A Song of the Sabbath
‘Tis the Sabbath this day,
The day of Your kindness…
The morning, the night, the sound of our singing,
O LORD of the Sabbath,
LORD of the battle,
LORD of the victory!
‘Tis the Sabbath this day,
The place of Your Presence and
we sing the gladness of Your Work,
O LORD of the Sabbath;
for the enemy perishes before us!
The plots of iniquity are destroyed!
The enemy is caused to cease!
In Your Presence, Your Presence,
O LORD of the Sabbath,
stand the ones who bear Your horn, Your Name,
Adrip in the Oil of Your Spirit.
‘Tis the Sabbath this day, O LORD our Rest,
Flourishing in Your courts this day,
as the enemy is restrained and his war is ceased
to the song we sing, to the song we sing!
Contributed by Fran B.
The Sabbath is an issue of debate among Christians, and a subject of Law and tradition in Jewish doctrine.
Psalm 92 is a "Song of the Sabbath". In part, this Psalm reads:
"When the wicked spring up like grass,
And when all the workers of iniquity flourish,
It is that they may be destroyed forever.
But You, LORD, are on high forevermore.
For behold, Your enemies, O LORD,
For behold, Your enemies shall perish;
All the workers of iniquity shall be scattered."
It may be a surprise to find that the Sabbath, the day of rest, is associated with warfare. The root meaning of Sabbath is the word shavath, which means: to cease, desist, rest, put an end to, exterminate, destroy, to remove, to cause to fail, to restrain an enemy, to put an end to, sit down, sit still.
So, the meaning of Sabbath, is surrounded by warfare.
The first mention of the origins of the Sabbath is in Gen. 2:2:
"And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done,
and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done."
The word, rested, used in this scripture, is the word "shavath", as defined above. What warfare had our Father been involved with? What enemies had He just restrained? In Genesis Chapter 1, the earth is described as without form, empty, void, and shrouded in darkness. Chaos ruled over earth.
In a form of warfare against this darkness and emptiness, Father created light, and filled the earth with life. He subdued the enemy, which had tried to subject the earth to darkness.
When we remember His "rest", we remember His victory. We keep it holy, because it is holy. It is a great and mighty work of the hands of our Father.
Our Father is Sabbath.
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