How does rest influence the seven days of creation?

Sometimes we need to take a break. And if we really need one and don’t take it, God might tell us to lie down in green pastures. I’ve been there. Done that. And apparently, needed to do it again. And that got me to a day of rest. Actually, a time of rest. Which leads to: Was it seven days of creation? Or seven creation days? Ever since the beginning, the two things are tied together. That begs the question, how does rest influence the seven days of creation?

How does rest influence the seven days of creation? is article #1 in the series: In The Beginning. Click button to view titles for the entire series

Between the image and the idea of resting, and the title, the verses below might come to your mind.

Ps 23:1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

Ps 23:2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,

The Lord, green pastures, and quiet/still waters.

It’s something that comes to me when things are anything but green and quiet and I need a break from things.

For those who may not be familiar with the 23rd Psalm, here’s the whole thing.

Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

Ps 23:1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

Ps 23:2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,

Ps 23:3 he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.

Ps 23:4 Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

Ps 23:5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.

Ps 23:6 Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.

I still have trouble with the first part of verse 5. You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies. I don’t feel a need for that. I guess it’s an Old Testament thing maybe. It feels kind of embarrassing, like having a celebration to gloat over people who were my “enemies”.

Sometimes God wants us to take a break

The 23rd Psalm tells us at least part of the reason for taking a break. That is, taking a break with God to be in His presence.

• he restores my soul.
• He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
• I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
• your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
• Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
• and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

That’s a lot of good stuff.

Lie down in green pastures when we need to rest

Nine weeks ago I wrote It’s week three of radiation treatment – time to be thankful.

The treatments ended four weeks ago.

Believe it or not, even though I wrote that, I didn’t really “do” it.

Not completely anyway.

I was thankful for how well things seemed to be going. “Seemed”, because as of the time of writing this, it’s still two more months before I get results on how effective the radiation was.

But, there’s more to this Psalm than being thankful.

Actually, way more. And that’s the part I missed.

And it’s a big, even huge, part. Let’s see what I mean.

Seven “days” of creation.

OK – the seven “days” of creation. Notice, I put “days” in quotes. Why? Because the Bible wasn’t written in English. It was originally in Hebrew. And the Hebrew word doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a 24-hour day. That, and some other things in “The Beginning”, indicate something very different. Something referred to in some Jewish tradition as a creation day.

For more info on the seven days of creation and the “creation day”, please check out Is evolution a concept from Satan? in adjacent the inset box.

I point that out for a couple reasons.

First, I don’t want to lose people who disagree with the literal 24-hour days of creation who might just leave the page if I insist on that. In fact, quite the opposite.

I do believe God could have created everything in six 24-hour days, and made it appear to be billions of years old. Even Hollywood did that in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan with the Genesis Planet.

However, given the evidence we have to draw our own conclusions, either God took billions of years to create everything in our universe, or He made the Genesis planet thing work out a whole lot better than the Star Trek people.

Either way, the point I’m after by bringing in creation is actually to look at the seventh “day”. The day of rest. You may remember how that went.

The Beginning

…
Ge 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

Ge 2:2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

…

Question: did God really need to rest? Does God just take a break every now and then? Let the world go on while He takes a quick nap? Is that really what happened on the 7th day?

I don’t think so. And I certainly hope not! So much for God being in control and watching over us if He just grabs a few winks now and again. Especially if a “day” is the creation day definition!

It’s hard to find a Christian explanation of those two verses that merges in Jewish thought on a creation day. Of all the resources I have, no Christian authored books contain it. However, it is Jewish Scripture, written in their language, so I find it impossible to just ignore it.

To that end, in an attempt to get something to talk about God not taking a break, and not adding in things that don’t really belong there, here’s what I chose to include.

… and he rested on the seventh day—not to repose from exhaustion with labor (see Is 40:28), but ceased from working, an example equivalent to a command that we also should cease from labor of every kind.  ¹Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (Vol. 1, p. 18). Logos Research Systems, Inc.

For completeness, here’s Isaiah 40:28

Comfort for God’s People

Isa 40:28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.

… blessed and sanctified the seventh day—a peculiar distinction put upon it above the other six days, and showing it was devoted to sacred purposes. The institution of the Sabbath is as old as creation, giving rise to that weekly division of time which prevailed in the earliest ages. It is a wise and beneficent law, affording that regular interval of rest which the physical nature of man and the animals employed in his service requires, and the neglect of which brings both to premature decay. Moreover, it secures an appointed season for religious worship, and if it was necessary in a state of primeval innocence, how much more so now, when mankind has a strong tendency to forget God and His claims?  ²Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (Vol. 1, p. 18). Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Rest , Seven days of creation, and Seven days of the week

I’ve written about Creation Days before, but I’m going to merge the main thoughts into this piece. That’s because of the link between rest and the way the events of creation are given in Christianity. However, we must remember that “our” Old Testament is actually Jewish scripture first.

We saw above the beginnings of how rest and creation got started. It’s the tie-in between the Sabbath and a day of “rest” for God.

Of course, God didn’t actually rest. He still watched over things. Did things to keep things going, although maybe not in the same fashion as the first six “days”, whatever that “day” might be.

In some ways, the analogy carries over for us as well. It’s not like we stay in bed all day every seven days to get some rest. No one, that I know of, advocates doing this either. And yet, there is this concept of a day of rest for Christians. That day of rest, ideally from a Christian viewpoint, also includes going to church. In theory.

So where does this all come from and how does it fit together? More important, how does rest and the comparison between God and people influence what we read about creation? Not to mention, why does this matter?

Conclusion – How does rest influence the seven days of creation?

So that’s an overview of what we’re going to look at in this series, In The Beginning.

I know, the resting part comes at the end of the passage we often see titled “The Beginning”. It’s not even in Chapter 1 of Genesis. It’s the start of chapter 2. It seems like a transition from one thing to the next.

So as we go through the series, either by verse or by phrase, keep in mind these concepts of transitioning and of rest.

As we go through Chapter 1, we’ll take a look at each individual thing. That includes the seven days of creation. Or, worded differently, and with a very different interpretation, the seven creation days.

Also, as we g through it, we need to ask ourselves, do we even want to believe it? Do we want to believe in God? In God’s inspired word, which is asking do we even want to believe God?

So, that’s the goal. And I believe if we keep those two things in mind – transitions and rest – we will find that science and the Bible tell us of the same events. That the conflicts are from people who want to prove their view is right, at the expense of the other view.

However, if we take away what’s essentially a selfish point of view, we may see that, with the limited knowledge we have and as much as we can understand, both of them say the same things.

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Footnotes

• 1
  Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (Vol. 1, p. 18). Logos Research Systems, Inc.
• 2
  Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (Vol. 1, p. 18). Logos Research Systems, Inc.