What Does Exodus 20:11 Mean?
For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and settled on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and set it apart.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.THE KEY
The act of stopping and the Sabbath day share one Hebrew root, so cessation itself belongs to creation’s design.
THE MEANING
Your time is not measured only by what you produce. The created rhythm includes both work and stopping; that stopping is blessed and set apart. The seventh day speaks of a life in which cessation belongs to the order of creation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that stopping is wasted time: the verse gives the day of stopping blessing and distinction.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁבֹּת
vayishbot
GROWS FROM
שבת
Cease, stop, desist.
The verb for the LORD’s stopping and the name of the Sabbath grow from the same root. English gives us “rested” and “sabbath,” while Hebrew lets us hear the stopping in both: cessation is woven into creation’s rhythm.
ALSO GROWS
Shabbat: Sabbath; the day of cessation.
שַׁבָּת
The day’s name carries the same root as the act of stopping, joining the day itself to the rhythm it marks.
shevitah: Cessation or stoppage.
שְׁבִיתָה
This related form makes the root’s concrete sense of stopping visible, illuminating the Sabbath as a marked cessation.
וַיְקַדְּשֵׁהוּ
vayqaddeshehu
GROWS FROM
קדש
Set apart, make distinct.
“set it apart” in this verse is vayqaddeshehu. The day is not only a pause; it is marked as distinct. The same root describes what is set apart and the place set apart for it, so sacred distinction can belong to time as well as space.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart; distinct.
קָדוֹשׁ
This adjective names the quality given to the day: it is marked as distinct within the week.
miqdash: Sanctuary; a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
The related word applies the same root to a place, showing how the language of setting apart can mark both space and time.
THE PATTERN
In the created order, stopping is a bounded part of work, and its blessing extends beyond the worker.
And God blessed the seventh day and set it apart, for on it he had stopped from all his work which God had created and made.Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall stop, that your ox and your donkey may settle, and the son of your handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed.He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.THE THREAD
It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for the ages, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and took breath.The same Hebrew root, שבת (shavat, “cease”), names the seventh-day stopping here and in Exodus 31:17. There, the stopping is paired with being refreshed, presenting cessation as part of the created rhythm.
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