OK, so one of the things that this blog is teaching me, which I had hoped it would teach me, is to write even though my thoughts are not completely developed. If I wait until my thoughts are completely developed, I will never write.

One thing we Reformed believe is that the covenants in Scripture build on one another. God makes each one more glorious than its predecessor. We have the Abrahamic Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant and the New Covenant. There are typically at least three elements of a covenantal ritual:

1. A remembrance,
2. A sign, and
3. Repetition.

While the Noahic Covenant follows this pattern, I have not been able to find this pattern in the Davidic Covenant. It also appears that the institution of circumcision does not use the word zkr (“remember”) as do the others. However, as Jack Collins observes in his commentary on Genesis 1-4, it is not necessary to use the precise word for covenant as long as the concept is there. For a parent circumcising his or her child, the event would most certainly raise the question why am I doing this. Not only that, but throughout the remainder of Scripture, the nation of Israel repeatedly refers to the covenant made with Abraham as the hope and blessed cause for His actions on their behalf.

The fourth commandment, as described in Exodus 20, follows the pattern of a remembrance of the day on a weekly repetition. In this respect it is very similar to circumcision in that circumcision is the sign of remembrance on a sequence not of a weekly schedule but on the sequence of the birth of offspring, a male child.

There is an additional parallel between circumcision and the Sabbath. In Genesis 17, God commands Abraham to circumcise every male offspring. At verse 14, God commands that every uncircumcised male shall be “cut off” from the people. In most English translations of the Old Testament this Hebrew word krt (“cut”) is translated “made” when it is referring to God making a covenant. The way the Old Testament people of God would have understood the making of a covenant would have been a cutting of a covenant. The key concept in Genesis 17 is that if the foreskin is not “cut off” the man himself should be “cut off” from the covenant.

Then in Exodus 31, Yahweh elaborates to Moses on the fourth commandment previously given in Exodus 20. At verse 14, Yahweh commands that whoever does work on the Sabbath, that soul shall be “cut off” from among the people. Both verses 14 and 15 make it clear that this “cutting off” means putting the man to death. Indeed, verses 13 through 17 appear to follow a chiastic structure with the command to “cut off” the violator positioned in the middle. Therefore, this “cutting off” should be given special note.

How should we take this? Is it possible to conclude that, rather than holding a subordinate position in the commandments, one that can be ignored in the New Covenant, the Sabbath has a heightened position in the commandments, one that should be given special consideration in the New Covenant? Clearly, the fourth and fifth commandments are different than the other eight. They are positive rather than negative in resolution, commanding conduct rather than prohibiting conduct. They inculcate a way of acting and thereby thinking.

The concept of cutting does not end here. The concept of cutting figures in prominently in the Prophesy of the Messiah. Typically, a “cutting off” is used to describe a divine judgment on the wicked. However, there are a few significant passages that are counter.

Isaiah 53:7-9 sings of the lamb:

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth;like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who consideredthat he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death,although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Jeremiah 11:19 likewise sings of the lamb:

But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.I did not know it was against me they devised schemes, saying,"Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more."

Daniel 9:26 declares:

And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one [Messiah] shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.

While the first two passages portray the lamb as being cut off by “oppression,” the third is a simple declaration that a Messiah will be cut off in conjunction with the destruction of the city and the sanctuary. However, as Isaiah 53:10 and following goes on to explain, it was Yahweh’s purpose to use this “oppression” for His purpose that, “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”

This background makes N. T. Wright’s observation that Jesus sought to take unto himself the Jewish cultic elements of Sabbath and Temple all the more ironic. Jesus declared himself to be the new temple. He also declared himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath. In the death sentence of Messiah there was a declaration by sinful man of Messiah’s violation of the covenant, not only of the covenant made with Abraham, but also of the Sabbath. He who was Lord of the Sabbath, the one who kept the Sabbath perfectly, was declared a Sabbath breaker by the true covenant breakers. In his death and resurrection, He triumphed over that death sentence and defines the new Sabbath. He did not leave it there. He instituted a new ordinance, commanding us to do the Eucharist in remembrance of him as His new Sabbath memorial.