Rest, temple and fellowship with God

As Solomon prepares to build the temple, he connects temple building and rest (1 Kings 5:4), a link also made by David earlier (2 Sam 7:1) and mentioned even before Israel entered the promised land (Deut 12:8-12). On one level, this is practical; when a country is fighting for existence, there is no time for grand building projects. However, there is a deeper and symbolic connection between rest and temple, rest and God dwelling with His people that is worth exploring further.

God’s rest after creation

Rest goes back to creation, when God rested on the seventh day (Gen 2:2-3). The verb from which Sabbath is derived means ‘to cease, stop’ (i.e. from work). Significantly, there is no marker at the end of the seventh day (the last one is at day six, Gen 1:31), so that Sabbath rest continues indefinitely. In other words, God enters rest and stays in it. However, rest cannot mean inactivity because God has not abandoned His creation. He continues to maintain and uphold it (Col 1:17; Heb 1:3).

The nature of God’s creation work

So what kind of ‘work’ does God cease from? Here, it is helpful to step back and consider how the ancient Near East thought about creation. The creation stories of people around Israel usually involve violent clashes between the forces of chaos and the forces of order. It is as chaos is subdued and overcome that order emerges. By comparison, Israel believed that their God was all-powerful and had no need to do battle with other forces out of His control. Thus, God speaks and what He says happens without opposition to His will. Nevertheless, the biblical creation story likewise focuses on this pattern of creating order and once it is complete, it does not need tinkering with.[1] It is finished.

God starts with an earth that is ‘formless and void’ (Gen 1:1) and through a series of separations He creates living spaces in the air, on the ground and sea (Gen 1:7, 9). Separations are associated with an ordered existence because they involve sorting into neat categories, making a distinction between different entities. The same Hebrew verb ‘separate’ (hiphil bdl) is used of the priests who distinguish between the holy and the common, the clean and unclean (e.g. Lev 10:10; 11:47), so that God’s ordering of creation is described in priestly terms.

God then creates animals (‘according to their kind’, Gen 1:21, 24-25), allocates them to their appropriate living space and assigns them the task to multiply and fill that space (Gen 1:20-22, 24-25). All this speaks of a sorting into an ordered existence. Finally, humanity is given the mandate to rule on God’s behalf as His image-bearers or representatives (Gen 1:27-28). Since the main task of a ruler in the ancient Near East was to maintain order, this again underlines the focus of the passage. Likewise, the repeated affirmation ‘it was good’ is more likely to emphasise functionality rather than moral goodness, so that everything is good because it fits, functions well and is in the right place.[2]

The cosmos as God’s temple

As mentioned above, God’s creative activity is described in terms reminiscent of the priests in the temple, which leads us to another aspect of the creation story. If God is like a priest, then the cosmos is symbolically His temple. This idea of the cosmos as sacred space is shared across cultures in the ancient Near East. It may seem less apparent to us Christian readers, but Israelites would have seen an obvious connection. How the creation story is told suggests that the writer wanted us to perceive God and creation this way. For instance, the word for light (ma’or) referring to the sun and moon (Gen 1:14-15) is only used elsewhere in the Pentateuch of the sanctuary lamp (e.g. Exod 35:14; 39:37).[3] The temple is also described as God’s resting place (Ps 132:14), so when Israelites heard of God’s rest after His creation work (Exod 20:11) they would have connected the cosmos with temple ideas.

Additionally, shrines in the ancient world often had gardens attached to them with water flowing through them, so that the picture of the garden of Eden (Gen 2:9-10) would have evoked the idea of sacred space for Israelites. This is further underlined by the cherub guarding Eden when the human pair is expelled from the garden (Gen 3:24). Notably, palm trees and cherubs appear as temple decorations (e.g. 1 Kings 6:29; Ezek 41:18) and Ezekiel’s temple description includes water flowing from under the threshold of the sanctuary (Ezek 47:1). In keeping with this idea is the description of humanity’s job (they are God’s representatives, after all) in looking after the garden. The commands to work/serve (‘avad; NASB ‘cultivate’) and keep/guard/attend to (shamar) it are also associated with the priesthood serving in the temple (Gen 2:15; e.g. Num 3:8, 18:6-7).[4] Finally, God walking in the garden (Gen 3:8) indicates His presence there; perhaps the most obvious temple clue.

The disruption of rest

Although it is not obvious from English translations, ‘rest’ also applies to humanity. When God puts Adam in the garden, the Hebrew says that ‘He causes him to rest in the garden to work it and keep it’ (Gen 2:15).[5] Once again, rest is not inactivity, but not being involved in a particular type of work. Notably, the consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin is not only the loss of a close and open fellowship with God but also the loss of rest and the arrival of toil and pain as a way of life for both the man and the woman (Gen 3:16-19). Sin undoes the order God has created so that the world no longer functions as it should. That this toil is the opposite of rest is evident from the hope expressed in Noah’s name, which comes from the root for ‘rest’ (nuaḥ) because ‘this one will give us rest [lit. ‘comfort us’] from our work and from the toil of our hands’ (Gen 5:29). Noah could not fulfil the hopes attached to him because human work and effort can never resolve the problem of sin. Rest can only come from being in fellowship with God.

