Genesis 2:1
“The Seventh Day: God's Rest and Blessing”Genesis 2:1–3
Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible · Public domain
Bible text: American Standard Version (1901) · Public domain
Bible text: World English Bible, Messianic edition · Public domain
Bible text: Geneva Bible (1599) · Public domain
Bible text: Young's Literal Translation · Public domain
- וַיְכֻלּוּvay·khu·Luand they were completedH3615Conj-w ¦ V-Pual-ConsecImperf-3mpVerb Pual Consecutive Imperfect 3rd Plural Masculineוַandיְכֻלּוּthey were completed
- הַשָּׁמַיִםha·sha·Ma·yimthe heavensH8064Art ¦ N-mpNoun Plural Masculine Absoluteהַtheשָּׁמַיִםheavens
- וְהָאָרֶץve·ha·'A·retzand the earthH776Conj-w ¦ Art ¦ N-fsNoun Singular Feminine Absoluteוְandהָtheאָרֶץearth
- וְכָלve·kholand allH3605Conj-w ¦ N-mscNoun Singular Masculine Constructוְandכָלall
- צְבָאָםtze·va·'Amtheir hostH6635N-msc ¦ 3mpNoun Singular Masculine Construct with suffixצְבָאָhostםtheir
English is a literal word-by-word gloss of the Hebrew, not the KJV's wording. Why?
This is the original text the KJV's translators worked from — each Hebrew word with its own literal English meaning in this verse, prepared by scholars at Tyndale House, Cambridge. The KJV translates whole sentences, not word by word, so its wording differs: one Hebrew word can become several English words, and the KJV may choose “the LORD” where the gloss reads “Yahweh”. Both are faithful — they answer different questions. For the KJV's own rendering, switch to the KJV text.
Words in [ ] are added by the English.
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Public-domain commentary
Matthew Henry
From his Commentary on the Whole Bible. Henry wrote on whole passages, and this entry covers Genesis 2:1–3. He set out his notes in a two-level outline, kept here as he numbered it.
We have here, I. The settlement of the kingdom of nature, in God's resting from the work of creation, Genesis 2:1, Genesis 2:2. Here observe, 1. The creatures made both in heaven and earth are the hosts or armies of them, which denotes them to be numerous, but marshalled, disciplined, and under command. How great is the sum of them! And yet every one knows and keeps his place. God uses them as his hosts for the defence of his people and the destruction of his enemies; for he is the Lord of hosts, of all these hosts, Daniel 4:35. 2. The heavens and the earth are finished pieces, and so are all the creatures in them. So perfect is God's work that nothing can be added to it nor taken from it, Ecclesiastes 3:14. God that began to build showed himself well able to finish. 3. After the end of the first six days God ceased from all works of creation. He has so ended his work as that though, in his providence, he worketh hitherto (John 5:17), preserving and governing all the creatures, and particularly forming the spirit of man within him, yet he does not make any new species of creatures. In miracles, he has controlled and overruled nature, but never changed its settled course, nor repealed nor added to any of its establishments. 4. The eternal God, though infinitely happy in the enjoyment of himself, yet took a satisfaction in the work of his own hands. He did not rest, as one weary, but as one well-pleased with the instances of his own goodness and the manifestations of his own glory.
II.The commencement of the kingdom of grace, in the sanctification of the sabbath day, Genesis 2:3.
He rested on that day, and took a complacency in his creatures, and then sanctified it, and appointed us, on that day, to rest and take a complacency in the Creator; and his rest is, in the fourth commandment, made a reason for ours, after six days' labour. Observe,
1.The solemn observance of one day in seven, as a day of holy rest and holy work, to God's honour, is the indispensable duty of all those to whom God has revealed his holy sabbaths.
2.The way of sabbath-sanctification is the good old way, Jeremiah 6:16. Sabbaths are as ancient as the world; and I see no reason to doubt that the sabbath, being now instituted in innocency, was religiously observed by the people of God throughout the patriarchal age.
