This was originally a blog post from July 2017, and has been edited in 2022 as well.
Previously, I commented on Genesis 2:1-3. There, I made a brief reference to the somewhat odd grammar of bara elohim laasot, which, to use an awkward metaphor, I said “welded” together the verbs bara “created” and laasot “to make”, the two verbs which dominate the proceeding chapter. Mentioning them both is a fitting end to the Genesis 1 (Priestly) creation story.
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because on it he rested from all his work which God created to make.
This is a literalistic translation. What is this created to make, this bara . . . laasot, in the phrase asher bara elohim laasot (“which God created to make”)? I’m not sure I’ve seen any construction quite parallel to it in Hebrew, although I’ve seen some that come close. I dug through a couple books on syntax, and couldn’t quite find it. Why the infinitive form of make or do?
A literalistic English rendering suggests that God first created, then made, his work. I could imagine someone arguing for this, but it strikes me as odd. After digging around a while, I found something interesting on page 72 of an English translation of Heinrich Ewald’s Syntax of the Hebrew Language of the Old Testament. Here it is, with my own had hoc transliteration in place of the Hebrew character in the original:
--To be continued.