Book of Contradictions: A Challenge

[Ryft]

2. God is tired and rests
Ex 31:17 It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed

God is never tired and never rests
Is 40:28 28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.

This supposed contradiction does not come from the text but rather from outside of it, made nowhere more obvious than how each passage is introduced. (1) The first passage is introduced by saying that God is tired and rests, pointing to Exodus 31:17 for support. However, in that passage we find that God rested but nowhere in it do we find that it was because he was tired. That part is imposed on the text which itself says nothing of the sort. (2) The second passage is introduced by saying that God is never tired and never rests, pointing to Isa. 40:28 for support. But in that passage we see that God never tires but nowhere can we find it saying he never rests. That is likewise imposed on the text which does not itself say anything of the sort. To make these passages contradict one another, foreign concepts have to be forced upon them from without; that is, one has to force them to say something they do not actually say before a contradiction manifests. Thus the contradiction exists in the manufactured interpretation, and not in the text itself.

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Yeah, and I'm still disagreeing, Tack. What I think is actually being said, trying to get the original meaning rather than understanding the translation, is that this is like a manager starting a company and then sitting at the helm running it when it's up and running. That's what sabbath is, too. Never a day off, a day to do nothing. More a day to run the show rather than build it. You build the computer, set it up, then get on with the task of using it for what it was intended. ... In Genesis this is the culmination of God setting up his temple and then taking his place at the controls. Otherwise we have a deist scenario where God makes everything and then leaves it alone, which is theologically problematic.

You have been reading Walton, haven't you?