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Hi, I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to episode #6 of Context for Kids, where I teach you a lot of cool stuff that most adults don’t even know. This week’s episode is called “And God Rested.” But this doesn’t happen in chapter one, even though it is at the end of the Creation story.
2 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Well, what’s up with this being in chapter two instead of being the end of chapter one? Well, I’ll tell you a secret. Okay, so it isn’t a secret. It’s just something that most people don’t know. There were no chapters at all in Genesis until 1227, which is almost eight hundred years ago! That means that when Jesus was reading from the scrolls in the synagogues in Capernaum and Nazareth, there were zero chapters and definitely no verses. There were also no pages! They would unroll a scroll and really had to know their stuff to be able to find things. If you have never seen a Torah scroll from a modern synagogue, you ought to go look one up online. They are very big. Other books had their own scrolls, but first and second Samuel used to be just one big scroll and the same goes for first and second Kings and first and second Chronicles. Ezra and Nehemia were together and I am pretty sure that Jeremiah and Lamentations were also combined. If you had a scroll of the entire Hebrew Scriptures, then no one would be big and strong enough to carry it around. And they were all handwritten too!
But they had no chapters and no verses. As I said before, the chapters are less than eight hundred years old. Jesus lived two thousand years ago, and Moses lived 3500 years ago. Verses in Genesis never happened until Rabbi Nathan invented them in 1448, less than six hundred years ago. And the chapters of the New Testament were divided up into verses in 1551 in a Greek version. That’s still less than five hundred years ago. Although it seems like it was a long time ago, really compared to how old the Bible is, it’s not long at all.
So, all that just means that the Chapters and Verses weren’t original and weren’t created by God. People put them in so that it would be easier to find things. I think it is one of the greatest inventions of all time, actually. I can’t even imagine having to find stuff without them. But, because the chapters were created by people, sometimes it is a puzzle why they begin and end where they do. In fact, there are quite a few places where Christian and Jewish Bibles are different and a verse that is at the end of one chapter in a Christian Bible might be in the next chapter of a Jewish Bible instead. All the verses are still there, but because people made decisions about what should go where, there are some changes in chapter location. But, since the Bible didn’t originally have the chapters and verses, even with the differences it is still very helpful.
But this is one of the puzzling places where verses don’t seem to be in the right chapter. Those three verses, to me, clearly belong in Genesis chapter one because they are the end of that story. But, when the people who made the chapters and verses divided everything up, they didn’t know what I am going to teach you today about what it means for God to work six days and then rest on the seventh. When Moses was telling the ancient Israelites this story in the wilderness, they would have known and now we know too because of archaeology. For them, today’s ancient archaeology was real life! We dig up an ancient coin and put it in a museum but to them, that coin was something to buy food with or a goat. We find an old earring and we are just amazed and people show pictures of it on the news but at one point it was just hanging in the ear of someone long forgotten. And all the stories in the cuneiform tablets that we laugh at and think how silly they were to believe such things—like the sun being a huge glowing boat that Ra sailed across the sky—that was normal to people, even to people who didn’t believe it. So, when we read the Bible, it is important to think of what they knew and what they didn’t know. They didn’t know that the sun was a huge ball of hot plasma almost a million miles away. They thought it was exactly the same size as our moon, which is teeny tiny in comparison. The moon just looks the same size because it is closer but they had no way of knowing that at the time. Normal to them seems silly and backward to us because we don’t have the same context. Remember that context is whatever is normal to you that you figure everyone else knows too. Context is what makes an inside joke funny but what also makes a foreign language confusing. We have to learn someone else’s context to see things the same way they see them and to understand what they are and aren’t saying.
Now, these Israelites 3500 years ago had heard the stories all their lives about gods and their temples. There were a whole lot of gods in Egypt! Something we see in some of those cuneiform tablets I told you about are stories about gods getting their temples all ready. They would build the Temple and put all the furnishings inside it and prepare the priests and the altar and all that, and then they would “rest.” And it would take the gods six days to fix up their Temple the way they wanted it, and on the seventh day they would “rest” in it. So, if you were one of the ancient Israelites listening to Moses tell the creation story, when you heard that God rested on the seventh day you would know something very important—you would know that God set up the world so that He could be King over the universe and over all of us. That’s because that word rest meant for a god to live in his or her Temple with their people all around them. But for you to understand that I will have to explain ancient Temples and how they worked—what exactly they meant to those Israelites in the desert listening to Moses tell them the stories that God shared about Himself.
