Note 725 — Chapter VII · THE BABYLONIAN “EVIL DAYS” AND THE SHABATTUM

Shabbāthôn occurs all together ten times in the Old Testament, where it is applied to New Year’s Day, the Day of Atonement (above, pp. 82 sq.), the first and eighth days of the Feast of Tabernacles, and also to the Sabbatical Year (Leviticus, xxv, 4) and to the Sabbath Day proper (Exodus, xvi, 23, xxxi, 15, xxxv, 2; Leviticus, xxiii, 3). Professor Morris Jastrow thinks that shabbāthôn is mistranslated as “solemn rest” and that in fact it is merely an adjectival formation meaning “sabbatical” or “Sabbath-like.” The word “belongs to a period prior to the development of a Sabbath institution, celebrated every seventh day without any reference to the phases of the moon” (American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 1914, xxx, 97 n.⁷).