Strict observance of the Sabbath day was a fundamental doctrine of the law which Moses gave to the Hebrew people. The fourth commandment reads in part (Ex. 20:8,9): "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work."
So important was this teaching to the children of Israel that its practice was a sign of the covenant relationship between God and His people. Isaiah records God's promise in these words (58:13,14): "If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth."
As the years passed, the Jewish legalists became so engrossed with the negative provision of the commandment that their observance of it took an exaggerated form, and their proscriptions against almost any activity became more burdensome than the labors from which they were supposed to be resting.
