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 when the seventh day arrived.
And he rested - not to repose from labour, through exhaustion with fatigue (see Isaiah 40:28), but, simply, he ceased from working; not, however, from the providential government of the world-for that has been carried on with uninterrupted regularity (John 5:17) - nor from all exercise of creative power, but only from the arrangements connected with the introduction of the new system of things He had been establishing in this world.