“Keep the Sabbath day, to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labor and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.”[152] It is a singular fact that this scripture is uniformly quoted by those who write against the Sabbath, as the original fourth commandment; while the original precept itself is carefully left out. Yet there is the strongest evidence that this is not the original precept; for Moses rehearses these words at the end of the forty years’ sojourn, whereas the original commandment was given in the third month after the departure from Egypt.[153] The commandment itself, as here given, contains direct proof on the point. Thus it reads: “Keep the Sabbath day, to sanctify it, As the Lord thy God HATH COMMANDED thee;” thus citing elsewhere for the original statute. Moreover the precept as here given is evidently incomplete. It contains no clue to the origin of the Sabbath of the Lord, nor does it show the acts by which the Sabbath came into existence. This is why those who represent the Sabbath as made in the wilderness and not at creation quote this as the fourth commandment, and omit the original precept, which God himself proclaimed, where all these facts are distinctly stated.[154] But while Moses in this rehearsal omits a large part of the fourth commandment, he refers to the original precept for the whole matter, and then appends to this rehearsal a powerful plea of obligation on the part of the Hebrews to keep the Sabbath. It should be remembered that many of the people had steadily persisted in the violation of the Sabbath, and that this is the last time that Moses speaks in its behalf. Thus he says:— “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.”