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The Sabbath of Creation
v. 1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them. The actual work of creation had been done in six days, all the created beings in heaven and earth, angels, birds, animals, and men, all organic and inorganic matter having been called into being, and men, beasts, and plants having been endowed with the power to reproduce their own kind.
v. 2. 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. The work of creation did not extend into the seventh day, but was finished at sundown of the sixth day, which marked the beginning of the seventh. God devoted the seventh day to rest after the creative activity of the preceding days. Not that God was tired out, or that He now turned from the world to devote Himself entirely to the enjoyment of the bliss of heaven, but that the work of creation was finished.
v. 3. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made. In the blessing of the seventh day as a day of rest for Himself and as a type of the great Sabbath of heaven, Heb_4:4, God blessed the entire creation, for His blessing is an imparting of the powers of salvation, of mercy, and of peace. And He hallowed, or consecrated, the day, appointing it for His own rest and intending that the peace of the Sabbath should rest upon the world until the eternal Sabbath would continue this rest, Heb_4:9. There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God. God, literally, created His works to make, His divine activity remains in the world in the form of preservation, of providence.