The title of this section has certain thematic significance: "The Seventh Day" is a biblical allusion referring to Genesis 2, verses 1–3: "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. . . . " The biblical seventh day is a respite and a day of reward, a holy day of celebration and rest from the previous days' work in which God had completed his creation, and "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."
Baldwin uses this creation-birth-rebirth image throughout the novel: The novel opens in March, the beginning of spring, associated with new life and birth. It is John's 14th birthday, "birthday" itself suggesting some significance in this regard and the special significance of the 14th birthday connoting puberty, that is, the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. Elizabeth, John's mother, is pregnant. The home and church pressure "unit[e] to drive [John] to the alter," that is, drive him to "being saved" or "born again." Perhaps most significantly, the image can be seen in the symbolic new beginning that virtually every adult character in the novel seeks in moving from the oppression of the South in search of something better in the North. The image appears even in the title of the novel; the "It" in Go Tell It on the Mountain is "Jesus Christ is born."
