As we continue in our study of Hebrews 4, we encounter two Old Testament quotes in verses 4 and 5, The first here, in verse 4, is a quote of Genesis 2:2 and refers to God’s rest in creation. It reads as follows: “And on the seventh day God rested from all His work”. We must make note here of the fact that, in the beginning of his explanation of the New Covenant rest, he chooses to compare this rest to the rest of God in creation, and not to the rest of the people of Israel found in the Law of both Exodus and Deuteronomy. Here we find that the rest of the New Covenant is of the same type presented in God’s rest in creation, and not of the same type as the people’s rest provided in the Law. This is what we will find further delineated in the next several verses, which serve to fully establish the superiority of this New Covenant rest to the Old Covenant rest of the Law. To obtain a proper understanding of this New Covenant rest, it becomes necessary to examine more closely the rest of God which is of the same “type” as the rest of the people of God in the New Covenant. Genesis 2:2 is quoted here as follows: “And on the seventh day God rested from all his work”. As we may remember, the story of Genesis one is the “creation” story, and is the story of God preparing a home, and ideal habitation, for the creature created in His image and likeness. At the conclusion of the six days of creation, we find that God has created human beings in their ideal environment and pronounces His creation as “very good” (Genesis 1:26-31), which is then the conclusion of the six days. It is then, on the seventh day, which God “rests”. The crucial thing to be mentioned here, for our purposes, is as to the nature of this rest. God rests here not because he is tired and needs a day off, but rests because His work is finished, He has accomplished His purpose, done what He has intended to do, and rests after He has done so. The term translated rest here is the Hebrew “shabat”, or rest. As we examine this term more closely, we will find that it can refer to two different forms of “resting”. The term shabat can refer to rest as either a pause in work or a completion of work. The rest of the Old Covenant is of the first type, a temporary (one day) pause in the work process, while the latter is the type of rest of God in creation and is a completion of the work process. So ultimately here, we find first of all, that the rest of the New Covenant is of a different type than the Old, it is a “ceasing” of the work process, rather than a “pause” in it, and therefore superior to the Old Covenant rest in nature in that it is permanent rather than temporary, a ceasing rather than a pausing.