Since I have always read the short account of God’s rest on the 7th day of creation fairly literally, it has always puzzled me.<\/p>\n\n\n
Was He worn out? Did he need a tall glass of lemonade to sip while He reclined under one of the trees He created?<\/p>\n\n\n
In reading up on Old Testament background recently, I came across an interpretation that makes a lot more sense to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Some scholars take “resting” to be a divine activity reserved for temples. In other words, God creates the earth for the purpose of inhabiting it as a deity inhabits a temple.<\/p>\n\n\n
So He isn’t resting in a hammock. He’s on a throne.<\/p>\n\n\n
This would explain why days 1 through 6 end with “And there was evening and there was morning”, but that phrase does not reappear for day 7. God continues to this day to “rest” in this deeper sense.<\/p>\n\n\n
That makes sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
So that means the command to observe the Sabbath is more than the cessation of work. It’s about humans joining God in His rest, acknowledging His presence and His rule.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Intentionally.<\/p>\n\n\n
At least once a week.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since I have always read the short account of God’s rest on the 7th day of creation fairly literally, it has always puzzled me. Was He worn out? Did he need a tall glass of lemonade to sip while He reclined under one of the trees He created? In reading up on Old Testament background […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9167,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166\/revisions\/9167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}