There are some people today who believe that the Sabbath should be tied into the sighting of the new moon with the four quarters of the moon’s phases being Sabbaths. This means that the Sabbath would be the 7th, 14th, 21st., and 28th of the lunar month and could fall on any day of the week (i.e. Monday, Tuesday, etc).
The reasons why a lunar Sabbath is not biblical are many. One has to do with the Sabbath of Creation and another has to do with how God gave the Sabbath to Israel. Passover and First Sheaf will reveal that the teaching of a lunar Sabbath is not possible, and Nehemiah and Messiah, etc., will also reveal that it’s not biblical.
THE SABBATH OF CREATION
The Sabbath appears in Creation week on the seventh day. The Moon was created on the fourth day. There’s only three days from the creation of the moon till the creation of the Sabbath, not seven as the lunar concept calls for. Perhaps the Sabbath should have come on the 11th day? Someone might say, ‘Well, this is Creation, just the beginning but after that the Sabbath will always be seven days after the new moon.’ But without any clear, written indication in Scripture, they’re arguing from silence and against Scripture which states it’s every seventh day irrespective of the moon (Gen. 2:3; Ex. 20:8-11).
Some lunar sabbaterians say that the first light of Creation, on the first day, is the sun and the moon so that the seventh day is seven days after the creation of the moon. But this interpretation is contradicted by Scripture. Gen. 1:14-19 states that the moon was created on the fourth day.
The light of the first day, as a number of ancient Jewish sages correctly interpreted, was the Light of Messiah, the Living Word of God, the Light of the world (John 1:1-9; 8:12; 9:5, etc.). The very first words of God in Hebrew were, ‘Light, be!’ and Yeshua, the Word of God (John 1:1-3; Rev. 19:13), came forth, begotten of the Father (Ps. 2:2, 6-7; Jn. 1:18; 3:16, 18).
THE SABBATH IN SCRIPTURE
Nowhere in Scripture does God ever instruct or even hint at keeping the Sabbath based on the new moon sighting. If by two witnesses everything in Scripture is be to established (Dt. 17:6; 19:15; Mt. 18:16; 2nd Cor. 13:1), there’s nothing but inferences and poor interpretations from those who hail a lunar Sabbath. There’s not a single passage of Scripture that specifically commands the linking of the Sabbath to the new moon.
Lunar sabbaterians get around this by saying, “It’s not written because everyone back then knew it” and so it wasn’t necessary for God to specifically state it. But this kind of theologizing is extremely flimsy and irresponsible and can ‘confirm’ anything anyone wants to think. What is written is the Sabbath comes every seven days, with no skips or interruptions as one waited for the new moon to appear, and counted another seven days.
There’s no mention in either passage of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:8-11; Dt. 5:12-15), that the seventh day Sabbath is tied into the new moon. It states that work is to be done for six days and then the Sabbath:
‘For in six days Yahveh made the Heavens and the Earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore Yahveh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy’ (Ex. 20:11).
Note the simplicity of the Sabbath with no mention of a lunar connection. The Sabbath is directly tied into the seven days of Creation week with the Sabbath coming on the seventh day after the first six days of Creation.
It’s written to work for six days and then the Sabbath rest. This understanding can’t be squeezed into the time when the moon ends its visible cycle and reappears. It’s not six days and then the Sabbath but eight or nine days. This ‘lunar week’ from the Sabbath of the 28th to the next new moon sighting and then seven days later to the lunar Sabbath of the seventh day would be eight to nine days. This ‘week’ would come every month after their Sabbath of the 28th day. Again, no mention is ever made in Scripture about an extended week like this, either specifically in relation to a lunar concept or just as ‘an aside’ in a story.
Having an eight or nine day ‘week’ every month would also set up a very strange ‘order’ for things. This doesn’t seem to speak about the God of the universe and His orderly arrangement of things.
THE FIRST SABBATH IN THE WILDERNESS
In the account of the keeping of the first Sabbath by Israel in the Wilderness (Ex. 16:4-5, 22-23, 26-27, 30), not once is it ever tied into the new moon. But this is where God instructs Israel as to ‘when’ the Sabbath was to take place.
