The Biblical account of creation begins and ends very differently from creation accounts of pre-Judaic religions, like the creation stories of the Babylonians, Greeks or Egyptians etc.

On the one hand, unlike Judaism, pre-Judaic religions ask the question: "Where was God before He started creating the universe?" On the other hand, unlike Judaism they don't ask the question: "Where was God when He finished creation?"

Judaism broke away from its predecessors, on the one hand by not asking the pre-creation whereabouts of God and on the other hand answering the question about God's actions when He finished creating.

The Bible doesn't begin, like the myths of other religions which preceded Judaism, with stories of pre-creation struggles between the gods. It begins with "In the beginning God created….."

Also unlike the pre-Judaic religions the Bible recounts what God did when He finished creating the universe. It says: " He rested (Sabbath) from all his work …"

The Sabbath henceforth becomes the central them of the entire Bible. The fact that God finished creating is so spectacular that God commands every living creature (Human or controlled by a human) to rest on the Sabbath. (Resting includes physical relaxation but essentially means to desist from creation)

The law to rest on the Sabbath is so important that the Bible places it fourth in the Ten Commandments. It takes precedence over the law to honor parents, not to murder, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to bring false witness and not to covet.

This extraordinary emphasis on the Sabbath leads to only one conclusion, namely, that God created so that He could reach a situation of not creating, namely a situation of Sabbath. It was God's objective in creating the universe.

It's clear that the Bible doesn't deal with pre-creation because it wants to arrive at a reason why creation took place. It didn't have to take place; many thinkers have suggested that the world is so full of suffering and so bad it would have been better had God not created it.

If the Sabbath is God's reason for creating it must also be His reason for creating man and it must also be man's reason for living.

Man certainly requires a very good reason for living without killing his fellow man or without stealing from him or taking his wife etc. in order to be happy.

Man is both spiritual and a physical. His spiritual nature is derived from non-creating, his physical nature from creating.

Man needs to be physical in order to create but his physical nature also causes his desire to seek happiness through physical things, which brings him to murdering and stealing.

His desire to do good to his fellow man, on the other hand and not to murder or steal etc. originates in his spiritual nature which develops by desisting from creating.

The Sabbath symbolizes the spiritual domain and the 6 weekly days the physical domain.

The Biblical story of creation is meant to demonstrate that the spiritual domain represented by the Sabbath is the objective of God and should also be the objective of man.

Only if Man elevates himself to the spiritual level of God he won't murder, steal, and commit adultery or any of the other sins

While he was still in the Garden of Eden God gave Man free choice, to be a completely spiritual being by obeying God or to be physical being by disobedience.

After the Garden of Eden man continues to have free choice to rise to that spiritual level by observing the Sabbath or not to rise above his physical nature by not observing the laws of Sabbath.

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