Genesis 2:3
וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱלֹהִים אֶת־יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֹתוֹ כִּי בוֹ שָׁבַת מִכָּל־מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים לַעֲשֽׂוֹת׃ פ
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיְבָ֤רֶךְ אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־י֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י וַיְקַדֵּ֖שׁ אֹת֑וֹ כִּ֣י ב֤וֹ שָׁבַת֙ מִכָּל־מְלַאכְתּ֔וֹ אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָ֥א אֱלֹהִ֖ים לַעֲשֽׂוֹת׃ פ
καὶ ηὐλόγησεν ὁ θεὸς τὴν ἡμέραν τὴν ἑβδόμην καὶ ἡγίασεν αὐτήν, ὅτι ἐν αὐτῇ κατέπαυσεν ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν ἔργων αὐτοῦ ὧν ἤρξατο ὁ θεὸς ποιῆσαι.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Et benedixit diei septimo, et sanctificavit illum, quia in ipso cessaverat ab omni opere suo quod creavit Deus ut faceret.
Dios bendijo el séptimo día y lo declaró santo, porque en ese día descansó de toda su obra de creación.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y bendijo Dios al día séptimo, y santificólo, porque en él reposó de toda su obra que había Dios criado y hecho.
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on that day He rested from all the work of creation that He had accomplished. Man and Woman in the Garden
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse reports two actions of God toward the seventh day — blessing it and setting it apart as holy — and gives the reason: on that day God rested from all the work he had done. The Hebrew closes with a phrase describing that work as something God "had created to make."
Key words
- y.Va.rekh ("he blessed", H1288) — piel narrative form; the intensive stem marks a deliberate, formal act of blessing directed at the day itself.
- y.ka.Desh ("he set apart as holy", H6942G) — piel narrative form; the same intensive stem as the previous verb, showing the two actions (blessing, sanctifying) as parallel in force and sequence.
- sha.Vat ("he rested", H7673A) — qal perfect; marks completed action, giving the causal reason (ki, "for") for the blessing and sanctifying.
- ba.Ra' ("he had created", H1254A) — qal perfect, same root as Genesis 1:1; refers back to the totality of creative work now finished.
- 'a.Sot ("make", H6213A) — qal infinitive; paired with bara, it describes the work in terms of both creating and making/doing.
What the text says
The sentence is built on two narrative-vav verbs, y.Va.rekh ("he blessed") and y.ka.Desh ("he set apart as holy"), both in the piel stem, both with Elohim ("God", H0430G) as subject. This parallel structure presents blessing and sanctifying as two connected but distinct acts performed on yom ha-shevi'i ("the seventh day"). The causal clause introduced by ki ("for", H3588A) explains why: bo shavat — "on it he rested" — using the qal perfect sha.Vat, indicating a completed state of rest, not an ongoing one.
The final clause, asher bara Elohim la'asot ("which God had created to make"), combines the qal perfect ba.Ra' with the qal infinitive 'a.Sot. This construction — a completed verb of creating followed by an infinitive of making — describes the finished work using two distinct but related verbs, a nuance not always visible when both are rendered by a single term such as "work" or "creation" in translation.
Differences between versions
The Hebrew asher bara Elohim la'asot ("which God had created to make") is rendered in the LXX as ὧν ἤρξατο ὁ θεὸς ποιῆσαι, "which God began to make" — using a verb of beginning (ἤρξατο) rather than one corresponding to bara ("created"). The Vulgate follows the Hebrew more closely with quod creavit Deus ut faceret ("which God created, that he might make"), preserving both the creating and making sense. This produces a divergence: the LXX shifts the completed act of creation in the Hebrew and Vulgate toward a sense of an action that was begun.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.