God rests — NOT! (Gen 2:2)
Reading through the story of creation
He sabbathed — on the seventh day — from all the work He had done.
וַיִּשְׁבֹּת֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י מִכָּל־מְלַאכְתּ֖וֹ אֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשָֽׂה׃
As I’ve written earlier, one of the reasons I started this blog is that, for me, there’s no substitute for careful reading of a text. Some people can grasp the big picture and memorize the details; I must work through them myself. I’ve spent enough decades reading the Bible that I know some parts of it quite well and have a grasp of some of the larger themes running through it and which biblical voice might have said them. But it’s important to keep working at it in order to keep learning. So here is a reminder, from the intellectual autobiography of the late E. P. Sanders, of what we’re doing here:
THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON OF MY LIFE
You really know what you learn for yourself by studying original sources.
That’s what I’m doing as well; you’ll see later on in this post some of what prompted me to repeat this now. And thanks for studying them with me. If you are finding it worthwhile, do please click the buttons below to share and/or subscribe.
Now, we rejoin our originally scheduled program.
וַיְכַ֤ל אֱלֹהִים֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י מְלַאכְתּ֖וֹ אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשָׂ֑ה
וַיִּשְׁבֹּת֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י מִכָּל־מְלַאכְתּ֖וֹ אֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשָֽׂה׃
Today we’re finishing Gen 2:2. The first line above is the beginning of the verse, which was covered in our previous post. Underneath, in the original Hebrew, is the rest of the verse as translated at the top of this post. You can see from the Hebrew — even if you cannot read it — that the two halves of the verse are quite repetitive. (Apologies that Substack doesn’t let me right-justify it or space it to make the comparison easier.)
The first half uses the subject אֱלֹהִים֙ after the verb (remember we are reading Hebrew from right to left), and the second half of the verse omits the subject, relying for its subject on the 3rd masculine singular built into the verb form; in English translation, I have added the pronoun “He” to match it.
בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י ‘on the seventh day’ follows in both halves of the verse.
Both halves conclude with מְלַאכְתּ֖וֹ אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשָׂ֑ה ‘His work He had done’.
The second half of the verse emphasizes מִכָּל mikkol ‘from all’ the work He had done.
With those slight exceptions, the two halves of the verse follow the same pattern:
First, God finished the work He had done.
Then, He sabbathed from all the work He had done.
Both of these things happened on the seventh day.
Now we turn to the following question: What does it mean to “sabbath” as a verb? It is common to see this verb translated as “rested,” but that is not an accurate translation. It may have been influenced by the Enuma Elish, where the creation of humanity gives the gods a chance to rest while humanity does the heavy lifting, something we may need to talk more about when we get to v. 5.
Literally, the verb שׁבת means to cease, to stop doing something. For example, as the Pharaoh says to Moses and Aaron in Exod 5:5, when they request to take the Israelites into the wilderness to offer sacrifice:
You would have them cease [וְהִשְׁבַּתֶּ֥ם] their labors!
And in fact, this same verb is the one used in Modern Hebrew for going on strike.
God, however, is not on strike. But he has also not merely stopped working. Though our text does not tell us yet again that “there was an evening and there was a morning,” the verse reminds us twice, and v. 3 will do so again, that this is the seventh day …
… and the seventh day is a sabbath to YHWH your God. [Exod 20:10]
The two words, the verb שָׁבַת shavat and the noun שַׁבָּת shabbat, are certainly different (look closely), but it cannot be a coincidence that God finishes his work and then does this verb. This verse and the next are telling us that the Sabbath, which was and remains such a distinctive feature of Jewish life, is built into the cosmos. To steal the line about Isaac Newton and gravity, the Sabbath is not just a good idea. It is the law — a law of nature.
The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament says of this verb:
שׁבת: Although it has been suggested that there is some connection between the verb and the substantive [noun] שַׁבָּת it is nevertheless disputed whether the substantive is to be derived from the verb, or whether the substantive is primary and the verb is to be regarded as denominative.
But this misses the point.
The etymological relationship between the noun “Sabbath” and the verb shavat meaning “to cease work” is not really at issue here, nor is the history of the word shabbat or of that day on the Israelite/Jewish calendar. What’s at issue here is something explained by my teacher Stephen Geller:
The Bible makes religious meaning through literary rather than ideological and theoretical means.1
I consider thinking through these literary means one of my most important tasks as a scholar of the Bible.
One more thing is worth noting. Resting on the Sabbath — doing the verb שָׁבַת on שַׁבָּת — is mentioned in five biblical verses: with regard to the “Sabbath of Sabbaths,” that is, the Day of Atonement, and also with regard to the sabbatical years during which the land of Israel is not supposed to be worked agriculturally. These are what we call today shmittah years. All these references comes from Leviticus 23-26 (along with one reference to a Leviticus passage in 2 Chr 36:21).
These chapters come from the portion of Leviticus that scholars have named the Holiness Code (H for short) — and my own feeling is that H is the priestly voice that is telling us this first version of the creation story as well. Israel Knohl, in his breakdown of the priestly sources in his book The Sanctuary of Silence, does not agree. I suppose it is possible that even if H was the voice that put the Pentateuch together, this particular passage might not have demanded any particular changes from (what I take to be) the later priestly perspective of the Holiness Code as compared to the earlier priestly sources. This is one of the things I’m hoping to learn more about as we proceed.
Next time, we’ll continue with v. 3 and what might be called the apotheosis of the seventh day.
“Sabbath and Creation: A Literary-Theological Analysis,” in David gavra tava: Studies in Honor of David Marcus, Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society Special Supplement, 30.