"... Readers perceive themselves advancing from one day to the next, learning the details of Creation and the logic behind it. Naturally, then, this path leads to the final stage, which is the Creator’s rest once his work has ended. The writer or editor chose the materials for his new story from the versions within the traditions at hand, or even from a familiar epic. This new story is designed to announce an additional creation connected with the seventh day, namely, resting after six days of work. This perception that cessation from work is a kind of creation arises from the phrasing ‘On the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing’; and it is not written that he finished his work on the sixth day, or at least at the end of the sixth day. (In the Samaritan Version, the Septuagint and the Peshitta it is the sixth day. Compare also Jubilees 2:2, 16, as well as Talmudic and Midrashic attempts to confront this difficulty by describing the Holy One as one who ‘entered by a hair’s breadth’ (b. Megillah 9a; Genesis Rabbah 10:10 and Rashi’s commentary on this verse). The ancient versions, the Sages and the commentators who followed them, in contrast to the Masoretic text, have in mind the pragmatic halakhic problem of Sabbath observance, hence the centrality of separating the days from what was done on each day) Hence the Masoretic version prepares the basis for the oxymoronic concept of activity that is cessation, and thus hints at the creation of the Sabbath as a new entity that is cessation of any type of work ..."