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Psalmist, in the troubled rest of Canaan, still points his hearers to an end unattained.

8 For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken after this of another day. 9 There remaineth then a sabbath rest for the people of God. 10 For he that is entered into His rest hath himself also rested from his works as God did from His own.

4:8. eij ga;r... jIhsou'" ] For if Joshua ... The Peshito defines the ambiguous name ( Jesus ): Jesus the son of Nun ... (but not in Acts 7:45). aujtouv" ] The antecedent is mentally supplied: ‘those in whom Christians find their counterpart.’ Comp. Heb. 8:8, 11:28. See Winer p. 183. katevpausen ] transitive (otherwise vv. 4 note, 10) as in Ex. 33:14; Deut. 3:20 & c.
oujk a]n peri; a[llh" ejlavlei ...] He would not have continued to speak after this , after so long a time (v. 7), of another day. O. L. non de alio (?) (Lcf. de aliis ) dixisset postera die. Vulg. nunquam de alia loqueretur posthac die. For the unusual and expressive combination eij katevpausen oujk a]n ... ejlavlei , see Additional Note.

It is assumed that if Joshua did not gain an entrance into the rest of God, no later leader did up to the time of Christ. No earthly rest indeed can be the rest of God (Heb. 11:9 f.).

4:9. a[ra ajpol. ...] Heb. 12:8. This unclassical use of a[ra in the first
place of a sentence as defining a conclusion from the previous words is found in the Synoptists (Matt. 12:28; Luke 11:48) and in St Paul (Rom. 10:17; 1 Cor. 15:18 & c.), especially in the form
a[ra ou\n (Rom. 5:18 & c.), but it is not found in St John or in the Catholic Epistles.
sabbatismov" ] a sabbath rest (O. L. requies , Vulg. sabbatismus , Syr. to keep a Sabbath-rest )—a rest which closes the manifold forms of earthly preparation and work (the Hexaemeron of human toil): not an isolated sabbath but a sabbath-life. The change of term from katavpausi" is significant.

The word is not quoted as used by any earlier writer. Sabbativzw occurs not unfrequently in the LXX. and sabbatismov" itself is used in an enumeration of superstitious observances by Plutarch: De superst. 3; ii. p. 166 A.

The Sabbath rest answers to the Creation as its proper consummation. Such is the thought of Augustine at the end of his Confessions (13:35 f.): Domine Deus, pacem da nobis, omnia enim praestitisti, pacem quietis, pacem sabbati, sabbati sine vespera. Omnis quippe iste ordo pulcherrimus rerum valde bonarum modis suis peractis transitorius est; et mane quippe in eis factum est et vespera. Dies autem septimus sine vespera est nec habet occasum, quia sanctificasti eum ad permansionem sempiternam; ut id quod tu post opera tua bona valde, quamvis ea quiete feceris, requievisti septimo die, hoc praeloquatur nobis vox libri tui, quod et nos post opera nostra, ideo bona valde quia tu nobis ea donasti, sabbato vitae aeternae requiescamus in te.

And again after giving a brief parallel of the six days of Creation with the ages of the world, he closes his De civitate (22.30, 5) with the striking conception of the ‘seventh day,’ the ‘Sabbath,’ passing into an eternal ‘Lord's day’: De istis porro aetatibus singulis nunc diligenter longum est disputare. Haec tamen septima erit sabbatum nostrum, cujus finis non erit vespera sed


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