Introduction

One day I was at Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park in London, and after listening to one of the better known Muslim propagators, I pointed out an error he made when speaking about Jesus Christ. Like many of the propagators there, he was not able to reply or acknowledge he may have been wrong, but simply changed the subject. He invited me to come to the front of the crowd, and asked me whether I believed the Bible to be the word of God, this I confirmed. To this he replied that the God of the Bible cannot be the true God, because such a god portrayed by the Jewish and Christian scriptures is one who tires after six days of creative effort, he quoted the following verse from the book of Exodus to support his point.

"In six days the LORD made the heaven and the earth, on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed" Exodus 31:17 (Al Taurat)

The two interpretations

Indeed the Bible does testify that God rested after completing the creation of the heavens and the earth, thus far the propagator was correct. Was he correct however in his further exegesis of this verse? To be fair we shall consider the two possible interpretations that can be used to understand what God did when the creation process was finished.

The biological Interpretation

Rest is something can happen as a result of becoming fatigued or out of breath, it is something we do at least once a day in the form of sleep. As a consequence of resting, we may also eat some food and have a drink which would refresh us and which may abate our tiredness. This interpretation I have called biological because could be applied to things that breathe, and function in such a way as to require regular top ups as life progresses. This interpretation, it may not surprise you, was the one used by the propagator at Hyde Park.

The non-biological Interpretation

I have named this the non biological interpretation, as it can not only be applied to biological beings but also to non biological beings. In this context the verb rest means simply to cease the current action or event. For example my parents would say to me something along the lines of "would you give that music a rest?", which can be simply be translated as "turn off that cassette player". So this can also be applied to the creation account that on the seventh day God simply rested or ceased the creation process.

A refreshing point

"Ah!" replied the Muslim propagator, and held aloft a can of coke and said, "but God was refreshed" and went onto explain how God must have been physically tiered in order to have been refreshed, pointing to the can of coke as a example of physical refreshment.

Again the propagator made the same mistake, as we can also apply the non-biological interpretation to the word refresh. If we look at the construction of the word we can break it up into two components re and fresh. The word fresh in the thesaurus refers to new modern, contemporary or recent. So the word refresh indicates that something has become new or contemporary, indeed that is what happened once God had completed the creation process, transforming a void into a whole system populated by planets and stars. One of the first things a person does when they have completed some sort of building/construction project, is to takes a step back to bring the whole thing into perspective and then surveys the completion their work which is a refreshing/new experience as this is the first time they can view the sum of their works.

Keeping Consistent

So there are two possible interpretations for the verse mentioned in the verse from Exodus (al Taurat). The only honest and logical way to find out which interpretation is correct, is to find out what interpretation the rest of the Bible presents us with. Are we given a picture of a God who is easily fatigued and subject to human frailties? The answer is a definite no, consider the following verses;

"Don't you know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God; He never grows tired or weary." Issiah 40:28 (al Taurat)

"The protector of Israel never doses or sleeps. The LORD will guard you: he is by your side to protect you." Psalm 121 (al Zaboor)

These verses from the Bible clearly tell us that God is not one who is fatigued or tiered. So if we are to be true to the word of God then only one interpretation will apply, namely that the verse in Exodus (al Taurat) indicates that God simply ceased creating as he had accomplished all he had set out to do.

Conclusion

Before we proceed in summing up, it is worthwhile noting that the words used to described God's actions are anthropomorphism's which simply means that they are words in our language that give us a human understanding of God, but do not qualify as being human attributions to God. For example both the Bible and the Qur'an describe God speaking, when God speaks however, he does not require a voice box, larynx, lungs etc. in order to produce speech, and it would be ridiculous to argue therefore that God has a throat and a pair of lungs. So in summing up, we need to be careful that we do not make the mistake of attributing human features to God when we are applying human understanding.

Thanks to Brother Lacinitus for his original document that covered this subject.