Genesis 2:2

_AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY GOD ENDED HIS WORK WHICH HE HAD MADE; AND HE RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY FROM ALL_ _ HIS WORK WHICH HE HAD MADE._ And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made. Some commentators render it 'and God had ended,' as if the verb were in the pluperfect tense. But the future is never so used. Instead of "the seventh day," the Samaritan codex, the Syriac and the Septuagint versions, have 'the sixth day'-a change in reading obviously made with a view to avoid inference which the present text seems to imply, that God continued to prosecute his work on "the seventh day." But as that alteration is unsupported by MSS. testimony, the text must be adhered to; and though the language is loose, it is impossible to misapprehend its purport-namely, that by 'God's ending on the seventh day the work which he had made,' is meant that the work was brought to a termination...

2._And he rested on the seventh day _The question may not improperly be put, what kind of rest this was. For it is certain that inasmuch as God sustains the world by his power, governs it by his providence, cherishes and even propagates all creatures, he is constantly at work. Therefore that saying of Christ is true, that the Father and he himself had worked from the beginning hitherto, (102) because, if God should but withdraw his hand a little, all things would immediately perish and dissolve into nothing, as is declared in Psalms 104:29 (103) And indeed God is rightly acknowledged as the Creator of heaven and earth only whilst their perpetual preservation is ascribed to him. (104) The solution of the difficulty is well known, that God ceased from all his work, when he desisted

1-3 After six days, God ceased from all works of creation. In miracles, he has overruled nature, but never changed its settled course, or added to it. God did not rest as one weary, but as one well pleased. Notice the beginning of the kingdom of grace, in the sanctification, or keeping holy, of the sabbath day. The solemn observing of one day in seven as a day of holy rest and holy work, to God's honour, is the duty of all to whom God has made known his holy sabbaths. At this time none of the human race were in being but our first parents. For them the sabbath was appointed; and clearly for all succeeding generations also. The Christian sabbath, which we observe, is a seventh day, and in it we celebrate the rest of God the Son, and the finishing the work of our redemption....

Verse Genesis 2:2. _ON THE SEVENTH DAY GOD ENDED, C._] It is the general voice of Scripture that God finished the whole of the creation in six days, and rested the _seventh_! giving us an example that we might labour _six_ days, and rest the seventh from all manual exercises. It is worthy of notice that the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Samaritan, read the _sixth_ day instead of the _seventh_ and this should be considered the genuine reading, which appears from these versions to have been originally that of the Hebrew text. How the word _sixth_ became changed into _seventh_ may be easily conceived from this circumstance. It is very likely that in ancient times all the numerals were signified by _letters_, and not by words at full length. This is the case in the most ancient Greek and Latin MSS., and in almost all the rabbinical writings. When these n...

- The Seventh Day 1. צבא _tsābā'_ “a host in marching order,” a company of persons or things in the order of their nature and the progressive discharge of their functions. Hence, it is applied to the starry host Deuteronomy 4:19, to the angelic host 1 Kings 22:19, to the host of Israel Exodus 12:41, and to the ministering Levites Numbers 4:23. κόσμος _kosmos_. 2. חשׁביעי _chashebı̂y‛ı̂y_. Here השׁשׁי...

EXPOSITION GENESIS 2:1 THUS THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH WERE FINISHED. Literally, and finished were the heavens and the earth, the emphatic position being occupied by the verb. With the creation of man upon the sixth day the Divine Artificer's labors were brought to a termination, and his work to a completion. The two ideas of cessation and perfection are embraced in the import of _calais_._ _Not simply had Elohim paused in his activity, but the Divine idea of his universe had been realized. The finished world was a cosmos, arranged, ornamented, and filled with organized, sentient, and rational beings, with plants, animals, and man; and now the resplendent fabric shone before him a magnificent success—"lo! very good." This appears to be by no means obscurely hinted at in the appended clause, and all the host of them

AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY GOD ENDED HIS WORK, WHICH HE HAD MADE,.... Not that God wrought anything on the seventh day, or finished any part of his work on that day, because he could not then be said to rest from all his work, as be is afterwards twice said to do; and because of this seeming difficulty the Septuagint, Samaritan, and Syriac versions, read, "on the sixth day". The two latter versions following the former, which so translated for the sake of Ptolemy king of Egypt, as the Jews say a, that he might not object that God did any work on the sabbath day: and Josephus b observes, that, Moses says the world, and all things in it, were made in those six days, as undoubtedly they were; and were all finished on the sixth day, as appears from the last verse of the preceding chapter; and yet there is no occasion to alter the text, or suppose a various reading. Some, as Aben Ezra observes, t...

Genesis 2:1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a...

ANALYSIS AND ANNOTATIONS I. THE CREATION ACCOUNT The manner in which the book of Genesis begins leaves no doubt that it is the revelation of God. The creation account is historical truth. The question is how was it given? An answer to this question claims that the Jews obtained the account from the records of other nations concerning the origin of the universe and that they altered it according to their own religious ideas. This is an impossibility. The ancient heathen nations considered God and the universe one and had absolutely no knowledge of the existence of God independent of the universe, nor did they know anything of a creation of the world. Here is something wholly different from all the theories, mythologies and other inventions of the human race. How then was it given? By revelation of God is the only answer. No human being knew anything about the origin of the heavens and t...

Thus in six days God completed His work of creation, and as He reviewed it He uttered the same verdict on the whole, only in a heightened form (very good and not merely good) that He had uttered on the successive stages. For the whole is not the mere sum of the parts, it is a unity in which these separate parts dovetail into each other and work together in perfect mutual adjustment and co-operation. It is here described as the heaven and the earth. and all the host of them. The host of heaven generally means the stars, though it is sometimes used for the angels, and since the stars were often regarded as animate bodies (_e.g._ Judges 6:20; Job 38:7 *, Revelation 9:1 f.), the transition from one sense to the other was easy. Our author i