Does The Sabbath Start At Twilight? (Part Two)

The first post in this series was centered on how an annual Biblical holiday, Passover (which leads to a day of rest akin to an ordinary Sabbath), starts with onset of the evening at twilight.  This on its own has no ramifications for the timing of the Sabbath each week, despite conventional Jewish practice reportedly entailing that the weekly time of rest from work starts at twilight or sunset, one way or another around the evening time.  Similarly, they often propose that evening (whatever precise moment they mean by this) marks the beginning of every day, Sabbath or not.  The closest thing to a statement in the Bible affirming this Sabbath habit is in Leviticus 23 regarding the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur in Hebrew.  More specifically, Leviticus 23 indicates that the period of rest tied to this holiday should stretch from one evening to the next—not necessarily with sunset precisely, but from evening to evening.

Leviticus 16:29 says to do no work on the Day of Atonement, reiterated in Leviticus 23:28-31 alongside details about other holidays, with verse 31 of chapter 16 adding that this holiday is a "sabbath of rest".  Similar phrasing about rest appears in Leviticus 23 as well.  The Torah very much affirms that there must be a time of rest with defined boundaries for Yom Kippur.  Leviticus 23:32 again calls the Day of Atonement a sabbath, a sabbath of rest, and only in this verse it is specified that this exact duration without work lasts from the evening of the ninth day of the seventh month until the next evening.

Since the tenth day specifically is the Day of Atonement itself on which work should be abstained from according to Leviticus 16:29-30 and 23:27-28, that the Bible prescribes a sabbath beginning on the ninth day actually refutes the idea that each Biblical day starts at evening because then the special sabbath starting on the ninth day would not overlap with two separate days, but would encompass a single evening-to-evening period that is identical to the entirety of the tenth day alone.  The evening of what the Bible calls the ninth day would then really be the start of Yom Kippur, the tenth day.  Yet the Bible both says this annual sabbath begins with the evening on the ninth day and says that the next day, the tenth day, is the Day of Atonement on which one should do no work.  This sabbath does not really overlap with the entirety of either the ninth or tenth days, but a portion of both of them.

Clearly, the time of sabbath rest in this case really includes part of the ninth day and most of the tenth day.  The Bible itself says it spans two distinct calendar/natural days, albeit not quite as directly as I have worded it.  Also, the singular yearly sabbath connected with the Day of Atonement clearly begins and ends with an evening, but does this mean all Sabbaths do?  Not at all.  As with the annual days of rest associated with Passover (Exodus 12:14-16, Leviticus 23:5-8), that something central pertaining to Yom Kippur begins at evening has nothing to do with the regular Sabbath.  It does not follow that the weekly Sabbath also starts at evening or that each day itself begins with evening, as some traditionalistic Jews and Christians influenced by the baseless traditions of the former—and this conception of what constitutes a day would indeed contradict what Leviticus teaches about the distinction between the ninth and tenth days anyway.

The qualities that make a day a sabbath of whichever kind must be shared by all of them, whether they occur every week or once a year.  However, the qualities of a special, annual "sabbath of rest" do not necessarily apply to the ordinary Sabbath that occurs from one week to another.  Leviticus 23 prescribing the Day of Atonement's sabbath from the evening of the ninth day of the seventh month to the evening of the tenth day thus in no way requires that the weekly day of rest really starts with the evening.  It seems like the real reason why so many adherents of Rabbinic Judaism think all Sabbaths begin at evening is because they believe, on the basis of nothing but assumptions, and ideas that are incorrect in addition to being assumed, that every day starts at evening.  In the next installment of this series, attention will shift to how none of the Biblical prescriptions of a day of rest for every six days of work mention the evening.  The normal Sabbath is never said to initiate at twilight!