H7676 shabbāt “Sabbath”

TWOT H2323

The meaning of šābat is “to rest” in the sense of repose only when the verb is used in a Sabbath context (and this is confined to the Qal stem, thirteen of twenty-seven times).

The basic thrust of the verb is, when transitive, “to sever, put an end to,” and when intransitive, “to desist, to come to an end.” This may possibly indicate that the Sabbath is the day which ‘puts a stop to’ the week’s work. Statistically, šābat is used seventy-one times in the OT.

By stem it occurs twenty-seven times in the Qal (and thirteen of these, as we indicated above, are in connection with the Sabbath observance).

The translation “to cease, desist” can be illustrated in the following verses: “Day and night shall not cease” (Gen 8:22); “The seed of Israel shall cease from being a nation (Jer 31:36): “So these three men ceased to answer Job” (Job 32:1).

In the Niphal šābat appears four times.

It is in the Hiphil, however, that the verb appears most often; forty times. Here the meaning is “to put an end to, to cause to cease.” Preponderantly in the Hiphil of šābat, God is the subject of the verb. It is a favorite verb of the prophets to describe God’s judgment on his people: “I will cause to cease the arrogancy of the proud” (Isa 13:11), most often in Ezekiel (ten times). Occasionally šābat, with God as subject, may have a hopeful ring to it; “He makes wars cease unto the end of the earth” (Ps 46:9 [H 10]; “The Lord who has not left you without a kinsman” (Ruth 4:14).

Victor P. Hamilton, “2323 שָׁבַת,” in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 902.