Sabbath

Sabbath

Sabbath or a sabbath is generally a weekly day of rest or time of worship. It is observed differently in Abrahamic religions and informs a similar occasion in several other practices. Although many viewpoints and definitions have arisen over the millennia, most originate in the same textual tradition. The term has been used to describe a similar weekly observance in any of several other traditions; the new moon; any of seven annual festivals in Judaism and some Christian traditions; any of eight annual pagan festivals (usually "sabbat"); an annual secular holiday; and a year of rest in religious or secular usage, originally every seventh year.

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Famous quotes containing the word sabbath:

    Only man thinning out his kind
    sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind
    swipe of the pruner and his knife
    busy about the tree of life . . .
    Robert Lowell (1917–1977)

    Is there any religion but this, to know, that, wherever in the wide desert of being, the holy sentiment we cherish has opened into a flower, it blooms for me? If none sees it, I see it; I am aware, if I alone, of the greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will keep sabbath or holy time, and suspend my gloom, and my folly and jokes.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
    Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 5:15.

    See Exodus 22:8 for a different version of this fourth commandment.