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The Hebrew word translated "sabbath" first appears in the Bible at Ex 16:3
and something like 112 times thereafter. The word is shabbath (shab
bawth') which, though it is often used to speak of the seventh day of the
week, actually means intermission, i.e, discontinuity, gap, hiatus, interim,
interlude, interregnum, interruption, interstice, interval, parenthesis, repose,
and/or pause, etc.
The seventh day of creation is in the sabbath category (Gen 2:2-3) and so
is the Feast of Trumpets and Yom Kippur. (Lev 16:29-34 & Lev 23:23-25)
Fact of the matter is; we may safely attest that any day, whether a special
day or not, wherein no manual labor is allowed, falls in the sabbath
category; which is not only Feast of Trumpets and Yom Kippur, but also the
first and last days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. (Ex 12:16)
The first day of the Feast of Unleavened bread commences with the Passover
lamb dinner, and when that first day is in very close proximity to the routine
weekly day of repose, it is very easy to overlook; consequently Seder night
often fails to be taken into proper account when people work up their
chronology of crucifixion week.
• John 19:31 . . The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the
bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that
sabbath day was an high day) besought Pilate that their legs might be
broken, and that they might be taken away.
The high day mentioned in that passage is very easily mistaken for the
routine weekly repose because it's called a sabbath; which is technically
correct, though terribly misleading for those of us brought to always think
of a sabbath day as the sabbath day, i.e. the seventh day of the week.
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