Commentaire de citation sur La Genèse 2:2

There is also a Midrashic explanation: If you began to fulfill a mitzvah, complete it, etc. I.e., the word כל is related to the word, “And Hashem completed (ויכל) on the seventh day, etc. (Bereishis 2:2).” Alternatively, the word כל is related to the word כלה (entire). In other words, you should perform the mitzvah in its entirety — if you begin to fulfill it, complete it. According to this, the word מצוה written in this verse refers to “a single commandment.”

There is also a lesson here that the success of the work performed during the six days of the week depends on the observance of the seventh day as a holy day. The reason is that the Sabbath is the soul of the world as we explained in our introduction to Genesis on Genesis 2,2.

If we want to round out this picture, remember that the full name of G’d, the tetragram, does not appear in connection with the entire story of creation until after the creation of the human species. In their commentary on Genesis 2,2 and 2,4 וייצר י-ה-ו-ה אלו-הים את האדם, our sages (Bereshit Rabbah 13,3) remark cryptically: “a complete name of G’d applicable to a complete universe.” How is it possible to describe the universe as complete when woman had not yet been created? [We hear about Chavah becoming a separate body only in Genesis 2,22] The answer clearly is that Adam had been equipped with the female hormones, or whatever, to enable him to produce female offspring. This full name of the Lord is used again when G’d is described as building up the side He had removed from Adam into a separate human body, a female, i.e. Chavah. This conveys the idea that Chavah too has been equipped with the potential to reproduce either as male or female. In other words, each human being is theoretically able to determine the gender of the offspring it produces.
We have a complete verse illustrating this concept in Genesis 46,15: אלה בני לאה אשר ילדה ליעקב בפדן ארם ואת דינה בתו כל נפש וגו’, “these were the sons of Leah whom she bore for Yaakov in Padan Aram, and Dinah his daughter; all the persons, etc.” The Torah attributes the male children to the mother and the female children to the father. When we said that the male harbours within him the essence of the female, and the female harbours with her the essence of the male, the meaning is not that as a result of such biological factors a woman can give birth to a female and a male to a male (each unassisted by the other). Our sages in Vayikra Rabbah 14,9 have already said that there is no barber who can shave himself, i.e. man or woman each require a partner of the opposite sex in order to perform the act of procreation.