Does God grow tired and need rest?
Hard question · Who God is · raised by 3 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
The sabbath is a sign: in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh “he rested, and was refreshed”.
It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.
The everlasting God, the Creator, “fainteth not, neither is weary”.
Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
To Judah, which had turned its back on him: “I am weary with repenting”.
Thou hast forsaken me, saith the Lord, thou art gone backward: therefore will I stretch out my hand against thee, and destroy thee; I am weary with repenting.
“Thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities.”
Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities.
The sabbath law: rest, so that the servant and the stranger “may be refreshed”.
Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.
The objection
Exodus 31:17 says that after the six days of creation God “rested, and was refreshed”, and in Jeremiah 15:6 God says, “I am weary with repenting”. But Isaiah 40:28 says that the Creator “fainteth not, neither is weary”. Either God grows tired or he does not.
The answer
Isaiah 40:28 states plainly what God is: his strength never fails, and in the next verse he gives power to the faint. The other verses use human language for something else. ‘Rested’ in Exodus 31:17 is shabat (H7673), ‘to cease, stop’, as in Genesis 2:2: God stopped creating because the work was finished, not because he was exhausted. ‘Was refreshed’ (naphash, H5314, literally ‘took breath’) is a bold human picture of delight in finished work, and it makes God’s rest a pattern for Israel’s sabbath: the same verb is used of the servant and the stranger who rest on the seventh day and “may be refreshed” (Exodus 23:12). Gill calls it figurative, said ‘after the manner of men’ of God’s ceasing from creation and his delight in what he had made.
Jeremiah 15:6 does not say God is tired of working. The Hebrew says he is weary of relenting (the BSB has “I am weary of showing compassion”): he had spared Judah again and again, and would now hold back judgment no longer. Isaiah 43:24, “thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities”, is likewise the language of patience worn out by sin, not of fatigue.
From the classic commentators
which is to be understood figuratively after the manner of men, who ceasing from toil and labour find rest and refreshment; but not really and properly … but this denotes his cessation from the works of creation, though not of providence, and of the delight and pleasure he takes in a view of themJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Exodus 31:17 (1746–63), at Bible Hub
not executing the threatenings denounced, but sparing them a little longer, showing mercy, and exercising patience and longsuffering; but now he was as one weary and tired out, and was determined to bear no longer with themJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Jeremiah 15:6 (1746–63), at Bible Hub
Sources
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Exodus 31, at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Jeremiah 15, at Bible Hub
- Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Isaiah 40 (1857–78), at Bible Hub