Q. Can we cook on the Sabbath?

Q. Can we cook on the Sabbath?

A. The word in Hebrew for Sabbath basically means “to cease” and it carries the idea of ceasing our occupations and our ways of “making money” for ourselves. In the book of Nehemiah the people were carrying commercial loads and people were selling and Nehemiah stopped it, but the issue of your question is cooking. If you are a cook and you make money and are gainfully employed you can’t cook for money. What you are ceasing is taking money for it. Cooking your own food is allowed. There are those who follow the Rabbinical Oral Law on this but let’s look at the Scriptures and see what they say. Some will quote Exo. 16.23 to say cooking isn’t allowed, but does it?

“And he said unto them, this is what the L-rd meant, Tomorrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the L-rd: bake that which you will bake (today), and boil that which you will boil, and that which is left (what you have not cooked) keep for tomorrow” The words in parenthesis are mine and add what I believe the intention was. It doesn’t say bake/boil all of it so you don’t have to do it on Sabbath. It just says bake/boil what you need and the rest will not spoil (like it did on other days of the week Exo.16.19) when you need it the next day (Sabbath). 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. We are not to go out and acquire food in restaurants and stores but there is no law stating that you can’t prepare it. I know there are rabbinical laws about this, but that is oral law and any law written by man that is not found in the Word (Dt. 4.2) should be examined.

Now, what about the man carrying sticks in Num. 15.32? Isn’t there a law about making fires on Sabbath in Exo. 35.3? No, not really. The context of Exo. 35 is working on the Mishkan, or Tabernacle. So, the fires spoken about are work fires in relation to working on the Tabernacle. They were not to make work fires and it has nothing to do with cooking. What the rabbis have done is take the above mentioned scriptures, 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. I hope this helps.