Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, on which you must not do any work—neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant or livestock, nor the foreigner within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.
And by the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on that day He rested from all His work.
Significance
The fourth commandment explicitly recalls the creation account: "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth... but on the seventh day He rested" (Exod 20:11), directly echoing Genesis 2:2. The Decalogue's own verb for God's seventh-day rest is נוּחַ (nuach, H5117, "rested"), not Genesis 2:2's שָׁבַת (shabat, H7673) — though the command's noun שַׁבָּת (shabbat, H7676) carries the same root — and it adds that the LORD בֵּרַךְ (berak, H1288, "blessed") the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy (the Piel of קָדַשׁ, qadash, H6942) — language drawn from Genesis 2:3. The cluster "blessed · sanctified · seventh · day" (H1288 + H6942 + H7637 + H3117) occurs together in only these two verses of the Hebrew canon (Gen 2:3; Exod 20:11). This is a marked verbal parallel rather than a verbatim quotation, and it grounds Israel's Sabbath obligation in the creation order itself: because God structured the world around a seven-day pattern culminating in rest, Israel must imitate its Creator. The commandment transforms the creation narrative from descriptive theology into covenant law.
Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Allusion (a marked verbal parallel, not a verbatim quotation)
