"On the seventh day, Hashem completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day ... Hashem blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it He had rested from all his work which Hashem created to make."

Rabbi Meir Leibush Malbim, in his work Eretz Chemdah, takes note of a dichotomy in this passage. On the one hand, we speak of the seventh day in negative terms. We say that on the seventh day, Hashem rested from his work, and did not continue to create the universe. Yet on the other hand, for the first time we now speak of the introduction of Hashem's blessing into the universe. Hashem blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, and through this there entered the quality of bracha (blessing) into Hashem's creation.

These two elements, writes Malbim, are really one. For on the Sabbath, we have the meeting of the finite with the infinite. On the one hand, the world is shown to be finite. On the seventh day, the creation process comes to an end. Yet on the other hand, it is only through the Sabbath that blessing enters into the world. For it is through experiencing the Sabbath that man can lift the world up from being just a conglomeration of bits and pieces, and transform it into something holy, something more far-reaching than mere finite fragments of creation.

He can turn all the world into something meaningful.

This is the meaning of the last sentence in the passage. "Hashem blessed the seventh day ... because on it he rested from all his work which Hashem created to make." What is the meaning of that language, "which Hashem created to make"? It is written that way for a reason.

For the Torah wishes to tell us that the work of creating the universe did not end in those original six days of creation: rather, it is a process which is meant to go on and on, under the guidance of man himself. It is man, and only man, whose job it is to take all those finite pieces and transform them into something higher. And this is achieved through the Sabbath experience. For on the Sabbath, Hashem rested and looked back, as it were, upon the wholeness of all that which He had created. And under the watchful gaze of Hashem, all those bits of creation fused and blended together and became one.

The whole became greater than the sum of its parts.

And it is our job to do this too, by re-creating the Sabbath anew each and every week.

This is the overarching meaning of the Sabbath. The Sabbath transcends all of creation, but it lifts all of creation up with it. And in taking part in the Sabbath, in participating in that day in which all of creation comes together to serve as a mirror for Hashem's presence--thereby the Jew himself brings a measure of the infinite into the humdrum finitude of life.

Copyright (c) 1998 by Rabbi Levi Langer

Courtesy of www.JewishAmerica.com
Have a good Shabbos!