The pattern of God’s intervention, His presence and rest in Israel’s story

As the biblical story continues with Abraham’s line and the creation of God’s people, we again see the problem of hard toil, this time in Israel’s experience of slavery in Egypt. It is only God who can redeem them from it so that they might serve the living God as royal priests (Exod 19:6). Once the relationship is solemnised in the covenant (Exod 24:3, 7-8), Israel is called to build a tabernacle, so that God may dwell among them (Exod 25:8). Significantly, the instructions about the tabernacle end in the command of the sabbath rest, a sign that it is God who sanctifies them (Exod 31:12-13, 17). Fellowship with God is closely connected with rest. Yet, once again there is disruption through sin when the golden calf is worshipped (Exod 32:1), which jeopardises God’s presence with His people (Exod 33:3). Moses intercedes and initially God promises to be with Moses and give him rest (singular ‘you’ in Exod 33:14), but at Moses’ insistence, the Lord relents and will not withdraw His presence from Israel after all (Exod 33:15-17). As the actual tabernacle building begins, Israel is once again reminded of the Sabbath rest (Exod 35:2).[6]

However, this phase is only a foretaste of what is to come when Israel settles in the land and is given rest from their enemies, the time when God is going to dwell among them in a permanent temple (Deut 12:10-11). It is this stage that both David and Solomon refer to. God gives rest from enemies (1 Kings 5:4). Once again, rest is not inactivity because Israel will work the land and Solomon will continue to rule and govern, but the qualitatively different work of creating a settled life will have already been done by God. Through His work, everything is ordered and functions well and the forces that cause disruption and chaos (‘enemies’) are subdued. Nevertheless, human sin is going to disrupt this idyllic rest. When Solomon becomes unfaithful and worships other gods, God raises up enemies against the kingdom once more (1 Kings 11:4, 14, 23).

Humanity’s larger story from sin to rest

Israel’s story foreshadows the larger story of salvation offered to all humanity. Only God can redeem from the toil of slavery and bring us into His rest, because He sanctifies us. Jesus calls people into this rest (Matt 11:28-29) and it is what the author of Hebrews describes using Israel’s story as a paradigm (Heb 3:12-18; 4:1-11). Israel was called into God’s rest symbolically by coming into the land and into a settled, ordered existence, secure from enemies. However, the people did not believe that God could bring them in and they died in the wilderness (Num 14:1-4, 22-23; Hebrews quotes from Ps 95:7-11). God’s rest can only be entered into by faith, i.e. by trusting in God’s power to do it. Only then can we stop toiling to put things right by our own efforts because we know He has done it! Once again, such rest is not inactivity but involves serving Him in fellowship again. So we come full circle as God restores life to what it was always meant to be.

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[1] Incidentally, it is worth noting the different perspective here from our modern concerns that focus on the material aspects of creation. John Walton in particular argues that ancient cosmologies were more interested in describing the functional part of creation, i.e. how order was created and functions/roles were assigned to different elements in the created world. He asserts that Israel’s focus was similar to its neighbours in this respect, though of course the biblical worldview is markedly different in the way it understands God as sovereign and all-powerful. John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009).

[2] The Hebrew ‘tov’ can have a wide variety of meanings just like the English word ‘good’ from moral goodness to something that functions well. Since the context is so strongly about ‘order’ in Genesis 1, understanding ‘good’ in functional terms seems to me to fit better here, though of course God did not create anything that is evil. This functional understanding of ‘good’ is argued by several commentators. Walton, for instance, suggests that we can get a sense of what ‘good’ means by looking at what is ‘not good’ in the creation story, namely for the man to be alone (Gen 2:18). This is not a moral issue but one of functionality, of not operating according to purpose. John H. Walton, Genesis, NIVAC (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 115.  

[3] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, WBC 1 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1987), 22.

[4] Commentators routinely point out this connection. See e.g. Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, NAC 1A (Nashville: B&H, 1996), 209-10.

[5] As in English, the Hebrew ‘to rest’ can mean ‘to alight, settle’ (e.g. Gen 8:4), so the English rendering in Genesis 2:15 as ‘to put/place’ makes good sense, especially as ‘work’ is involved (though not creation work). The parallel verse (Gen 2:8) uses the more usual word for ‘to place’ (sim), which may be another reason why the translators decided on a similar term in v.15. Nevertheless, using a word that includes ‘rest’ in its root is illuminating.

[6] Brevard S. Childs, among others, notes this connection between temple building and sabbath rest. The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary, OTL (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1974), 541-42.

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