Hyperliteral → Literal Report (Prototype) — P#3 (Genesis 2:1–3)
Group 1: The text itself
1. Words
1.1 Homographs including homonymous homographs
צְבָאָם (ṣĕbāʾām, “their host”): can denote army/host, heavenly bodies, or service/array depending on context.
שָׁבַת (šābat): verbal root “cease/stop” (not necessarily “rest” as recuperation); later lexical field overlaps with “Sabbath” terminology (noun usage elsewhere).
1.2 Polysemic words
וַיְכֻלּוּ / וַיְכַל (kll): “be finished / finish,” with range including completion, bringing to an end, ceasing.
מְלָאכָה (mĕlāʾkāh): “work” broadly (labor, task, craftsmanship, productive activity).
בָּרָא (bārāʾ): “create,” often construed as divine creative act; semantic range debated across contexts (but minimally: “bring into being / create”).
עָשָׂה (ʿāśâ): “make/do,” wide functional range; overlaps with “create” in some contexts but not identical in usage patterns.
קָדַשׁ (qdš): “sanctify / make holy / set apart,” can be construed as consecrating or treating as holy.
בָּרַךְ (brk): “bless,” semantic range includes endowing, favoring, empowering, etc.
יוֹם (yôm): “day,” but can function as calendar day or broader time-period depending on construal.
1.3 Morphological ambiguity
בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי (“on/in the seventh day”): prepositional phrase permits straightforward temporal reading (“on the seventh day”) but also admits discourse-level construal (“by the seventh day / when the seventh day arrived”), which interacts with the well-known “completion day” tension (see §6).
- אֲשֶׁר בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים לַעֲשׂוֹת: infinitive construct לַעֲשׂוֹת can be read with different attachment/force:purpose/result nuance (“which God created to make/do”),or a summarizing idiom (“which God created and made/did”), depending on how one treats the clause as a fixed collocation versus a more compositional syntax.
2. Multiword lexical units (MWLUs)
2.1 By primary exegetical function
2.1.1 Idiomatic theological / conceptual units
הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ (“the heavens and the earth”): meristic totality formula (“everything” framed as cosmic total).
יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי (“the seventh day”): fixed temporal-designator that functions as a conceptual unit across the three verses.
2.1.2 Metaphorical / imagistic idioms
וַיִּשְׁבֹּת (“and he ceased”) applied to God: anthropomorphic/anthropopathic framing (cessation from “work” expressed in human terms).
2.1.3 Technical cultic / legal phrases
וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֹתוֹ (“and he sanctified it”): consecration language that readily maps to later cultic/legal registers (without asserting dependence).
2.1.4 Discourse-pragmatic expressions
כִּי (“because/for”) introducing rationale in v3: discourse connector marking explanation/ground.
2.2 By morpho-syntactic profile
2.2.1 Construct chains and genitive MWLUs
כָּל־צְבָאָם (“all their host”): genitive relation (“host of them”).
מְלַאכְתּוֹ (“his work”): pronominal genitive.
2.2.4 Nominal / adjectival multiword units
בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי (“on the seventh day”): preposition + definite noun phrase functioning as a stable temporal unit.
מִכָּל־מְלַאכְתּוֹ (“from all his work”): preposition + quantified NP (often repeated as a fixed frame).
2.4 By semantic transparency for readers
2.4.1 Transparent but culturally specific
“blessed the seventh day”: transparent lexically, culturally specific in what “blessing” a day entails.
“sanctified it” (the day): transparent “set apart,” culturally specific in cultic/social entailments.
3. Deixis — words that take meaning from context
3.3 Temporal deixis
“the seventh day”: temporally deictic within the narrated sequence; depends on prior day-counting in Gen 1.
“on/in the seventh day … on/in the seventh day … the seventh day”: repeated temporal anchoring.
3.4 Discourse deixis
כִּי (“because/for”) points to the immediately preceding proposition as the warrant for blessing/sanctifying.
3.5 Social deixis
אֱלֹהִים (“God”) as a title rather than a personal name: social/register marking (divine referent, formal narration).
4. Figures of speech: classical
4.1 Figures of Speech
4.1.1 Schemes (figures of arrangement and sound)
Repetition (epanalepsis / anaphoric recurrence)
Repeated reference to “the seventh day” (vv. 2–3) and “his work” functions as deliberate emphasis through recurrence rather than ornament.
Parallel phrasing (syntactic parallelism)
Balanced clauses: finished → ceased → blessed → sanctified, arranged in a measured sequence that marks completion and transition.
Asyndetic listing (limited)
Serial verbs without heavy connective load heighten a sense of ordered finality.
