To BE REFRESHED — a rare verb from the same root as nefesh, 'soul, life-breath': literally 'to be re-souled,' the physical relief of a spent body catching its breath. It occurs only twice in the Torah, both in the same short span of chapters. First for the exhausted: 'your ox and your donkey may rest, and your servant's son and the foreigner may be REFRESHED' (Exodus 23:12, already on these pages), a workday's fatigue undone by the weekly rest. Then, startlingly, for God: 'in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he ceased from work and was REFRESHED' (Exodus 31:17) — the identical verb this book otherwise reserves for a tired laborer or a tired animal, now describing the Creator's own seventh-day rest. No other verb in the Hebrew Bible makes that particular claim. → first discussed at Exod 31:17