3.The sabbath of the Lord is truly honourable, and we have reason to honour it - honour it for the sake of its antiquity, its great Author, the sanctification of the first sabbath by the holy God himself, and by our first parents in innocency, in obedience to him.
4.The sabbath day is a blessed day, for God blessed it, and that which he blesses is blessed indeed. God has put an honour upon it, has appointed us, on that day, to bless him, and has promised, on that day, to meet us and bless us.
5.The sabbath day is a holy day, for God has sanctified it. He has separated and distinguished it from the rest of the days of the week, and he has consecrated it and set it apart to himself and his own service and honour. Though it is commonly taken for granted that the Christian sabbath we observe, reckoning from the creation, is not the seventh but the first day of the week, yet being a seventh day, and we in it, celebrating the rest of God the Son, and the finishing of the work of our redemption, we may and ought to act faith upon this original institution of the sabbath day, and to commemorate the work of creation, to the honour of the great Creator, who is therefore worthy to receive, on that day, blessing, and honour, and praise, from all religious assemblies.
Historical interpretation
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Further, He says to them, "Your new moons and your Sabbath I cannot endure." Ye perceive how He speaks: Your present Sabbaths are not acceptable to Me, but that is which I have made, [namely this,] when, giving rest to all things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead. And when He had manifested Himself, He ascended into the heavens.
From what toil did God rest? For the creatures that came to be on the first day came to be by implication, except for the light, which came through his word. And the rest of the works that came to be afterward came to be through his word. What toil is there for us when we speak one word? So what toil could there have been for God to speak one word a day? Moses, who divided the sea by his word and his rod, did not tire. Joshua, son of Nun, who restrained the luminaries by his word, did not tire. So what toil could there have been for God when he created the sea and the luminaries by his word? It was not because he rested on that day that God, who does not weary, blessed and sanctified the seventh day. Nor was it because he was to give it to that people, who did not understand that since they were freed from their servitude, they were to give rest to their servants and maidservants. He gave it to them so that, even if they had to be put under requirement, they would rest. It was given to them in order to depict by a temporal rest, which he gave to a temporal people, the mystery of the true rest, which will be given to the eternal people in the eternal world.
You see, in saying at this point that God rested from his works, Scripture teaches us that he ceased creating and bringing from nonbeing into being on the seventh day, whereas Christ, in saying that “my father is at work up until now and I am at work,” reveals his unceasing care for us: he calls “work” the maintenance of created things, bestowal of permanence on them and governance of them through all time. If this wasn’t so, after all, how would everything have subsisted, without the guiding hand above directing all visible things and the human race as well?
Under the law the people were ordered to work for six days and to rest on the seventh … because the Lord completed the creation of the world in six days and desisted from his work on the seventh. Mystically speaking, we are counseled by all this that those who in life devote themselves to good works for the Lord’s sake are in the future led by the Lord to sabbath, that is, to eternal rest.
In recapitulating the Divine works, Scripture says (Genesis 2:1): "So the heavens and the earth were finished and all the furniture of them"
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This verse
With the sixth day done, the whole of creation, the heavens, the earth and everything that fills them, stands complete, just as God made it.
“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished,”
“Thus” gathers up all six days of Genesis 1. “Finished” is kâlâh, to end or complete, and the work stands complete as God had pronounced it very good.
“and all the host of them.”
Everything that fills the sky and the earth in its ordered multitude, from the stars above to every living creature below.
Passage studyGenesis 2:1–3
God Rests and Blesses the Seventh Day
Summary
With the sixth day done, God’s work of creation is complete. The heavens and the earth stand finished, with everything that fills them. On the seventh day God ends his work and rests from it, and then he blesses that day and makes it holy, because it is the day of his rest. In three verses we learn that God finishes what he begins, that his rest is the rest of a completed work, and that the weekly rhythm of work and rest is built into creation itself. That rhythm leads to the Sabbath given to Israel and, beyond it, to the rest God’s people find in Christ.