Scripture states, ‘the people rested on the seventh day’ (Ex. 16:30), without any reference to the moon. This ‘seventh day’ would have to speak of the seventh day of the week starting from the first day of the week (i.e. Sunday), as it was in Creation week. So too with the mention of the sixth day and other places where the seventh day is used in Ex. 16. This was the normal seven day week in ancient times for Hebrews and many pagans (e.g. Babylonians). Most everyone had the seven day week because of their creation accounts.
There’s no mention of any linking of new moons to Sabbaths anywhere in Ex. 16 when God first gives and instructs the ancient Hebrews about it. And how simple it would have been for the Lord to include dates for a supposed lunar Sabbath (i.e. the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of every lunar month). He gives dates for the annual Sabbaths (Lev. 23:5, 6 24, 27, 32, 34, 39). But this is never seen.
THE SABBATH AND PASSOVER
The 14th of the first biblical month is the slaughter of the Passover lamb but this day is never mentioned as a Sabbath (Ex. 12:1-20; Lev. 23:5-8, etc.). The Lord speaks of the 15th day, the first day of Unleavened Bread being a Sabbath but never the day the lamb was sacrificed on. This negates a lunar Sabbath because the 14th of every month should be a lunar Sabbath according to the lunar sabbaterians.
Also, with Passover on the 14th day of the first month, and the Hebrews leaving the morning of the 15th day (Ex. 12:40; 16:1; Num. 33:3), Ex. 16 would seem to come in the last third of the lunar month with no previous keeping of the Sabbath on the 7th and 14th days of the new moon. Instruction on when and how to keep the lunar dating of the Sabbath would seem essential. But nothing is said of the moon.
THE SABBATH AND THE SACRIFICES
In Numbers 28, a listing of special times concerning various sacrifices, the Sabbath comes before the mention of the new moon. If the Sabbath were tied into the new moon sighting, it would seem that the Sabbath should be mentioned after the new moon. Notice the progression though:
- sacrifices every day (Num. 28:3).
- sacrifices every Sabbath day (v. 9).
- sacrifices every new moon for the beginning of the month (v. 11).
- Passover sacrifices once a year. (This begins the yearly feasts in v. 16).
This progression is seen elsewhere too (1st Chron. 23:31; 2nd Chron. 2:4; 8:13; 31:3; Ezk 46:3, etc.). There are other ways of listing it but this is the basic way established in Torah.THE SABBATH AND YESHUA
The Sabbath of the Jewish people is currently celebrated every seventh day, as it was in the days of Yeshua. When the Pharisees came to Him and spoke of Him or His followers desecrating the Sabbath by say, plucking grain on it (Mt. 12:1-7; Mk. 2:23ff; Lk. 6:1ff; see Dt. 23:25 where eating grain from the field is specifically allowed), or about healings on the Sabbath day (Lk. 13:14ff; Jn. 9:14ff), or when Yeshua healed the man and told him to pick up his pallet and walk on the Sabbath (Mk. 3:2ff; Jn. 5:9ff), Yeshua never once tells the Pharisees that their Sabbath day was not God’s Sabbath. He never tells His Apostles that the Jewish reckoning of the Sabbath was wrong.
Yeshua defends His healings and ability to pick and eat grain on the Sabbath day in a number of different ways but never once does He say to the Pharisees or to His disciples (or to us in Scripture through the inspired Word of God; 2nd Tim. 3:16-17), that the ‘Jewish Sabbath’ was on the wrong day or that they kept it the wrong way by not tying it into the moon. This is a powerful argument against a lunar Sabbath.
No Gospel writer or New Testament writer ever says that the Jewish people kept the wrong Sabbath. In the book of Acts (13:14, 27, 42, 44; 15:21; 16:13; 18:4), many years after the Resurrection (when Acts, as well as the Gospels were actually written; 60-65 A.D. for the three synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and Acts, with John being written about 90 A.D.), there is no mention that the way the Jews understood and kept the timing for the seventh day Sabbath was not actually the correct day or way. There is not a single Scripture that notes this. If it was wrong, wouldn’t the Holy Spirit alert believers to this fact somewhere in the New Testament? One cannot use the argument that ‘everyone knew it’ here for Yeshua and the New Testament confirms the Jewish reckoning of time by not stating they were wrong.
It’s more than reasonable to assume that the Sabbath of the Jewish people in the days of Yeshua was God’s seventh day Sabbath. And that same Sabbath is kept today by the Jewish people. The Jewish Sabbath of today is the biblical Sabbath of ancient times and it’s not based on a lunar sighting.
