Compare & Correlate · Lexical
Finishing the work
One verb with one noun — he finished the work — in seven verses of the Hebrew Bible, and every one of them is about building for God: the heavens and the earth, the tabernacle, and the temple. Around the verb the three accounts share more: all the work seen, a finish marked by rest or by cloud, and a seven. No verse cites another; the vocabulary is what is shared.
Lexical: A word the passages share, with its count in the annotated corpus.
Finishing the work. Lexical — the link is the words themselves, checked token by token against the annotated Hebrew corpus, with a count wherever rarity is the finding.
- כָּלָה kalah, “finish” — 7 verses in the annotated Hebrew corpus holding it together with melakhah, work: 1 Chronicles 28:20, 1 Kings 7:40, 2 Chronicles 4:11, 2 Chronicles 8:16, 2 Chronicles 29:34, Exodus 40:33, Genesis 2:2
The words, as the corpus holds them (each checked present, or absent, in the verses cited beside it):
- כָּלָה kalah, “finish”
- מְלֶאכֶת melekhet, “work”
- מְלָאכָה melakhah, “work”
- רָאָה ra'ah, “see”
- הִנֵּה hinneh, “behold”
- שָׁבַת shavat, “cease”
- עָנָן anan, “cloud”
- מָלֵא male, “fill”
- שְׁבִיעִי shevi'i, “seventh”
- שֵׁשׁ shesh, “six”
- שֶׁבַע sheva, “seven”
- שָׁלֵם shalem, “be complete”
Sources:
- The seven verses are every verse in the annotated Hebrew corpus holding kalah with melakhah in either of the two lemma spellings BHSA uses, re-derived by tests/test_correlations.py; every word marked in a cell is checked in the verse cited beside it.
- The design note first counted four, over one spelling of the noun; the missing three include Genesis 2:2.
Row by row
| Creation | The tabernacle | The temple | |
|---|---|---|---|
| He finished the work | God finished his work on the seventh dayGenesis 2:2 | Moses finished the workExodus 40:33 | Hiram finished all the work for the house1 Kings 7:40 |
| Seven verses hold the pair. 2 Chronicles 4:11 repeats Hiram's; 1 Chronicles 28:20, 2 Chronicles 8:16 and 29:34 are the temple too. | |||
| All of it seen | God saw all that he had made, and behold, very goodGenesis 1:31 | Moses saw all the work, and behold, they had done itExodus 39:43 | no verse has Solomon survey the work |
| Then | he ceased on the seventh dayGenesis 2:2 | the cloud covered the tent, the glory filled itExodus 40:34 | the cloud filled the house1 Kings 8:10 |
| A seven | the seventh dayGenesis 2:2 | the seventh speech is the sabbath, and quotes the six daysExodus 31:12-17 | seven years in the building1 Kings 6:38 |
| Exodus 25–31 opens seven speeches: 25:1; 30:11, 17, 22, 34; 31:1, 12. The verb is amar, not dibber, at 30:34 and 31:12. | |||
| Another verb | the heavens and the earth were finishedGenesis 2:1 | all the service of the tabernacle was finishedExodus 39:32 | all the work was complete — a different verb1 Kings 7:51 |
| Kings and Chronicles close the temple with shalem (1 Kings 7:51; 2 Chronicles 5:1), where Genesis and Exodus keep kalah. | |||
Where it appears in the text
- Genesis 2 — God finishes his work on the seventh day
- Exodus 39 — the work seen, and the service finished
- Exodus 40 — Moses finishes the work, and the cloud fills the tent
- 1 Kings 7 — Hiram finishes the work for the house
- 2 Chronicles 4 — Hiram finishes the work, as Kings has it
In the app this comparison opens beneath each of those chapters. Open it in TheophilusBible.