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Philo reads God's rest on the seventh day as a claim that God never stops creating, since creating is what God does the way burning is what fire does. In John, Jesus defends healing on the Sabbath with a similar interpretation.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Philo, Allegorical Interpretation 1:5
Classical
For God never leaves off making, but even as it is the property of fire to burn and of snow to chill, so it is the property of God to make: indeed far more so, since He is the source of action for all other things. Moses, moreover, does well to say “caused to rest” and not “rested”; for He causes to rest what appears to be making but is not actually at work, but He Himself never ceases making. For this reason Moses adds after “He caused to rest” the words “from what He had begun.” For while things produced by human arts stand still when finished and remain as they are, the products of divine skill, when completed, begin to move again; for their endings are the beginnings of other things, as the end of day is the beginning of night, and the beginnings of a month and of a year must naturally be regarded as the limits that close the months and years just past: birth, again, comes about through the decay of other things, and decay through fresh births, showing the truth of the saying: Nothing born will ever die, Its severed parts together fly, And yield another shape.
Date: 20–50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
John 5:17
New Testament
15 Now because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began persecuting him. 16 So he told them, “My Father is working until now, and I too am working.” 17 For this reason the Jewish leaders were trying even harder to kill him because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was also calling God his own Father, thus making himself equal with God.
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Notes and References
“... On Gen 2:2 (“God rested on the seventh day from all his work”), Philo remarked in Leg. 1.3, “God never ceases to create, but as it is proper for fire to burn and snow to cool, so God also creates. And this is all the more so because he is the reason for action for all the rest.” ‖ Rabbinic explanations of Gen 2:2 are as follows: Genesis Rabbah 10 (8A): R. Levi (ca. 300) said in the name of R. Yose b. Nehorai (ca. 250), “As long as the hands of their Creator were busy with them, they (the works of creation) extended further and further. But when the hands of their Creator departed from them, they were given rest. And on the seventh day, he gave rest to his world.” ...”
Strack, Hermann L., and Paul Billerbeck
A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Midrash, Volume 2: Mark through Acts
(pp. 896-897) Lexham Press, 2022
* 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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