20:8 Remember. The Hebrew word for “remember” actually is in the sense of “mark” or “set aside.” The Israelites didn’t need to be told to remember the sabbath, because they, like other nations had been keeping time in weeks ever since the first week (Genesis 2:1-3). Note the references to the sabbath in the giving of the manna, prior to the giving of the Law (Exodus 16:23-29).

20:10 the seventh day. It is important to note the principle of one rest day following six days of work. The Hebrew word for “sabbath” does not mean “Saturday” or “seventh day;” it means “rest” or “intermission.” The institution of the sabbath (one day of rest, worship and remembrance of the Creator) was “made for man,” not as an arbitrary legalistic ritual (Mark 2:27), whether remembered on the first or last or any other day of the locally observed week (even assuming the specific days could actually be traced back to the beginning, an assumption incapable of external proof). In fact, the Christian observance of the first day as the rest day seems most appropriate, signifying now a “marking” not only of God’s completed work of creation but also His completed work of redemption of the creation (note His victory cry on the cross–“it is finished!”) affirmed forever by His victory over sin and death on the first day of the Jewish week at the time.

20:11 in six days. This verse, written on stone by God’s own hand (Exodus 31:18) settles once and for all the question of the meaning of “day” in the creation chapter (Genesis 1). Man was to work six days and rest one day because God did; in fact, God took six days, instead of a single instant, to finish His work of creating and making all things to be a model for humanity (Genesis 2:1-3). God’s week was of precisely the same duration and pattern as man’s regular week. The Hebrew word for “days” (yamim), furthermore, is used over seven hundred times in the Old Testament, and cannot be shown ever to require any meaning except that of literal days, certainly never to anything comparable to geological ages. Still further, “all that in them is” was made in the six days; nothing had been made previously, as the gap theory of Genesis would require. There seems to be no legitimate exegesis of Genesis that can ever allow for the theoretical ages of evolutionary geology. Further, no such gap is necessary; all the data of rocks and fossils are much better explained in terms of the great Flood. It is also significant that other human measurements of time (day, month, year) are keyed to astronomical processes. The universal week, however, has no astronomical base whatever. We keep time in weeks simply because God does!