Ezekiel 20:12

I gave them my sabbaths. — “Not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers” (John 7:22). The Sabbath, like circumcision, was an institution far older than the period here spoken of, but was now commanded anew, and made the especial pledge of the covenant between God and His people. The verse is a quotation from Exodus 31:13; and every one must have remarked the great stress everywhere laid in the Old Testament upon the observance of the Sabbath, and the prominence given to it among the privileges of the Divine covenant. It is plain that the day is regarded not in its mere outward character, as a day of rest, but as “a sign” of the covenant, and a means of realising it in the study of God’s word, and the communion of the soul with Him. It is in these latter aspects also that the weekly day of rest still retains its inestimable value — that men “might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.”