Today, only 1,900 years after Messiah and the Apostles, we know for a fact that the Jewish people have not tampered with the Sabbath since the time of Yeshua (from any cursory glance into the history of the Jewish people). For something this massive, the keeping of the Sabbath day among the Jews, if it had been altered in any way since the time of Yeshua, it would surely have raised many alarms among Jewish historians as well as the Jewish people. But history records nothing of the sort. Therefore, the seventh day Sabbath of today, Friday evening at dark to Saturday at dark, is the same one of Yeshua’s day, and the same one of Moses’ day, and the same one of Creation Week.
Even if another civilization kept a ‘sabbath day’ by a lunar calendar, we know that Satan worked much of his deception through other civilizations, especially Babylon. There’s no reason to think that they might have the ‘right way’ when Scripture plainly says otherwise (or in this case, doesn’t say anything about a lunar Sabbath).
THE SABBATH AND FIRST SHEAF
The new moons are for signs and seasons; for days (the beginning of a month) and years (the first new moon after the vernal equinox being the new moon of the new year). They also determine all the annual Sabbaths like the first day of Unleavened Bread, Shavuot (Pentecost) and the Feast of Trumpets, etc. (Lev. 23), as well as the Sabbatical year and the time of Jubilee (Lev. 25). The annual feast Sabbaths harken back to the first new moon of the year, the biblical new year, the first of Aviv (erroneously called Nisan today; Ex. 12:1-2), from which all the following annual feast Sabbaths are calculated.
Another major problem arises with First Sheaf for those who espouse a lunar Sabbath. There are two interpretations of Lev. 23:11, 15 for the time when the first sheaf of barley grain would be offered on the Altar by the High Priest. After that would be the subsequent counting of 50 days to Shavuot. The interpretations center around, ‘the day after the Shabat’:
Lev. 23:11: ‘And he shall wave the sheaf before Yahveh for you to be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath the (High) Priest shall wave it.’
Lev. 23:15: ‘And from the day after the Sabbath, from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the elevation offering (the ‘first sheaf’ or ‘omer’ [the amount of barley grain to be sacrificed]), you shall count off seven weeks; they shall be seven complete Sabbaths (or weeks).’
The reason why it’s not as simple as it seems is because v. 15 (and v. 16, also ‘seven complete Sabbaths’), can be interpreted as being seven complete weeks, with no mention of a literal seventh day Sabbath. The Hebrew word for Sabbath can also denote a full week, hence the two interpretations.
The ancient Pharisees believed ‘the day after the Sabbath’ meant the day after the Sabbath of the first day of Unleavened Bread. The first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread comes on the 15th and is an annual Sabbath day. This meant that the counting would always begin on the next day, on the 16th of Aviv (or Nisan today among traditional Jews). The modern Orthodox Jew follows this rule of interpretation and so for them, Shavuot (Pentecost) is always on the 6th day of Sivan, the third Hebrew month.
The Sadducees interpreted ‘the day after the Sabbath’ to be the day after the weekly seventh day Sabbath that fell during the seven days of Unleavened Bread. In this understanding, one cannot know the date of either First Sheaf (and consequently Shavuot), until the new moon for the first month of that year is established. Fourteen days later, in ancient times, it’d be the day for the sacrifice of the Passover lamb with the eating of it in the evening of the 15th, which comes at the close or end of the 14th day. The 15th is the annual, first day Sabbath of Unleavened Bread. This day could fall on Monday, Tuesday, etc. and when Sunday would come around, that Sunday, the day after the weekly Sabbath, would be the day for offering up the barley, and the day that the counting would begin for Shavuot.
That Sunday could range in dates anywhere from the 16th to the 22nd of the month of Aviv. This is why one had to wait every year to find out when the new moon sighting for the first month was, in order to determine when the Feast of Unleavened Bread and First Sheaf would be. In the days of Yeshua, this priestly or Sadducean interpretation was followed.
The Sadducean interpretation is biblically correct. The Pharisaic and modern Orthodox interpretation is wrong. First Sheaf and Shavuot are the only two annual times when God doesn’t give any dates for it (unlike Passover which is the 14th of Aviv, or the first day of Unleavened Bread which is the 15th, or the Feast of Trumpets which is the first day of the seventh biblical month, etc.). If the Pharisees were correct, God would have given the date for the beginning of the counting of the omer (First Sheaf), and also Shavuot fifty days later. But God couldn’t give the date because it changes every year as the first day of Unleavened Bread (the 15th of Aviv), can come on any day of the week and so the Sunday date for the Feast of Unleavened Bread week changes every year. It’s not possible to give a date for First Sheaf and that’s how we know the Sadducees were right, and also how we know that a lunar Sabbath is wrong.