Inclusio (envelope closure)
The completion statement (“were finished”) frames the end of the creation sequence, functioning as a closing seam to the prior days’ pattern.
4.1.2 Tropes (figures of meaning)
Merism
“The heavens and the earth” signifies totality (the whole cosmos), not two discrete items.
Anthropomorphism / anthropopathism
God is said to cease/rest from work—human modes of activity applied analogically to divine action.
Metonymy (institutional)
“The seventh day” stands for a structured temporal order endowed with special status.
Catachresis (mild)
Sanctifying a day transfers a category usually applied to persons/objects into the temporal domain.
4.2 Figures of Thought
Completion → cessation logic
The text reasons implicitly: completion warrants cessation. This is a conceptual figure structuring the narrative’s argument.
Consecration by rationale
The day is blessed/sanctified because of divine cessation—reasoned grounding rather than mere assertion.
Temporal valuation
Time itself is treated as a bearer of qualitative distinction (ordinary vs. sanctified).
4.3 Images
4.3.1 Image
Divine craftsman ceasing from labor
God is imagined as a worker who stops upon completion, providing a concrete mental picture for abstract completion.
4.3.2 Symbol
The seventh day
Symbolizes completion, fullness, and ordered time distinguished from ordinary succession.
4.3.3 Archetype
Sacred rest after ordered activity
An archetypal pattern: productive action followed by cessation that confers meaning on the whole.
4.3.4 Motif
Rest / cessation motif
Introduced here as a narrative motif that recurs later in canonical discourse about sacred time and rhythm.
Blessing–sanctification motif
The pairing of blessing and sanctification marks a recurring conceptual bundle.
4.3.5 Type / antitype
Type: primordial sanctified time
The seventh day functions typologically as an originating instance of consecrated time.
Antitype (canonical, not asserted here)
Later sanctified-time observances stand as correspondences to this primordial pattern, without the pericope itself asserting the mapping.
5. Structural
5.1 Canonical patterns
- Repetition / refrain-like recurrence“seventh day” (threefold in vv2–3).“his work” / “from all his work” (clustered recurrence).
- Closure formulav1 (“finished”) functions as a closing seam to the creation sequence.
- Reason clause structurev3: blessing/sanctifying + because (grounding rationale).
6. Sources of ambiguity
“Finished on the seventh day” tension: whether the completion is located on day seven or construed by day seven (interaction of syntax, discourse construal, and translation decisions).
שָׁבַת (cease vs rest): whether the verb should be rendered “ceased,” “rested,” or a mixed sense (“ceased/rested”) depends on whether one treats it as pure cessation or as Sabbath-framed “rest.”
Object of sanctification: אֹתוֹ (“it”) refers back to “the seventh day,” but the semantics of sanctifying a time-unit varies with cultural/conceptual framing.
אֲשֶׁר בָּרָא … לַעֲשׂוֹת: attachment of לַעֲשׂוֹת (“to do/make”) affects whether the clause is read as purpose (“created to do/make”) or as a summarizing idiom (“created and made”).
Group 2: The context
7. Presupposition and conventional implicature
7.1 Lexical presuppositions
“ceased/rested from all his work” presupposes prior “work” has occurred (within the narrated frame).
“blessed” presupposes a target that can be treated as recipient of blessing (here, a day).
“sanctified” presupposes a set-apart distinction being instituted (or recognized) relative to other days.
7.3 Conventional implicatures
כִּי (“because/for”) conventionally signals that what follows supplies an explanatory ground for what precedes (v3).
9. Genre and form-critical constraints
9.1 Genre-driven expectations
Pericope function as a formal closure to the preceding creation sequence: completion + cessation + consecration.
Etiological potential (text-internal): explains/grounds the special status of the seventh day within the narrative logic (without claiming later legal codification).
9.2 Speech-act patterning by genre
Declarative narration with embedded evaluative/consecratory acts (blessing/sanctifying) presented as performed by the divine actor.
10. Intertextual and canonical echo
10.2 Thematic and typological patterns
Sabbath/rest sanctification motif: later canonical texts reuse the “God worked → ceased → seventh day” logic (notably in Sabbath rationales); this pericope is the archetypal narrative kernel for that motif.
11. Communicative situation and speaker role
11.1 Speaker and addressee roles
Narrator reports divine action; no direct speech.
Addressee is implicit (text presented for an audience receiving narrated cosmological/temporal ordering).
11.2 Liturgical / communal vs. individual settings
The pericope readily supports communal time-ordering (day sanctification) as a narrative anchor; whether it is read as liturgical warrant or purely narrative closure depends on reader posture and downstream canonical framing.
