Genesis 2:3

3 and he blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; for in that day God ceased of all his work which he made of nought, that he should make. (and he blessed the seventh day, and made it holy; for on that day God ceased from all his work which he had made out of nothing, that he had intended to make.)

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Genesis 2:3 Meaning and Commentary

Genesis 2:3

And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it
A day in which he took delight and pleasure, having finished all his works, and resting from them, and looking over them as very good; and so he pronounced this day a good and happy day, and "sanctified" or appointed it in his mind to be a day separated from others, for holy service and worship; as it was with the Jews when they became a body of people, both civil and ecclesiastical: or this is all said by way of prolepsis or anticipation, as many things in this chapter are, many names of countries and rivers, by which being called in the times of Moses, are here given them, though they were not called by them so early, nor till many ages after: and according to Jarchi this passage respects future time, when God "blessed" this day with the manna, which descended on all the days of the week, an omer for a man, and on the sixth day double food; and he "sanctified" it with the manna which did not descend at all on that day: besides, these words may be read in a parenthesis, as containing an account of a fact that was done, not at the beginning of the world, and on the first seventh day of it; but of what had been done in the times of Moses, who wrote this, after the giving of the law of the sabbath; and this being given through his hands to the people of Israel, he takes this opportunity here to insert it, and very pertinently, seeing the reason why God then, in the times of Moses, blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it, was, because he had rested on that day from all his works, ( Exodus 20:11 ) and the same reason is given here, taken plainly out of that law which he had delivered to them:

because that in it he had rested from all his work, which God
created and made;
which shows, that this refers not to the same time when God blessed and hallowed the seventh day, which was done in the times of Moses, but to what had been long before, and was then given as a reason enforcing it; for it is not here said, as in the preceding verse, "he rested", but "had rested", even from the foundation of the world, when his works were finished, as in ( Hebrews 4:3 ) even what "he created to make" ^F5, as the words may be here rendered; which he created out of nothing, as he did the first matter, in order to make all things out of it, and put them in that order, and bring them to that perfection he did.

FOOTNOTES:

F5 (twvel-arb) "creavit ut faceret", V. L. "creaverat ut faceret", Pagninus, Montanus.

Taken from John Gill's Exposition of the Bible

Genesis 2:3 In-Context

1 Therefore heavens and earth be made perfect, and all the ornament of those. (And so the heavens and the earth, and all their ornaments, were finished.)

2 And God [ful]filled in the seventh day his work which he made; and he rested in the seventh day from all his work which he had made; (Yea, God finished his work by the seventh day; and so he rested on the seventh day from all the work which he had done;)

4 These be the generations of heaven and of earth, in the day wherein the Lord God made heaven and earth, (These be the generations, or the creation, of the heavens and the earth, in the days when the Lord God made the heavens and the earth,)

5 and each little tree of [the] earth before that it sprang out in [the] earth; and he made each herb of the field before that it burgeoned. For the Lord God had not (yet) rained on the earth, and no man there was that wrought the earth (and there was no man yet to work the earth);