Hebrews 4:9

9. Remaineth The full conclusion given. There is a permanent rest underlying the Canaan rest, which is God’s and the believer’s rest. But, significantly, our author for the word rest, which has hitherto been αναπαυσις , a pausing, now substitutes σαββατισμος , sabbatismos, sabbatism, a sabbath-rest, thus finely identifying the saints everlasting rest with God’s sabbatic rest. On this Whitby gives a number of interesting extracts from the early Christian writers. “Irenaeus saith, ‘The seventh day, which was sanctified, and in which God rested from all his works, is the true sabbath of the just; in which they shall do no earthly labour.’ And Origen saith that ‘Celsus understood not the mystery of the seventh day, and the rest of God, in which all that had done their work in six, and had left nothing undone which belonged to them, should feast with God, ascending to the vision of him, and in that to the general festivity of the just and blessed.’ And again: ‘If we further inquire which are the true sabbaths, we shall find that the observation of the true sabbath reaches beyond the world; the true sabbath, in which God will rest from all his works, being the world to come, when all grief, sorrow, and sighing shall fly away, and God shall be all in all.’”

And as the early Christian writers are thus in accord with our apostle, so our apostle is in accord with the Hebrew doctors, it not being easy to say which made the earlier utterance. Says Whitby:

“Thus in their descants upon the 92d Psalm, which bears, both in the Hebrew and the Greek, this title, A Song of the Sabbath, ( εις την ημεραν του Σαββατου ,) they say, ‘This is the age to come which is all sabbath.’ ‘The psalmist,’ saith R. Solomon Jarchi on the passage, ‘speaks of the business of the world to come, which is all sabbath.’ ‘A psalm upon the sabbath day,’ saith R. Eliezer, cap. xix, p. 42, ‘that is, upon the day that is all sabbath and rest, in the life of the world to come.’ And again, cap. xviii, p. 41, ‘The blessed Lord created seven worlds, (that is, ages,) but one of them is all sabbath and rest in life eternal.’ Where he refers to their common opinion, that the world should continue six thousand years, and then a perpetual sabbath should begin, typified by God’s resting the seventh day and blessing it. So Bereschith Rabba, ‘If we expound the seventh day of the seven thousand years, which is the world to come, the exposition is, and he blessed; because that in the seventh thousand all souls shall be bound in the bundle of life; for there shall be there the augmentation of the Holy Ghost, wherein we shall delight ourselves. And so our Rabbies, of blessed memory, have said in their commentaries, God blessed the seventh day; the Holy God blessed the world to come, which beginneth in the seven thousand of years.’ Philo is very copious in this allegory, who, disputing against those who, having learned that the written laws were συμβολα νοητων πραγματων , symbols of intellectual things, did upon that account neglect them, saith that though the seventh day was a document of the power of God, and of this rest of the creature, yet was not the outward rest to be cast off.”