’s own, and it marked them out from the nations around them as the LORD’s people.

Verse 3 gives one concrete example of the work that stops. Bâʻar means to burn, kindle or consume, and ʼêsh is fire. Fire was essential in every home for cooking, heat and light, so this command reaches into the most ordinary tasks of the day, such as baking bread and preparing meals. “Throughout your habitations” carries it into every dwelling. The word behind it, môwshâb, means a seat or dwelling place, so the Sabbath was kept in private homes as well as in public, and every household shared in it. “Upon the sabbath day” fixes the time, the seventh day only.

Israel had already learned this pattern in the wilderness. The manna stopped on the Sabbath, and the people gathered a double portion on the sixth day and prepared it ahead (Exodus 16:23). The rule about fire works the same way. Food was made ready the day before, and on the seventh day the people rested from providing for themselves and trusted God’s provision.

Moses gathered Israel to receive God’s commands, and Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, gathers his own people through his call to follow him (Matthew 4:19) and brings his sheep into one fold (John 10:16). The words the LORD commanded find their fullness in him, the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1). Israel built a tent so that God could dwell among them, and “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), where “dwelt” means that he pitched his tabernacle with us. Those who come to him are built up as a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5).

Jesus came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and he speaks as its Lord when he says, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” (Mark 2:27–28). He offers the rest the Sabbath pointed to: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28–30). Hebrews says, “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9–10). The unlit hearth of verse 3 pictures that rest, in which we stop trying to earn our own righteousness and rely on Christ’s finished work. The death the law threatened for refusing God’s day warns of the far greater loss of refusing the rest he offers in his Son.

His obedience also changes how his people keep God’s commands. The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who walk after the Spirit (Romans 8:3–4), and “all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Galatians 5:14). This is the new covenant God promised, with his law written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:31–34).

God made us for six days of work, and our labour pleases him. He also made us to stop, and setting aside time for him is an act of faith that says he is our provider and that our worth rests on his grace. When you lay your work down and turn to worship, you are trusting the same God who fed Israel with manna on the day before the Sabbath.

Moses spoke to the whole congregation, and the call still comes to God’s people together. We hear his word as a church, and we are called to do it.