The heavens and the earth were finished
Genesis 2:1 looks back over the whole account of Genesis 1, from light on the first day to man and woman on the sixth, and draws a line under it. “Thus” gathers up everything told there. Each part came into being as God said it should, and at the close of the sixth day “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Now the whole of it is finished, a world ready to be lived in and cared for.
The verb is kâlâh, which means to end, to cease, to be finished or to complete. It comes back in the next verse as “ended”, so both verses speak of the same thing: God brought his work to its end. The world was whole and ready for what God meant to do in it next.
“The heavens and the earth” names the two great parts of creation, and together they stand for all of it. The word for heavens, shâmayim, is plural in form and covers the sky and everything above it, where the sun, moon and stars are set. The word for earth, ʼerets, comes from a root meaning to be firm, and it takes in the land, the seas and all that lives on them.
“All the host of them” adds everything that fills those two realms. The word tsâbâʼ means an army or host, and it is the word in God’s title “the LORD of hosts”. The picture is of a vast multitude in good order: the stars of the sky, and every creature, plant and thing on the earth, each in the place God gave it. The world God made is ordered and full of purpose, and every part of it answers to his design.
Does “all the host of them” include the angels?
The verse speaks first of the visible creation, but Scripture uses the same word for angels. The prophet Micaiah says, “I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left” (1 Kings 22:19). Angels are created beings who belong to the heavens, so it is reasonable to hold that this phrase includes them, and that God’s finished work reached the invisible realm along with the visible. Paul says of Christ, “by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him” (Colossians 1:16). Genesis names no day for the making of the angels, so this is a fair inference to be held with care.
God rested on the seventh day
“And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made” uses kâlâh again. The seventh day is mentioned twice in this verse, and so is “his work which he had made”, which presses home two things: this day stands apart from the six days of making, and the whole of God’s work is in view. The word for work, mᵉlâʼkâh, is a common word for work or employment, and it can also mean what work produces. Here it covers every part of God’s making.
The word for rested is shâbath, which means to cease, to desist or to rest, and it is the root of the word Sabbath. God ceased from the work of creating because the work was done. He had already looked at all of it and called it very good, so his rest is the rest of a Maker whose work is complete and who is satisfied with what he has made.
Why would God need to rest?
God rested because his work was finished, and his strength was as great at the end as at the beginning. Isaiah asks, “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?” (Isaiah 40:28). God is spirit, and Scripture describes his ceasing in the words we use for our own rest so that we can understand what he did. The nations around Israel, Babylon among them, told stories of gods who grew weary and needed rest after their labours and struggles. Genesis tells of one God who made all things by his word and then ceased, with all his work complete.
Has God stopped working since?
God’s rest on the seventh day is his rest from the work of creation, the first making of the heavens and the earth. He goes on upholding, governing and caring for all he made. Jesus said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17). The seventh day marks the completion of the first creative acts, and God’s providence and his work of redemption carry on.
God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it
Verse 3 names two acts of God. To bless, bârak, comes from a root meaning to kneel. People bless God in worship, and God blesses people by doing them good. Here God blesses a day, giving his favour to a stretch of time and making the seventh day a source of good for his creation.
To sanctify, qâdash, means to make or pronounce clean, to set apart as holy, to consecrate. By sanctifying the seventh day God set it apart from the other six as his own, for his purposes. Blessing gives the day God’s favour, and sanctifying marks it as holy, and together they give it a place of its own among the days. God rules over time, and he alone makes a day holy.
The reason follows: “because that in it he had rested from all his work”. God’s own rest is the ground of the blessing, so the day is holy because of what God did on it. From the first week, then, a rhythm of rest after finished work is part of creation. The number seven often stands in Scripture for completeness, which suits the day on which God’s work stood complete.
“Which God created and made” sums up the whole. The two verbs, bara (“created”) and asah (“made”), together take in all of God’s work, both the bringing into being of what had never been and the shaping and forming of what he had made, from the vast heavens to the smallest living thing.
