[B-Greek] Heb. 4.4 *& 5* - Expanding my question on the length of the seventh day

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Jun 21 07:52:28 EDT 2004


At 7:10 PM -0700 6/20/04, Fred Day wrote:
>My original question was:
>
>
>>Heb 4.4:  ERHKEGAR POU PERI THS EBDOMHS OTW KAI KATEPAUSEN hO QEOS EN THi
>>hHMERAi THi hEBDOMHi APO PANTWN TWN ERGON AUTOU.
>>
>>It seems clear to me that the writer of Hebrews argued that God's rest
>>continues to the present.  Is there anything in the Greek by which we can
>>tell if he considered the length of God's rest and that of the seventh day
>>to be equal?
>
>If my questions are too much to do with translation so that I should take
>these questions elsewhere, please clue me in....
>
>Commenting on KATAPOUSIN, Robertson (in NT Word Pictures) wrote:
>
>"Rested (katepausen). First aorist active indicative of katapauo?,
>intransitive here, but transitive in Heb_4:8. It is not, of course, absolute
>rest from all creative activity as Jesus shows in Joh_5:17. But the seventh
>day of God’s rest was still going on (clearly not a twenty-four hour day)."
>http://bible.crosswalk.com/Commentaries/RobertsonsWordPictures/rwp.cgi?book=
>heb&chapter=004&verse=004&next=005&prev=003
>
>In the last sentence of his comment, Robertson seems to be applying his
>analysis of KATEPAUSEN to THi hHMERAi THi hEBDOMHi.  Am I correct in that
>and if so, is he correct in doing that?
>
>I'd like to add the following to my original question....
>
>Is there any particular practice in Greek that would call for hHMERAi to be
>excluded EBDOMHS, and is it certain that "day" should be assumed there?
>Could EBDOMHS have referred to anything else?
>
>Verse five reads:
>
>KAI EN TOUTWi PALI EI EISELEUSONTAI EIS THN KATAPAUSIN MOU.
>
>Could EN TOUTWi be linked to ERHKEGAR POU PERI from verse four so that the
>quote from Psalm 95 is meant to be another place that speaks of THS EBDOMHS,
>in addition to Genesis 2:2?  Does PALI cause the quote from the Psalm to
>stand apart from ERHKEGAR POU PERI so that the reason it is being cited
>(again) is only to remind the reader of what Scripture said thousands of
>years later?
>
>I hope my questions are making sense...

The text in question is, more accurately, EIRHKE GAR POU ... I'm wondering
whether your problem with the aorist KATEPAUSEN might be resolved by
understanding KATEPAUSEN as "inceptive" in sense: "he entered into rest."
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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