Chapter III: The Babylonian Sabbath

FEAST OF MARDUK AND ZARPANIT. A DAY CALLED SHABATUM. A DAY IN SOME
TABLETS AT YALE.

=1. Feast of Marduk and Zarpanit.=

The seventh day is the feast of Marduk and Zarpanit. It is an evil
day. The shepherd of the great people shall not eat flesh cooked on
the coals which is smoked. The garment of his body he shall not
change; a clean one he shall not put on. A sacrifice he shall not
offer. The king in a chariot shall not ride. In triumph he shall not
speak. In the secret place a seer shall not give an oracle. The
physician shall not lay his hand on the sick. It is not fitting to
utter a malediction. At night before Marduk and Ishtar the king shall
bring his offering; a libation he shall pour out. The lifting up of
his hands shall then be pleasing to the gods.[365]

This passage occurs in a tablet which describes the nature of all the days of a month. The same prohibitions are recorded for the fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days. The tablet has often been brought into comparison with the Hebrew sabbath, partly because the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days are involved, partly because the prohibitions remind the reader of Exodus 20:8-11 and Deut. 5:12-15.

Exod. 20:8-11. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days
shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is a
sabbath unto the Lord thy God: _in it_ thou shalt not do any work,
thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy
maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy
gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and
all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord
blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Deut. 5:12-15. Observe the sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord
thy God commanded thee. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy
work: but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the Lord thy God: _in it_
thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor
thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor
any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy
manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And thou
shalt remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and the
Lord thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand and by a
stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep
the sabbath day.

In reality the Babylonian prohibitions apply to certain classes of people only, and not to the whole population. A study of the contract literature shows that there was no cessation of business upon these days of the month, so that resemblance to the Hebrew sabbath is really quite slight.

=2. A Day Called Shabatum.=

These days were not, so far as we know, called _shabatum_, but another tablet[366] tells us that the fifteenth day of each month was so called. _Shabatum_ is etymologically the same as the Hebrew sabbath. As the Babylonian months were lunar, the fifteenth was the time of the full moon, so that in Babylonian the day denoted the completion of the moon’s growth. In the Old Testament “sabbath” is sometimes coupled with “new moon,” as though it may also have designated a similar day. (See 2 Kings 4:23; Amos 8:5; Hosea 2:11; Isa. 1:13; 66:23, and Ezek. 46:3.) This Babylonian _shabatum_ can, in any event, have no direct relationship to the Hebrew sabbath as a day of rest once a week.

=3. A Day in Some Tablets at Yale.=

A series of tablets in the Yale Babylonian Collection, a portion of which has been published by Prof. Clay,[367] shows that special sacrifices were offered on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth of each month. These sacrifices show that these days were thought to have some peculiar significance, but, whatever that significance may have been, the evidence cited shows that it was not the same as that of the Hebrew sabbath.