The Sabbath is rooted in creation
This verse comes long before Sinai, and it is the ground of the Sabbath commandment given there. In the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20, God tells Israel, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”, and he gives this very week as the reason: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:8–11). Israel’s weekly rest was rooted in God’s own work and rest, and it set Israel apart from the nations.
Because the pattern belongs to creation, it concerns everyone made in God’s image. Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). God gave the day for the good of the people he made, and it shows his kind care for them.
These three verses close the account of the creation week that began in Genesis 1:1. From here Genesis 2 turns to tell in more detail how the man and the woman were made and placed in the garden of Eden (Genesis 2:4–25).
Must Christians keep the Sabbath?
Believers differ on how the Sabbath command applies to Christians. Many hold that the principle of this verse remains, a day set apart for rest, worship and devotion to God, while the law of the seventh day given to Israel finds its fulfilment in Christ. They gather for worship on the Lord’s Day, Sunday, in remembrance of Christ’s resurrection and the new creation that began with it. Others keep the seventh day itself, the day God blessed here. Both agree that God blessed a day of rest, and that the true rest of his people is found in Christ.
The rest that remains in Christ
God’s finished work of creation looks ahead to another finished work. The one by whom all things were created (Colossians 1:16) is the one who said on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30). By his death and resurrection Christ completed the work of redemption, and now “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Creator who brought the first creation to its end brings the new creation to its completion too.
Jesus is “Lord also of the sabbath” (Mark 2:28), and he gives the rest the seventh day pointed to: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). It is rest from the burden of sin and from striving to earn righteousness by our own works, and he adds that his yoke is easy and his burden light (Matthew 11:28–30).
Hebrews 4 takes up God’s rest on the seventh day and speaks of it to us: “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9–10). The whole passage urges God’s people to enter that rest by faith (Hebrews 4:1–11). The rest that “remaineth” (Hebrews 4:9) is ours by trusting in Christ’s finished work, as God rested from his.
Living by the rhythm God made
God finishes what he begins. The world he made was complete and very good, and the salvation Christ won on the cross is just as complete. You can trust him with your life and with the whole course of history, because his plans are thorough and good, and he brings them to their end.
The seventh day also shows that work has its bounds by God’s own design. God set an end to his work and rested, and he blessed a day of rest for the people he made. Your worth in his sight rests on his love, apart from all you produce, so setting time aside for worship and rest is a way of trusting his provision. When your work is done, you can stop, thank him for what he has given, and enjoy it with his people. Above all, you can rest in Christ’s finished work, ceasing from the effort to earn what he has already accomplished, and look forward to the rest that remains for the people of God.
Genesis 2:1 This verse
“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished,”
“Thus” gathers up all six days of Genesis 1. “Finished” is kâlâh, to end or complete, and the work stands complete as God had pronounced it very good.
“and all the host of them.”
Everything that fills the sky and the earth in its ordered multitude, from the stars above to every living creature below.
Genesis 2:2
“And on the seventh day”
The day after the sixth, set apart from the days of making, and named twice in this verse.
“God ended his work which he had made;”
The same verb as “finished” in verse 1. On the seventh day God’s work stood at its end.
“and he rested on the seventh day”
shâbath, to cease or rest, the root of the word Sabbath. God ceased because the work was done, with his strength as great as ever (Isaiah 40:28).
“from all his work which he had made.”
“All” takes in the whole of creation. His rest is from the work of creating, and his care for what he made goes on (John 5:17).
Genesis 2:3
“And God blessed the seventh day,”
God gives his favour to a day and makes it a source of good for his creation.
“and sanctified it:”
He sets it apart as holy and his own, distinct from the six days of work.
“because that in it he had rested from all his work”
God’s own rest is the reason for the blessing, and the same reason is given for the Sabbath command at Sinai (Exodus 20:8–11).
“which God created and made.”
Two verbs that together sum up all of God’s work, from the heavens to every living thing.
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