Those who espouse a lunar Shabat place themselves in the same conceptual position as the Pharisees. They would always have the same date for First Sheaf on whatever ‘Sabbath’ they chose to count from. That’s because the lunar Sabbath would always be the 14th, which in the first month would also be Passover, the time for the ancient sacrifice of the lamb, with the next day being the 15th of Aviv, the first annual Sabbath of the First Day of Unleavened Bread. Whatever way they’d interpret ‘the day after the Sabbath to be (i.e. either their Sabbath of the 14th or the Sabbath of the 15th, or even their Sabbath of the 21st or the seventh day of Unleavened Bread which is an annual Sabbath), they’d always have a ‘set’ date from which their First Sheaf and consequently their Shavuot, would fall on. But with God not giving those dates, we know that those who have annual dates for those times are wrong.
The same problem arises for a lunar sabbaterian who would try and interpret the ‘day after’ as the Sadducees did too. The ‘weekly’ Sabbath for them would be the 14th day of Aviv with ‘the day after’ being the 15th. This would not only be their First Sheaf, and subsequent day of beginning the 50 day count for Shavuot, but also the annual Sabbath for the first day of Unleavened Bread. As such, it would always give them the same dates for both First Sheaf and Shavuot. (And of course, if they chose to use the annual Sabbath for the seventh day of Unleavened Bread, or their lunar Sabbath of the 21st of Aviv, they’d have the same problem with those two times always coming on the same dates.)
It’s here that the lunar concept completely breaks down because it always predicts the date for both First Sheaf and Shavuot with its fixed Sabbaths of 7-14-21-28. In other words, whether they interpreted ‘the day after’ to mean the day after the Sabbath of the 14th, or the annual Sabbath of Unleavened Bread on the 15th or even the second annual Sabbath of the 21st, etc., they would always have the same date for it and for Shavuot. But God didn’t give any of those dates and so it’s certain that there’s no such thing as a biblical lunar Shabat for the weekly Sabbaths.
THE SABBATH AND LUNAR INTERPRETATIONS
Some of the lunar Sabbath interpretations of Scripture may seem reasonable to a few people but in reality are very obtuse and lacking in simple biblical understanding. For instance, to support their claim that the Jewish people no longer keep ‘the right Sabbath’ they invoke Lamentations 2:6. It states that God will cause the Jews ‘to forget the Sabbath’. They interpret this to mean that God will cause the Jews to literally forget the actual day when the Sabbath should be kept and that they used to keep it by the sighting of the new moon. But a look at the Scripture immediately reveals their erroneous interpretation:
‘He has broken down His booth like a garden. He has destroyed His Tabernacle. Yahveh has caused Zion to forget Festival and Sabbath and in His fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.’
The book of Lamentations was written after the King of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. There was no city of Jerusalem anymore, no Temple and no Jewish state of Judah. All was destroyed. The proper interpretation for the verse has nothing to do with the Jews forgetting when the Sabbath should be or how they calculated it from an alleged new moon sighting, but that they wouldn’t be celebrating Sabbaths and Feasts in Jerusalem. They’d be slaves in Babylon, far away from the time when they kept the Sabbath and Feast days in their own land.
Assuming for a moment though, that the lunar sabbaterian interpretation is correct, wouldn’t Yahveh restore the correct day and way to keep His Sabbath when He brought the Jewish people back to Judah and Jerusalem seventy years later (Jer. 25:11-12; 29:10; Dan. 9:2; Zech. 7:5)? Not once in Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah or Malachi, the men and prophets of that restoration does God speak of them having the wrong day for the Sabbath and correcting them. Yet in Nehemiah, the Sabbath is mentioned thirteen times in nine verses (Neh. 9:14; 10:31; 13:15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22) and not once does God tell him that he had the wrong day for the Sabbath. Yeshua confirms this, never once reprimanding the Pharisees for keeping the Sabbath day of Nehemiah.
