This topic has been debated for centuries, and we would like to present our basic opinion on this issue, and give some information that may help a person looking into this question, but we don’t have the final answer on this of course. One must decide for themselves before Yehovah what they believe is the correct path based on the knowledge that they have, and stay open for more light on the matter.
The word in Hebrew for “sabbath” basically means to cease, rest or complete, and it carries the idea of ceasing our occupations and our ways of making money in a given occupation. In the book of Nehemiah the people were carrying commercial goods and loads and the people were buying and selling on the Sabbath, and Nehemiah stopped it. But let’s look at “cooking” and how it may relate to the Sabbath.
If you are a cook and you make money and are gainfully employed, you can’t cook for money on the Sabbath. What you are ceasing is your job and taking money for it. However, cooking your own food is allowed we believe. There are those who follow the Rabbinical Oral Law on this, but let’s look at the Scriptures and see what they are saying also.
Some will quote Exo 16.23 to say that cooking isn’t allowed, but does it say that? “And he said to them, this is what the Lord meant. Tomorrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the Lord: bake that which you will bake (today), and boil that which you will boil (today), and what is left over (the manna you have not cooked yet) keep for tomorrow (to cook).” We have added our comments on what we believe the intention of the verse was. It doesn’t say bake/boil all of it so you don’t have to cook on the Sabbath, it just says bake/boil what you need and the rest of the manna left over will not spoil like it did on other days of the week when you need it the next day, or Sabbath-Exo 16.19.
Exo 12.16 seems to confirm this when it says that no manner of work should be done on a particular festival except what a person must eat, that alone may be prepared by them. We should not to go out and acquire food by buying it in stores on the Sabbath, like the Israelites were not to go out into the field to look for manna on the Sabbath, but there is no law stating that you can’t prepare it on the Sabbath in our inderstanding. We know that there are rabbinical laws about this, but those are oral traditions of men, and any law written by man that is not found in the Scriptures should be examined-Deut 4.2.
Now what about the man carrying sticks in Num 15.32? Isn’t there a law about making cooking fires on the Sabbath in Exo 35.3? No, not really. The context of Exo 35 is working on the Mishkan. So, the fires spoken about are probably work fires in relation to working on the Mishkan, not fires for cooking. Remember, they had to do all the work on the Mishkan in the camp or at their homes. They were not to make work fires and it has nothing to do with cooking. What the rabbis and many teachers have done is to take the above mentioned Scriptures, and put them together to back up their prohibitions against cooking on the Sabbath. Taken in context, they don’t seem to be saying that at all.
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