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Dialogue with Trypho
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Chapter 21: Sabbaths Were Established Due to People's Sins, Not as an Act of Righteousness.
FURTHERMORE: God commanded you to keep the Sabbath and imposed other laws on you as a sign, as I have already explained, because of your unrighteousness and that of your ancestors. He states that to protect His name from being profaned among the nations, He allowed some of you to remain alive. These are His words as recorded by Ezekiel: ‘I am the Lord your God; follow My laws, keep My judgments, and do not participate in the customs of Egypt; honor My Sabbaths; and they will be a sign between Me and you, so that you may know that I am the Lord your God.
However, you rebelled against Me, and your children did not follow My laws, nor did they keep My judgments to do them, which, if a person does, they shall live by them.
But they polluted My Sabbaths. And I said I would pour out My fury upon them in the wilderness to express My anger against them; yet I did not do it, so that My name would not be completely profaned in the sight of the heathen. I led them out in front of their eyes and raised My hand to them in the wilderness, stating that I would scatter them among the heathen and disperse them through various countries because they had not followed My judgments, had despised My laws, polluted My Sabbaths, and their eyes were focused on the practices of their fathers.
Therefore, I also gave them laws that were not good and judgments by which they shall not live. And I will make their own gifts impure, in order that I may destroy all that opens the womb when I pass through them.’