In Malachi, God’s ‘last word’ to Israel, 400 years before John the Baptist would proclaim the coming of the Messiah, God says,
‘Remember the Law of Moses My servant, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.’
It would be very strange indeed for the Lord to be telling Israel to remember His Law and not tell them if they were keeping the Sabbath on the wrong day. If the Jews had been keeping the wrong Sabbath in the days of the return from Babylon, it’s more than reasonable to assume that God would have corrected them through one of His prophets. But this isn’t found anywhere in Scripture. This is extremely telling against a lunar Sabbath. The Jews were keeping the right day for the Sabbath in the days of Nehemiah, Malachi, Yeshua and Paul, and that, every seven days, irrespective of the moon.
THE SABBATH AND PHILO
A Jewish man by the name of Philo (20 B.C. to 50 A.D.), who lived in Alexandria, Egypt during the time of Yeshua, writes of the Sabbath being every seven days (http://calledoutservants.com/html/the_lunar_shabbat_lie___.html). He states that it’s the, ‘sacred seventh day after each recurring interval of six days’. There’s no mention of a week with ‘extra days’ of waiting in it or of the Sabbath being tied to the new moons.
Philo too negates a lunar sabbaterian teaching that the new moon is the conjunction (which can’t be seen with the unaided eye). He says the new moon is the first of every month (and not the full moon as some say), and that,
‘at the time of the new moon, the sun begins to illuminate the moon with a light which is visible to the outward senses and she displays her own beauty to the beholders.’
This speaks of a new moon that can be seen. Philo’s writings are normative for what Judaism understood about when the seventh day Sabbath would come.
NO LUNAR SABBATHWith the creation of the moon on the fourth day and the Sabbath coming on the seventh day, the lunar understanding of having to wait seven days after the new moon is sighted is called into question.
The Scriptures on Sabbath make no mention of a lunar connection. Whenever the Sabbath is mentioned (with or without the designation, the seventh day), nowhere is there any indication that it’s tied into the moon (e.g. Gen. 2:1-3; Ex. 16:11-29; 20:8-11; 31:12-17; Lev. 23:3; Num. 15:32-36; Deut. 5:12-15; Is. 56:1-8; 58:13-14; Jer. 17:19-27; Neh. 13:15-22; Mt. 12:1-2, 5, 8; Jn. 5:9-10; 7:22; 9:14; Acts 13:14; 15:21; Col. 2:16).
When God first gives the Sabbath to Israel in the Wilderness, there’s no mention of a new moon or a special period of waiting after it disappears in order to understand when the Sabbath should occur. There also no mention in Scripture that even hints at the Sabbath being tied into the new moon. This shatters a lunar concept for the Sabbath as there’s nothing specifically written anywhere in Scripture to support a lunar Sabbath.
Passover, the day when the lamb was slain, is never mentioned as a Sabbath day but would have to be according to a lunar understanding as it falls on the 14th day of the lunar month. But only the first and seventh days of Unleavened Bread are mentioned as annual Sabbaths. This too negates the lunar understanding that the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days of the lunar month are Sabbaths.
The order of the sacrifices in Numbers 28, with their daily, weekly and monthly sacrifices, pointed to the Sabbath taking precedence over the new moon. If Sabbath sprung off of the new moon, the sacrifices for the new moons should be listed before the Sabbath.
Yeshua never once tells the Pharisees that their Sabbath is not God’s Sabbath day. In this, the Lord of the Sabbath tells us that the day the Pharisees knew as the Sabbath is God’s Sabbath day also. And in the New Testament, there’s no mention that the Sabbath was being kept at the wrong time, something that we’d expect to find there if the Jewish people were keeping the wrong day. This also negates a lunar Sabbath.
Nehemiah and all those that came back from the captivity in Babylon seemed to have observed the right day for the Sabbath. The prophets in those days never tell him that Israel was keeping the wrong day for Yahveh’s Sabbath.
First Sheaf totally destroys the lunar Sabbath concept because a lunar sabbaterian will always have the same date every year. But God, in not giving a date for it (or Shavuot), shows us that He couldn’t give the dates as they change from year to year. But with a lunar Sabbath, one would always have dates for those two times.
Philo records that the Sabbath came every seven days, with no interruptions. And from the time of Yeshua and Philo until today, the Jewish people have kept the seventh day Sabbath, every seven days.
All these negate a lunar Sabbath. The lunar Sabbath teaching is not biblical.