Why did God make the earth in seven days and not one?

Answer 1

God worked six days and rested one to set the pattern of the week for man.

God created and defined the "Day" on the first day. The word "day" cannot have been symbolic of anything the first time it was used. To be used symbolically, a word must have been used before. Therefore, it was meant as a literal day.

Genesis 1:

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Exodus 20:

9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates:

11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Answer

People interpret the 6 day creation as being everything from literal history, to loose metaphor or allegory having some hidden meaning, to just being flat out wrong.

Unfortunately the people who wrote it are long gone, so we can never know what they intended it to mean. However, "seven" is a number containing symbolic significance in several other areas of scripture. it tends to signify completion or wholeness. The 7 days of creation can be seen to support God's repeated judgment that what he created was "good."

Answer

God is patient. God intended to create the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh day to show his character of patience. He wanted to show to all creation that He puts his best in all his creation by giving time to each detail that makes every creature unique. Of course He can just do all things at once but He chose not to because it is not in accordance to His character. Imagine, He created you and me in our mothers womb for 9 months. We came out handsomely.

Answer

G-d is all-knowing, perfect. As such everything he does is done in the best way and is perfectly suited for its purpose. He created the world in seven days because it was the best way to do it. Six days would have been to short and eight to long. We are finite and imperfect therefore we can not see the perfection in G-d's works.

Answer

Try to imagine all of the various things in the world. In the arena of plants alone there is so much to come up with and design that it isn't unreasonable to think that G-d got tired from long hours of work to create every little thing from a fruit fly to the sun. So G-d decided instead of running on empty until he/she had created all of the wonderful things in the world to take little breaks every night and recoup before starting anew the next day.

Answer 2

"The world was created with ten utterances (spread out through the days of Creation). What does this come to teach us? Certainly, it could have been created (immediately) with a single utterance. However, this is in order to make the wicked accountable for destroying a world that was created with ten utterances, and to reward the righteous for sustaining a world that was created with ten utterances. (To impress upon us the importance of this world and our responsibility.) - Mishna, Pirkei Avot 5:1.