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"Now it happened that some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather, but they
found none. And the Lord said to Moses, 'How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and
My laws? See! For the Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore He gives you on the sixth day
bread for two days. Let every man remain in his place; let no man go out of his place on the sev-
enth day.' So the people rested on the seventh day" (verses 13-30).

Starting on the 15th day of the month, God provided food for the Israelites then, on the sev-
enth day after the 15th, He did not provide any manna -- thereby showing that this day (the 22nd
day of the month) was a Sabbath. Obviously, if the 15th was seven days before the 22nd, it too was
a Sabbath day! This Herbert Armstrong clearly understood. We can see here that God was setting
up His weekly Sabbath cycle for the Israelites. If the 15th and the 22nd were Sabbath days, then
the 8th and the 29th of the month were also Sabbaths! So here we see a pattern -- 8th, 15th, 22nd
and 29th. What significance do these dates have? Just this -- THEY CORRESPOND TO THE
PHASES OF THE MOON!! God was showing the Israelites that His Sabbath days were to fall on
the days corresponding to the moon's phases, thus showing that the weekly Sabbaths were to be
kept by THE SAME CALENDAR or reckoning used to determine the annual Sabbaths or feast
days!

I ask you, WHY would God complicate the Israelites' lives by having them keep two
calendars or reckonings -- one for the weekly Sabbath and one for the annual holy days? This
makes no sense whatsoever! God set up ONE calendar for ALL of His days -- not two!

Babylon and the Dead Sea Scrolls

In this calendar, states Assyriologist S. Langdon, "the weeks do not continue in a regular
cycle regardless of the moon. Each month has four weeks, beginning with the new moon. Days 29
and 30, or in case of a 29-day month, day 29, are simply THROWN OUT of the four-week system.
I have no doubt but that this was the old Hebrew scheme...In other words the fourth week has one
or two extra days. Every month must begin with the first day of the first week [as determined by the
new moon]" (Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendars, p. 89).

The New Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia notes that "there is general agreement
that the seven-day period [as observed by the Hebrews] was derived from Babylonia, where it
was employed in pre-Semitic times -- this is confirmed by the fact that not only were the seventh,
fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the month observed, but that the nineteenth
was also a special day..." (vol. VII, 1910. P. 492). The reason for the one-day discrepancy here as
compared to the days God set apart in Exodus 16 is because the days 7, 14, 21 and 28 are reck-
oned from the first crescent of the moon, whereas the numbers 8, 15, 22 and 29 are reckoned from
"day one" from the "dark" of the moon.

Many facts tie the ancient Hebrew calendar in with that of ancient Babylonia. There is a
phrase, found in the tablets uncovered by archaeologists, which was used in Babylonia -- "day of
rest of the heart = shabattum" (Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions, pp. 134-139). Although the
Babylonian term "shabattum" was originally connected only with the full moon rest day, it is tech-
nically a word which means "to divide." And, as one etymological study concluded,

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