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-ziggurat-2353049
https://www.historyonthenet.com/ziggurats-and-temples-in-ancient-mesopotamia
Okay, close your eyes and imagine this. In Mesopotamia, which is to the east of Israel, in the modern-day regions of Iraq and Iran, they had huge buildings called ziggurats which is totally a funny name, I know. They were very tall with outer walls that were sloped, looking sort of like a pyramid with it’s top cut off. Unlike the Pyramids, which were made of huge cut stones, the ziggurats were made with sun baked clay bricks—but don’t think these were small bricks because they weighed 33 lbs each. And there was a huge stairway going right up the side, also built of bricks. Once you reached the top of that level, there was another stairway going up onto a new level, and then a third. Sometimes there were as many as eight levels, and at the very top there was a beautiful square temple, gleaming in the sun. That’s where they thought their god would come down to earth. Not just any god because they worshiped a lot of them, but the patron god who specifically took care of their city. And no one could go up there except for the priests. The priests were like the servants at a palace because that is how they saw their god, as the king who ultimately protected their city. The human king was just his representative on earth. If you remember last week’s teaching about what it means to be made in God’s image, then you will understand when I tell you that only the king or queen was thought to be the image of the pagan gods. No one else was important enough. What a different story than the Bible tells, that all of us were created in God’s image!
So just think of all those levels and this huge building rising into the sky with the beautiful temple on top and that’s where they thought their god lived, between heaven and earth. And all the priests scurrying around, doing everything they could to feed the god, to take care of the idol, or statue, of their god. Wanna hear something funny? They actually treated the idol like it was really their god. They would put it to bed at night and get it up in the morning. They would give it a bath and pour perfumed oil on its head and feet. They would dress it up in fancy clothes and they would make really fancy meals for it. Then at night they would put the idol to bed again and start all over again the next day. It was a thankless job—because—the idol can’t talk…nevermind. Although the priests did get to eat whatever the idol left behind. They believed that the spirit of the God would eat the spirit of the food and leave all the yummy physical stuff behind. (Jeremiah 10:1-9 actually describes these idols and how they were manufactured. So does Isaiah 44:9-20)
And the people of these cities would hear the stories of their gods and how, after the Temple had been built, they would make it livable, into a home, by filling it with furniture and people over a six day period of time and then, when everything was finally all ready, on the seventh day the god would descend from heaven and make that temple up on top of the ziggurat his or her home. The god would rest there, not to sleep but in order to reign as a king. Although their gods did sleep too. And somewhere on the ground was the human king’s dinky little palace that probably looked like an outhouse in comparison. But the people would hear this story and they would feel safe because they believed that their god had made his or her home with them and was watching over the city to protect it from invaders. But that god in that ziggurat temple could only protect just that one city because remember, their gods weren’t all that powerful and they weren’t good at doing too many things at once. I mean, they needed humans to take care of them so they wouldn’t starve!
The ancient Israelites knew all these stories too and possibly believed them after so many years in Egypt. God had to show them how different He was from all these fake gods of Egypt and Babylonia and Canaan so that they would love and trust Him completely. So, God told them His story about creating and filling, not a dinky little temple that was made by people, but the entire heavens and earth. And just like those fake stories about pagan gods who could only manage to furnish and fill a Temple in six days, He created everything we see around us on earth and in the ground and the waters and the sky and in outer space. And those fake gods created people to be slaves and to serve them. God told the Israelites that He created people and served them by providing everything they would need to life a good life full of blessings. And when God told them that He rested on the seventh day it would have blown their ever-loving minds.
You see, this God isn’t just a god of one city or one people or one country or one anything. He doesn’t rule over just one dinky little city and the people in it. He rules over all the heavens and all the earth. The whole earth is His ziggurat and the heavens above are His Temple where he sees not just one city, but everything created.
Of course, once God allowed a permanent Temple to be built for Him, He didn’t have them put it up on a Ziggurat built of bricks by men but up on a mountain that He created, Mt Zion. That’s what ziggurats were supposed to be—mountains. But the real Creator God doesn’t need anyone to build him a mountain! David understood this, and in I Chronicles 28:12 David tells us that the Holy Spirit gave him God’s plans for exactly how to build His Temple on Mt Zion. But David also wrote Psalm 24 because David understood the ancient beliefs about gods living on the top of mountains but David knew there was only one God. And when he talks about God building on the waters, that’s right out of the creation story.
The earth and everything in it belong to the Lord. The world and all its people belong to him. (Here David isn’t giving any credit to any other god for anything, even the people who worship false gods belong to our God) 2 He built it on the waters. He set it on the rivers. (That’s right out of Genesis because when God started creating, all that existed were the waters) 3 Who may go up on the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy Temple? (Remember, in the ziggurat, only the priests could go up on top of the manmade mountain of sun-baked bricks) 4 Only those with clean hands and pure hearts. They must not have worshiped idols. They must not have made promises in the name of a false god. (wow, this means that anyone, rich or poor, old or young, male or female, slave or free, Israelite or gentile could go up to Mt Zion and worship God as long as they worshipped Him alone) 5 It is they who will receive a blessing from the Lord. The God who saves them will declare them right. 6 They try to follow God. They look to the God of Jacob for help. Selah 7 Open up, you gates. Open wide, you aged doors. Then the glorious king will come in. 8 Who is this glorious king? The Lord, strong and mighty. The Lord, the powerful warrior. 9 Open up, you gates. Open wide, you aged doors. Then the glorious king will come in. 10 Who is this glorious king? The Lord of heaven’s armies—he is the glorious king. Selah (ICB)
But both David and this Temple would be far into the future from here. The Israelites were still stuck in the wilderness where they camped for forty years. They had seen some amazing things when God plagued Egypt but now He was telling them that He wasn’t just bigger than Egypt, He was bigger than the whole Universe.
