Commenting on the interpretation of the “days” in Genesis 1-2 elsewhere in the Old Testament, Kyle R. Greenwood noted:
[Another] indication that the days in Gen. 1 are literary devices rather than solar days is how the creation of the cosmos is recounted elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. Although the creation event is described in numerous s places throughout the OT, the days of creation are only relevant in two other passages, Exod. 20:8-11 and 31:17. Elsewhere, not only are the days inconsequential, the order of creation is often altered (See Job 38:2-11; Pss. 74:12-17; 104:1-17; 136:1-9; Prov. 8:22-31; Isa. 40:12; 42:5-9; Neh. 9:6). In Ps. 74, for example, God defeats the sea monster Leviathan, cuts openings for the springs, establishes celestial luminaries, fixes the boundaries of the earth, and then fashions summer and winter. Since most of these other accounts are written as poetry, it is difficult to say how precisely we should consider the order of the events. What we can say, however, is that the various authors were not bound to a canonized doctrine of the order or duration of the creative process.
However, both Exod. 20:8-11 and 31:17 are predicated on the six-day creation week. The fourth commandment of the Decalogue unambiguously commands Israel to remember the Sabbath “for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it” (Exod. 20:11). On the face of it, Exod. 20:11 appears to vindicate a solar-day reading of Gen. 1. Three factors must be taken into consideration, however. First, it is likely more accurate to speak of an underlying Sabbath tradition behind Gen. 1 than to suppose that Gen. 1 prescribes Sabbath law. That is, Sabbath observance would have likely already been in place before its codification in the Ten Commandments or Gen. 1. Second, the order of creation in Exod. 20 (heavens, earth, sea) does not follow that of Gen. 1 (sea, heavens, earth). So, while Exod. 20 appeals to a seventh day of divine rest as justification for Sabbath observance, it is not bound to the creative order of the rest of the creation week. A third factor is that in the second giving of the law (Deut. 5:12-15), the rationale given for keeping the Sabbath has a different point of reference. In Exodus, Sabbath observance is grounded in cosmological-theological language, made explicit by the inclusion of “sea,” rounding out the three-tiered cosmic structure . . . By contrast, the motive provided for Sabbath rest in Deuteronomy is God’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage. The fact that this version of Sabbath law does not depend on a seven-day creation week is further indication that the days of creation were not imperative to a robust creation theology of the Hebrew Bible. (Kyle R. Greenwood, “Old Testament Reverberations of Genesis 1-2” in Kyle R. Greenwood, ed. Since the Beginning: Interpreting Genesis 1 and 2 through the Ages [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2018], 1-22, here, pp. 4-5)
In another essay in the anthology, this time focusing on the “Sabbath rest” and Hebrews, Ira Brent Driggers wrote:
. . . Heb. 3:7-4:11 interprets Sabbath figuratively as an eschatological rest awaiting persecuted Christians. It is a metaphor, in order words, for divine deliverance at the end of the age, a figuration of Christians’ direct enjoyment of God’s glory in the heavenly tabernacle (Heb. 2:1-18; 10:19-25) and even their own glorification in the kingdom that exists beyond the material cosmos. In this way the promise of Sabbath rest functions to foster faithfulness among those who might otherwise be dismissed by anti-Christian pressures.
The writer’s argument is difficult to follow, as he draws on seemingly disparate scriptural verses by means of common linking terms (a preferred mode of interpretation among some ancient Jews). To simplify matters, I focus here on the term “rest,” to which the writer attaches two correlative meanings. First, there is the rest that God denied to the first generation of Israelites who left slavery in Egypt, when they were forbidden from entering the promised land (Heb. 3:7-11, quoting Ps. 95:7-11). Second, there is the rest described in Gen. 2:2, when “God rested on the seventh day from all his works” (Heb. 4:4). For Hebrews, this divine rest is an ongoing state into which God desires to draw human creatures. It is not a twenty-four hour period, long since passed, but rather an eternal rest into which Christians may hope to enter.
In essence, the writer interprets the first of these “rests” in light of the second. In other words, the wilderness sojourn to the promised land, while historically real, was a figuration of the human sojourn to God’s eternal Sabbath. While this argument comes largely at the expense of the rebellious Israelites, the point is not to disparage that group as much as it to encourage the first-century audience to remain unswervingly loyal to God. According to Heb. 4:9-10, “a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his.” Through faithful obedience, then, the audience of Hebrews can expect to enter God’s own rest.
What does Christ have to do with this argument? While there is no explicit mention of him in the discussion of rest in Heb. 3:7-4:11, preceding verses made clear that Christ is the means by which God brings human creatures to glory, chiefly through his sharing in their suffering and death (Heb. 2:5-3:5). Indeed, Hebrews insists that Christ, as “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (12:2), first accomplishes for himself what he bestows on believers. Furthermore, as a consequence of Christ’s salvific accomplishment, there is a sense in which God’s eternal rest is available—at least partially—to believers in the present (4:3). Paradoxically, then, believers have some degree of access to the eschatological rest by virtue of Christ’s atoning sacrifice in the heavenly tabernacle (Heb. 8:1-10:22), even as their difficult earthly sojourn continues in the present. (Ira Brent Driggers, “New Testament Appropriations of Genesis 1-2” in Ibid., 45-75, here, pp. 53-54)
