2. on the seventh day] Some misunderstanding arose in very early times in consequence of these words. Jealous for the sanctity of the Sabbath, men said, “No, not on the seventh day, but on the sixth day, God finished the work of creation.” So we find “on the sixth day” is the reading of the Samaritan, the LXX, and the Syriac Peshitto. The mistake was not unnatural: it was not perceived that the conclusion of work was identical with the cessation from work. God wrought no work on the seventh day; therefore, it is said, He brought His work to an end on the seventh day. The reading, “on the sixth day,” may be dismissed as an erroneous correction made in the interests of keeping the Sabbath. All reference to the sixth day was concluded in ch. Genesis 1:31.

his work] LXX τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ, “his works.” The same Hebrew word as in the Fourth Commandment, Exodus 20:9, “all thy work”; it denotes not so much the “result” of labour, as its “process,” or “occupation.” Driver renders by “business.”

rested] LXX κατέπαυσε = “ceased,” Lat. requierit. Heb. shâbath has strictly the sense of “ceasing,” or “desisting.” It is this thought rather than that of “resting” after labour, which is here prominent. Elsewhere, the idea that God rested on the seventh day, is more directly expressed, e.g. Exodus 31:17, “And on the seventh day he (the Lord) rested (shâbath, ‘desisted’) and was refreshed.” The idea of “cessation” from the employment of the six days suggested the conception of “rest,” which is mentioned, both in Exodus 20:11; Exodus 31:17, as the sanction for the observance of the Sabbath. Rest in the best sense is not idleness, but alteration in the direction of activity.

