A BROTHER writes: "I am often inquired of by the caviler, what God did on the seventh day in ending his work. I reply that he made the Holy Sabbath."
We remark that there would be nothing for the caviler to cavil at, in Gen. ii, 2, if we had a correct rendering of the passage. The Bible Unionists, now engaged in the revision of the Scriptures, remark on this passage, "The work of creation was evidently completed on the sixth day, and the seventh was devoted to rest. It should therefore have been translated, 'On the seventh day God had ended his work.'"
By other eminent critics the word translated "ended," is rendered "had finished." Thus the London Quarterly Journal of Prophecy. See also the Cottage Bible. This would show that when the seventh day commenced the work of creation was complete, thus agreeing with all other portions of the sacred record. We may therefore set it down as a fact that God performed no part of his labor of creation on the seventh day, but that according to the record everything was finished on the sixth day, and God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good." The following note from Dr. Adam Clarke's Commentary is worthy of particular notice:
"On the seventh day God ENDED, &c. It is the general voice of Scripture, that God finished the whole of the creation in six days, and rested the seventh; giving us an example that we might labor six days, and rest the seventh from all manual exercises. It is worthy of notice, that the Septuagint, the Syriac and the Samaritan, read the sixth day instead of the seventh; and this should be considered the genuine reading, which appears from these versions, to have been originally that of the Hebrew text. How the word sixth became changed into the seventh, may be easily conceived from this circumstance. It is very likely that, in ancient times, all numerals were signified by letters, and not words at full length. This is the case in the most ancient Greek and Latin MSS. and in almost all of the rabinical writings. When these numeral letters became changed for words at full length, two letters nearly similar might be mistaken for each other: vau stands for six, zain for seven; how easy to mistake these letters for each other, when writing the words at full length, and so give birth to the reading in question!"