How can the Bible say God was refreshed if he never gets weary?
Upvote:2
On the seventh day, he ceased
The Hebrew word used in Ex 31:17 (as well as Ge 2:2-3, 8:22; Ex 5:5, 12:15, 16:30, 23:12, 31:17, 34:21; Lev 2:13, 23:32, 25:2, 26:6, 26:34-35; De 32:26, ...) is שָׁבַת (shabath, 7673, to cease, desist) not the word used for sleep or rest. I don't think you could claim that the writer of the Pentateuch was contradicting himself since he used this very phrase in other places.
You may well ask about the meaning of "and was refreshed," which (given the greater understanding of God we can get from Scripture) wouldn't mean that God took a nap and woke up full of energy. It is the clear testimony of the Scripture that God doesn't need to sleep or rest, nor that he gets tired. So what could this mean? Perhaps God was "refreshed" in the sense that he was pleased how he had created the world (and established the idea of a sabbath rest). Perhaps this anthropomorphism is prescriptive of how the Jews were to respond to a Sabbath day.
Upvote:5
The simplest explanation is that God did not literally rest, but simply that he "rested from creating." From a Christian perspective, God did not rest, in the sense that he stopped doing anything, on the seventh day. In fact, he was then very active in his relationship with Adam and Eve, and all the rest of humanity.
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