Genesis 2:3 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

God blessed the seventh day, by conferring special honours and privileges upon it above all other days, that it should be a day of solemn rest and rejoicing and celebration of God and his works, and a day of God's bestowing singular and the best blessings upon his servants and worshippers. He separated it from common use and worldly employments, and consecrated it to the worship of God, that it should be accounted a holy day, and spent in holy works and solemn exercises of religion. Some conceive that the sabbath was not actually blessed and sanctified at and from this time, but only in the days of Moses, which they pretend to be here related by way of anticipation. But this opinion hath no foundation in the text or context, but rather is confuted from them; for as soon as the sacred penman had said that God had ended his work and rested, & c., he adds immediately in words of the same tense, that God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it. And if we compare this place with Exodus 20:8-11, we shall find that Moses there speaks of God's blessing and sanctifying of the sabbath, not as an action then first done, but as that which God had done formerly upon the creation of the world, to the end that men might celebrate the praises of God for that glorious work, which as it was agreeable to the state of innocency, so was it no less proper and necessary a duty for the first ages of the world after the fall, than it was for the days of Moses, and for the succeeding generations. Because he would have the memory of that glorious work of creation, from which he then rested, preserved through all generations. Which God created and made; either, 1. Created in making, i.e. made by way of creation; or rather, 2. Created out of nothing, and afterwards out of that created matter made or formed divers things, as the beasts out of the earth, the fishes out of the water. He useth these two words possibly to show that God's wisdom, power, and goodness was manifest, not only in that which he brought out of mere nothing, but also in those things which he wrought out of matter altogether unfit for so great works.