When Did God Finish Creation?

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The first chapter of Genesis describes how God created heaven and earth and all that is therein, ending with the glorious fashioning of humankind on day six. Then, in Genesis 2:1, we read that “The heaven and the earth were finished; and all their array.” It is a bit surprising, therefore, to read the following statement in the very next verse: “On the seventh day God finished the work which He had been doing” (Genesis 2:2).

If the work of creation had been completed during the first six days, what was God doing finishing His work on the seventh day? Wasn’t the seventh day supposed to be a day of rest?

The problem becomes all the more perplexing because we are told in two other places in the Five Books of Moses (the Pentateuch) that God created everything in six days.

According to the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:11), the Children of Israel are commanded to refrain from work on the seventh day because:

“ … in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.”

In concluding the detailed prescriptions for building the Tabernacle in the desert, God tells Moses that the Israelites should observe the sabbath because it is a sign for all time between Him and His people that

“ … in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He ceased from work and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:17).^a

This is not a problem in all Bibles. For example, if you look at Genesis 2:2 in the New English Bible, you will read, “On the sixth [rather than the seventh] day God completed all the work he had been doing.”

The Hebrew Bible’s use of “seventh” in the first half of Genesis 2:2 is one of the oldest cruxes in the biblical text. The New English Bible, as well as a number of other English translations, solves the problem by following the earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible—the third-century B.C. rendition into Greek—known to scholars as the Septuagint.¹ But any translation that adheres to the so-called Masoretic, or received Hebrew text, tells us in Genesis 2:2 that God finished his work of creation on the seventh day.

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Exegetes throughout the ages have attempted a number of explanations to resolve the problem, but none seems entirely satisfactory.

One ancient rabbinic source known as the Sayings of the Fathers (Pirke Avot) relates that ten things were created by God at dusk on the eve of the Sabbath; that is, at a time that seemed to belong neither (or both) to the day that preceded nor (or) to the night that followed (Sayings of the Fathers 5:9). Developing this line of thought, the great medieval Jewish sage known as Rashi (an acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Ben ltschak) suggested that God was busy creating right down to the wire on the sixth day, and it would only appear to human onlookers of less-than-perfect perception that He worked on the Sabbath day.

Apparently recognizing that this was not a wholly satisfactory solution, Rashi also gave a second explanation: Rest was created and came into the world on the seventh day, thus completing the work of creation. Such an important thing as rest, Rashi says, could not have been in existence when God was at work—and the world was obviously not completed without it! Note how Genesis 2:2 continues after the passage on which we have been focusing:

“On the seventh day God finished the work which He had been doing, and He ceased [or 014desisted] on the seventh day from all the work which He had done.”

In support of Rashi’s suggestion we could properly translate the verse: “God finished his work on the seventh day by desisting on the seventh day from all His work which He did.” This very legitimate translation emphasizes that the actual cessation of God’s work was considered a recognizable, substantial event necessary for the world to be complete.

Rashi’s suggestion that rest was created on the seventh day has been taken up by the 20th-century scholar and theologian Gerhard von Rad,² who, however, does not give credit to Rashi or his followers. Instead, von Rad cites as a parallel the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish. This epic does not end with Marduk’s creation of the world; creation is followed by an equally important event without which the world would not be complete—the building of Babylon and proclamation of Marduk as king of the gods. According to von Rad, God’s creation of rest on the seventh day parallels the building of Babylon and the proclamation of Marduk as king of the gods. Not pointed out by von Rad is the fact that Babylon is conceived of as a resting place for gods ascending and descending between heaven and the netherworld.

Still another solution has been suggested by Umberto Cassuto, in his well-known commentary to the first 11 chapters of Genesis.³ He points out that in Biblical style we often find new events introduced by the expression ‘and X completed/finished doing Y (old event) and he did Z (new event).’ So we find, for instance, “And Jacob finished [wayekhal] his instructions to his sons, and he drew his feet into the bed …” (Genesis 49:33; see also, Genesis 17:22; Exodus 34:33, 40:33 for other examples). The sentence means, “When Jacob finished giving his instructions to his sons, he drew his feet into the bed.” On the basis of analogy to such sentences, Cassuto suggests translating Genesis 2:2:

“And since God was finished on the seventh day with His work which He had done, He abstained on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.”

Unfortunately, although the parallel is close, it is not exact, for in all the examples cited or alluded to by Cassuto there is no case in which the word wayekhal is followed by a designation of time specifying the day after the completion of the completed action. It is doubtful that the Hebrew really has the meaning Cassuto attempts to attribute to it.

There is also one other possibility: The difference in Hebrew between “sixth” (hashishi) and “seventh” (hashebi‘i) is slight, thus facilitating a scribal error. At one point, “sixth” could have become “seventh” as a result of an error by a scribe copying the text, and this error could simply have persisted when recopied—until it made its way into the standard Hebrew text. It is even possible that ancient translations, such as the Septuagint, which read “sixth” instead of “seventh,” worked from Hebrew texts that still retained the original reading, “sixth.” We could therefore emend the Masoretic text and restore the original reading, and by such means eliminate the whole problem.

However, this possibility was early repudiated by the rabbis. According to the rabbis quoted in the Talmud, the change from “seventh” to “sixth” was intentionally introduced by the translators of the Septuagint.

Modern scholars, as well, for the most part also reject the view that the original Hebrew text read “sixth” instead of “seventh.” They do so not on dogmatic grounds in an effort to uphold the received Hebrew text at all costs, but because they honestly regard the change from “seventh” to “sixth” as a transparent effort to fix up what seems to be an obvious contradiction. That is why most English Bible translations still read “seventh” instead of “sixth.”

Although no wholly satisfactory solution to the problem has been proposed, one thing seems certain: Although God created the heavens and the earth and all their hosts in only six days, he did not desist on the Sabbath from creating exegetical cruxes!

The first chapter of Genesis describes how God created heaven and earth and all that is therein, ending with the glorious fashioning of humankind on day six. Then, in Genesis 2:1, we read that “The heaven and the earth were finished; and all their array.” It is a bit surprising, therefore, to read the following statement in the very next verse: “On the seventh day God finished the work which He had been doing” (Genesis 2:2). If the work of creation had been completed during the first six days, what was God doing finishing His work on the seventh […]