- Initiation: "And God said..."
- Confirmation: "And it was so."
- Evaluation: "And God saw that it was good."
- Summation: "And there was evening and there was morning, the _______ day."
- Gen 2.1-3—The seventh day, on which God rests. God blesses this day and calls it holy.
- Gen 1.24-31—The sixth day, on which God commands the land to bring forth living creatures, and on which he makes human beings in his image and blesses them.
- Gen 1.20-23—The fifth day, on which God created the water creatures and creatures of the sky and blessed them.
- Gen 1.14-19—The fourth day, on which he appointed the lights in the sky to be for signs and seasons and to rule day and night.
- Gen 1.9-13—The third day, on which God separated the land from the waters and called the land to bring forth vegetation.
- Gen 1.6-8—The second day, on which God separated the waters above from the waters below and called the expanse "sky." Note: this is the only day about which the text does not say, "And God saw that it was good."
- Gen 1.3-5—Day one, on which God called called light out of darkness and named them "day" and "night." Note: in the Hebrew text, this is not called the "first" day, but "one day." This may indicate that it was not the absolute first day of creation but day one of the seven described in this passage.
- Gen 1.2—This verse describes the condition of the land before the seven days. As we will see, it says the land was an uninhabitable wasteland because it was covered by darkness and deep water. However, it also says that God's Spirit was present, a hint that God is about to do something to change the condition of the land.
- Gen 1.1—This verse describes what God did "in the beginning," before the seven days. He "created the skies and the land," which should be understood as a merism, a figure of speech that describes a single thing by referring to its most contrasting parts. "The skies and the land" means "everything you see," or "all the world before you." It is written from the perspective of the human eye, of one scanning the landscape and pointing out the whole wide world to the reader.
Here is how it all fits together...
- God created all that is in the beginning. (Gen 1.1)
- Before God prepared it, the land was not yet ready for human habitation. (Gen 1.2)
- God prepared the land for humans, then created them and blessed them in the good land—in a period of six days. (Gen 1.3-31)
- God rested from his works on the seventh day and blessed the seventh day (Gen 2.1-3)
4 comments:
Mike, I agree that verse 2 is outside of the seven days of creation. It describes the starting conditions--a wasteland with God's spirit "brooding" over the vacuousness. However, I believe that verse one is a title for the entire chapter (to include Gen 2:1-3). Most Hebrew narratives begin in this way. See Jeremiah 26:1, "In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim"; Jeremiah 27:1 "In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim"; Jeremiah 28:1 "In the year that was in the beginning of the reign..."; Hos 1:2 "The beginning of the speaking of Jehovah by Hosea."
Thanks Marc. As I will argue in my next post, there are a few significant problems in taking verse 1 as a "title" for the chapter. One is that, if v. 1 is a title, then the author does not give any indication when or how God created the earth. In this view, the passage would begin with the earth already there (v.2) before God begins his creative work in v.3.
Mike, I understand the text to not deal with "when or how God created the earth." I read it to deal with "who crafted it and filled it with lesser wonders."
The non-cannon book of Wisdom says, "Surely vain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of God, and could not, out of the good things that are seen, know him that is: neither by considering the works did they acknowledge the workmaster; But deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world. With whose beauty if they being delighted took them to be gods; let them know how much better their Yahweh is: for the first author of beauty has created them."
Early Hebrew sages did not likely doubt that Yehweh created the world, but I believe they were focused more on proving that Yahweh (and no other) was the God that created all other things which men believed to be "gods."
In fact, Proverbs 8:22-29 indicates that the creation of heaven and earth were not "in the beginning" of time, since before that, it says, Yahweh acquired wisdom "before the earth was."
Howdy Mike...Jeff...again :o)
The following is taken from the book; Refuting Compromise, by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati. P137:
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James Barr was a leading Hebrew scholar, and Oriel professor of the interpretation of Holy Scripture, Oxford University, England. His studies on Hebrew word meanings were a milestone, overthrowing the faulty methodology of trying to derive meaning from etymology (derivation), or the “root fallacy”. While he would be on the liberal side of any liberal/conservative divide, he would be more properly regarded as a neo-Orthodox interpreter. So he does not believe Genesis, but he understood what the Hebrew so clearly teaches:
...probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that:
(a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience,
(b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story,
(c)Noah's flood was understood to be worldwide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. [1]
Some try to avoid the force of Barr's argument by pointing out that Barr was an avowed enemy of inerrancy, but they miss the whole point. That is, he is a hostile witness, which of course makes the case even more strongly. He knows what Genesis really means, even though he doesn't believe it.
1.J. Barr, letter to David C.C. Watson, April 23, 1984
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Therefore, even if you don't believe the account, the text in Genesis 1 clearly conveys an all encompassing six day creation and does not include a creation before the 6 days. Creation began on the first day with nothing proceeding it.
That's my two cents.
God Bless,
Jeff
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