To us, on the contrary, it seems by no means necessary to understand the days on which God labored and rested, in precisely the same sense as the days on which it is enjoined that we should labor and rest. The examples of God is, no doubt, represented in the Sacred Text as the reason for the Jewish Sabbath: “Six days shalt thou labor, and rest upon the seventh; _for_ in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth, and rested on the seventh.” But, suppose for a moment that the days of creation were long periods of time, will not the significance of this reason remain unchanged? As God, in the great work of the creation, labored for six successive periods, and then rested for a seventh, so shall you likewise do all your work during six of those successive periods into which your time is divided, and rest upon the seventh. In support of this view, we may observe that the Jews were commanded to abstain from work, not only every seventh _day_, but also every seventh _year_. “Six years thou shalt sow thy ground, and shalt gather the corn thereof; but the seventh year thou shalt let it alone, and suffer it to rest, that the poor of thy people may eat, and whatsoever shall be left, let the beasts of the field eat it: in like manner shalt thou do with thy vineyard and thy oliveyard. Six days shalt thou work: the seventh day thou shalt cease, that thy ox and thy ass may rest; and the son of thy handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed.”[160] And in another place we read: “When you shall have entered into the land which I will give you, observe the rest of the Sabbath to the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and shalt gather the fruits thereof; but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath to the land, of the resting of the Lord; thou shalt not sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. What the ground shall bring forth of itself thou shalt not reap: neither shalt thou gather the grapes of the first fruits as a vintage; for it is a year of rest to the land: But they shall be unto you for meat; to thee, and to thy man-servant, and to thy maid-servant, and to thy hireling, and to the strangers that sojourn with thee, to thy beasts of burden, and to thy cattle, all things that grow shall be for meat.”[161] The seventh year, then, according to Divine command, was a year of rest among the Jews, just as the seventh day was a day of rest; and it is evident that the one precept, no less than the other, was founded on the great example of God’s rest when He had finished the work of Creation. We are satisfied, therefore, that whatever may have been the length of those six days in which God labored, and of the seventh day on which He rested, His example might still be properly set forth as the model on which the law of the Sabbath was founded.