Let’s look at our verses again:
2 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Everything was finished, and God was telling them that, in a way, the whole Universe was His Temple because that’s how big and awesome and powerful He is. And on the seventh day, God made the entire universe His home from where He would watch over His special creation of people because he wanted to be their one and only king. He wanted to be their protector and provider, something all those false gods could never really do but thinking they were there made people feel better. So, God stopped creating—and He began running the universe He had carefully and lovingly created. Because it was good. Everything worked just the way it should. It was perfect for people and animals and it was a peaceful place because no one was killing anyone and no one was even eating meat—not even lions and tigers. And God blessed this seventh day. Blessings are cool. When God blessed the seventh day, He made it holy. He made it different forever.
The seventh day is important. There is even a commandment about it in Exodus 20: 8 “Remember to keep the Sabbath as a holy day. 9 You may work and get everything done during six days each week. 10 But the seventh day is a day of rest to honor the Lord your God. On that day no one may do any work: not you, your son or daughter, or your men or women slaves. Neither your animals nor the foreigners living in your cities may work. 11 The reason is that in six days the Lord made everything. He made the sky, earth, sea and everything in them. And on the seventh day, he rested. So the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
On the Sabbath, we remember that God created everything in the universe. We stop working, stop achieving, stop trying to get ahead and get rich. We stop demanding that other people do things for us. We stop and honor God and trust Him that working six days a week is enough. Even our animals get a rest but I can tell you that that is all my cats ever do. They are like living in a perpetual, unending sabbath, geez. And my dogs aren’t much better!
Jesus had a lot to teach us about the Sabbath too. On the Sabbath, He went to the local synagogue and read from the Bible and worshipped God. If someone had a demon in them, He booted it to the curb. He healed everyone who was sick and He fixed everyone who had disabilities. My son has had three surgeries over the past two months, two on his head and one on his lungs and I would just love to go to a church and see Jesus there to fix everything once and for all! Sometimes, mean leaders would come after him and accuse him of doing something wrong when He healed people but He told them that the Sabbath is a blessed day and people should be blessed on it! After the Exodus, God freed the slaves from their life of working day in and day out, seven days a week, just to make Pharaoh happy. He showed who He is when He did that. He showed that the Sabbath is a wonderful day of freedom celebrating the fact that He alone is king over all the universe.
Jesus said that no one should be enslaved on the Sabbath—not to Pharaoh or to disabilities or sickness or demons. He told the mean leaders that it would be wrong to leave people like that and it wouldn’t be a right action on God’s holy day when He wanted everyone to be able to celebrate with full and happy hearts. Jesus always showed the people who God is in all of His actions. God never created us to be sick or hurting, but our sins over the thousands of years since Creation have piled up and sometimes innocent babies are born with terrible problems. In Jesus’s day, most of the Jews, His own people, were very poor and malnourished. Jesus got angry because most of the rich people weren’t helping them at all. God’s laws in the Torah were meant to protect people who were hurting and who were sick and poor and being trampled by powerful people but the leaders had lost sight of all that. God wanted His people to be saved from all of that. When Jesus went around healing people on the Sabbath, He was showing them how much God loves them and wants good for them—just as much as when He created the Heavens and the Earth and then created us so that He could be with us as our God and King of the Universe.
Jesus showed us what it means to truly rest on the Sabbath day. We meet with others to read the Bible and worship God and learn more about Him but it is all empty if we refuse to do good things for people who need help. I always have a funny story I tell about the Sabbath. It’s a made-up story. So, in this story, who is honoring God’s holy day?
A family’s car is broken down on the side of the road on the Sabbath. It’s morning but it’s in Texas in July so it’s already super-hot and because they can’t start the car there is no air conditioning. The baby is screaming and the kids are whining. Another family drives by and rolls down their window and says, “I’d like to help but it’s the Sabbath so I can’t. I will come by tomorrow and if you are still there I will help you then.” Fortunately, another family comes by and they stop and the man takes off his suit coat and rolls up his sleeves, and starts helping fix the car. The kids come and invite the other set of kids to play in the park by the side of the road and the mom from the second car holds the screaming baby to give the baby’s mom a break. The second family is late for services but they don’t leave until the original family is safely on the road again. So, who kept the Sabbath? The family who avoided work but refused to do a good deed or the second family, who worked hard to do what was right? The second family of course, because they showed mercy and love to the family who was in need.
I love you. I am praying for you. I hope you have a wonderful week studying the Bible with the people who love you.