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Genesis 2 leaves the interpretive possibility that God finished some of his work on the seventh day, which would violate the Sabbath. Jubilees corrects this to say creation was completed explicitly in six days, leaving the seventh day entirely for rest.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 2:2
Hebrew Bible
1 The heavens and the earth were completed with everything that was in them. 2 By the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been doing. 3 God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work that he had been doing in creation.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 2:1
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
1 And the angel of the presence spoke to Moses according to the word of the Lord, saying: Write the complete history of the creation, how in six days the Lord God finished all His works and all that He created, and kept Sabbath on the seventh day and made it holy for all ages, and appointed it as a sign for all His works. 2 For on the first day He created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all the spirits which serve before him — the angels of the presence, and the angels of sanctification, and the angels [of the spirit of fire and the angels] of the spirit of the winds, and the angels of the spirit of the clouds, and of darkness, and of snow and of hail and of hoar frost, and the angels of the voices and of the thunder and of the lightning, and the angels of the spirits of cold and of heat, and of winter and of spring and of autumn and of summer and of all the spirits of his creatures which are in the heavens and on the earth, (He created) the abysses and the darkness, evening and night, and the light, dawn and day, which He has prepared in the knowledge of his heart.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Reviewing and fleshing out the account of the creation in Genesis 1, the angel starts off with the flat assertion that in six days the Lord God completed all His works: This explicitly rules out the possibility that God’s creation might have continued on into the seventh day, as would seem to be implied by Genesis 2:2, “On the seventh day God finished His work …” In fact, Jubilees here appears to be “correcting” Genesis 2:2 ..."
James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 29.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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