Verse 2. - And on the seventh day God (Elohim) ended his work which he had made. To avert the possibility of imagining that any portion of the seventh day was consumed in working, which the English version seems to favor, the LXX., the Samaritan, and Syriac versions insert the sixth day in the text instead of the seventh. Calvin, Drusius, Le Clerc, Rosenmüller, and Kalisch translate had finished. Others understand the sense to be declared the work to be finished, while Baumgarten and Delitzsch regard the resting as included in the completion of the work, and Von Bohlen thinks "the language is not quite precise." But calah followed by rain signifies to cease from prosecuting any work (Exodus 34:33; 1 Samuel 10:13; Ezekiel 43:23), and this was, negatively, the aspect of that sabbatic rest into which the Creator entered. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. Shavath, the primary idea of which is to sit still, depicts Elohim as desisting from his creative labors, and assuming a posture of quiescent repose. The expression is a pure anthropomorphism. "He who fainteth not, neither is weary" (Isaiah 40:28), can be conceived of neither as resting nor as needing rest through either exhaustion or fatigue. Cessation from previous occupation is all that is implied in the figure, and is quite compatible with continuous activity in other directions. John 5:17 represents the Father as working from that period onward in the preservation and redemption of that world which by his preceding labors he had created and made. Genesis 2:2The Sabbath of Creation. - "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." צבא here denotes the totality of the beings that fill the heaven and the earth: in other places (see especially Nehemiah 9:6) it is applied to the host of heaven, i.e., the stars (Deuteronomy 4:19; Deuteronomy 17:3), and according to a still later representation, to the angels also (1 Kings 22:19; Isaiah 24:21; Nehemiah 9:6; Psalm 148:2). These words of Genesis 2:1 introduce the completion of the work of creation, and give a greater definiteness to the announcement in Genesis 2:2, Genesis 2:3, that on the seventh day God ended the work which He had made, by ceasing to create, and blessing the day and sanctifying it. The completion or finishing (כּלּה) of the work of creation on the seventh day (not on the sixth, as the lxx, Sam., and Syr. erroneously render it) can only be understood by regarding the clauses Genesis 2:2 and Genesis 2:3, which are connected with ויכל by ו consec. as containing the actual completion, i.e., by supposing the completion to consist, negatively in the cessation of the work of creation, and positively in the blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day. The cessation itself formed part of the completion of the work (for this meaning of שׁבת vid., Genesis 8:22; Job 32:1, etc.). As a human artificer completes his work just when he has brought it up to his ideal and ceases to work upon it, so in an infinitely higher sense, God completed the creation of the world with all its inhabitants by ceasing to produce anything new, and entering into the rest of His all-sufficient eternal Being, from which He had come forth, as it were, at and in the creation of a world distinct from His own essence. Hence ceasing to create is called resting (נוּח) in Exodus 20:11, and being refreshed (ינּפשׁ) in Exodus 31:17. The rest into which God entered after the creation was complete, had its own reality "in the reality of the work of creation, in contrast with which the preservation of the world, when once created, had the appearance of rest, though really a continuous creation" (Ziegler, p. 27). This rest of the Creator was indeed "the consequence of His self-satisfaction in the now united and harmonious, though manifold whole;" but this self-satisfaction of God in His creation, which we call His pleasure in His work, was also a spiritual power, which streamed forth as a blessing upon the creation itself, bringing it into the blessedness of the rest of God and filling it with His peace. This constitutes the positive element in the completion which God gave to the work of creation, by blessing and sanctifying the seventh day, because on it He found rest from the work which He by making (לעשׂות faciendo: cf. Ewald, 280d) had created. The divine act of blessing was a real communication of powers of salvation, grace, and peace; and sanctifying was not merely declaring holy, but "communicating the attribute of holy," "placing in a living relation to God, the Holy One, raising to a participation in the pure clear light of the holiness of God." On קדושׁ see Exodus 19:6. The blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day had regard, no doubt, to the Sabbath, which Israel as the people of God was afterwards to keep; but we are not to suppose that the theocratic Sabbath was instituted here, or that the institution of that Sabbath was transferred to the history of the creation. On the contrary, the Sabbath of the Israelites had a deeper meaning, founded in the nature and development of the created world, not for Israel only, but for all mankind, or rather for the whole creation. As the whole earthly creation is subject to the changes of time and the law of temporal motion and development; so all creatures not only stand in need of definite recurring periods of rest, for the sake of recruiting their strength and gaining new power for further development, but they also look forward to a time when all restlessness shall give place to the blessed rest of the perfect consummation. To this rest the resting of God (ἡ κατάπαυσις) points forward; and to this rest, this divine σαββατισός (Hebrews 4:9), shall the whole world, especially man, the head of the earthly creation, eventually come. For this God ended His work by blessing and sanctifying the day when the whole creation was complete. In connection with Hebrews 4, some of the fathers have called attention to the fact, that the account of the seventh day is not summed up, like the others, with the formula "evening was and morning was;" thus, e.g., Augustine writes at the close of his confessions: dies septimus sine vespera est nec habet occasum, quia sanctificasti eum ad permansionem sempiternam. But true as it is that the Sabbath of God has no evening, and that the σαββατισμός, to which the creature is to attain at the end of his course, will be bounded by no evening, but last for ever; we must not, without further ground, introduce this true and profound idea into the seventh creation-day. We could only be warranted in adopting such an interpretation, and understanding by the concluding day of the work of creation a period of endless duration, on the supposition that the six preceding days were so many periods in the world's history, which embraced the time from the beginning of the creation to the final completion of its development. But as the six creation-days, according to the words of the text, were earthly days of ordinary duration, we must understand the seventh in the same way; and that all the more, because in every passage, in which it is mentioned as the foundation of the theocratic Sabbath, it is regarded as an ordinary day (Exodus 20:11; Exodus 31:17). We must conclude, therefore, that on the seventh day, on which God rested from His work, the world also, with all its inhabitants, attained to the sacred rest of God; that the κατάπαυσις and σαββατισμός of God were made a rest and sabbatic festival for His creatures, especially for man; and that this day of rest of the new created world, which the forefathers of our race observed in paradise, as long as they continued in a state of innocence and lived in blessed peace with their God and Creator, was the beginning and type of the rest to which the creation, after it had fallen from fellowship with God through the sin of man, received a promise that it should once more be restored through redemption, at its final consummation. Genesis 2:2 Interlinear
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