What Does Leviticus 23:3 Mean?
Six days work shall be done, but the seventh day is a sabbath of ceasing, a set-apart assembly. You shall do no work in it. It is a sabbath of the LORD in all your sitting places.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.THE KEY
Sabbath makes stopping itself the shape of a holy gathering.
THE MEANING
Your time includes six days for work and a seventh named as cessation, a holy gathering belonging to the LORD in every dwelling. When labor stops, time opens for shared life set apart to God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that stopping work means wasted time: here, cessation itself is named holy.
THE ROOT
שַׁבָּת שַׁבָּתוֹן
shabbat shabbaton
GROWS FROM
שׁבת
sh-b-t
to cease, stop, or desist
“sabbath of ceasing” in this verse is shabbat shabbaton. The Hebrew pairs shabbat with shabbaton, repeating the root of cessation in the phrase translated sabbath of rest. The day is defined by work coming to a stop, and that stopping makes room for the holy gathering named alongside it.
ALSO GROWS
shabbat: Sabbath; a cessation set apart as a day
שַׁבָּת
It names the seventh day through the act of ceasing.
shabbaton: solemn or complete rest
שַׁבָּתוֹן
It intensifies the cessation, making the day a full stopping from ordinary work.
מִקְרָא
miqra
GROWS FROM
קרא
q-r-ʾ
to call, summon, or proclaim
“set-apart assembly” in this verse is miqra. The word translated convocation is miqra, from qara, to call or summon. The Hebrew keeps the call inside the gathering: Sabbath is shared time into which people are summoned as a holy assembly.
ALSO GROWS
qara: to call or proclaim
קָרָא
This verb reveals the calling action held inside the word for convocation.
miqra: a called assembly or convocation
מִקְרָא
It shows that the Sabbath’s holiness is expressed in people gathered together.
THE PATTERN
The seventh day is set apart through cessation from ordinary labor, making stopping a sacred rhythm.
And God blessed the seventh day and set it apart, for on it he had stopped from all his work which God had created and made.But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your sojourner who is within your gates.He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.THE THREAD
And God blessed the seventh day and set it apart, for on it he had stopped from all his work which God had created and made.Leviticus names the day שַׁבָּת (shabbat, cessation), while Genesis uses the same root in וַיִּשְׁבֹּת (vayishbot, he ceased or rested). The shared root connects the seventh day with the act of stopping, which Leviticus names as a holy gathering.
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