The Land of Blessing

We have made the point in earlier entries that there are two focus points in Genesis 1. First, that God created everything (1.1). Second, that within his creation God prepared a special place where he made and put human beings (1.2-31).

English versions obscure this by translating the Hebrew word eretz as "earth" rather than "land," which is its more common meaning. For modern readers, the word "earth" conjures up pictures of the globe that we know as Earth, the planet in its entirety as it exists in outer space among the other heavenly bodies. However, this is not nor could it be the viewpoint of the author of Genesis. We've already noted that verse 1 would be more accurately translated, "In the beginning, God created the skies and the land." In Genesis 1.1, the author's perspective is that of one standing on the ground, looking out across a landscape and thinking about God's creation of all things from that point of view.

Within this comprehensive creation, God prepared a place (a land) where he put the first humans. Beginning at Genesis 1.2, the focus narrows considerably to "the land," and in particular, to the land where he brought forth living creatures and humankind (1.24-31). What land is this?

While it is possible that Moses is describing all the lands on planet Earth and making a general statement about God preparing various land masses for his creatures, I think it more likely that he has a particular land in mind.

• The fundamental argument for seeing a specific land here comes from accepting that Genesis 1-2 contain complementary, parallel accounts of the same events. Genesis 1 says that God formed the land and then created humans as male and female in that land. Genesis 2 identifies the Garden in Eden as the place where God made the man and woman and brought them together. If chapters 1-2 are telling the same story from different perspectives, we must respect the parallels between them and recognize that "the land" where God created humans in ch. 1 correlates with "Eden" and the "Garden" in ch. 2.
  

• According to the description of the rivers that form the boundaries of the Garden in ch. 2, we can deduce that Moses is identifying Eden with the Promised Land. That is where Adam and Eve received God's blessing. This is the land that God later promised Abraham and his descendants when he entered into a covenant with the patriarch (Genesis 15.18-21).
  

• This is the same land into which Joshua would lead the Israelites who received the Torah from Moses (Deut 1.7-8; 7.1). Though Israel dwelt in this land for many years, the only time Israel ruled over all of this land was during the reign of Solomon (2Kings 4.21; 2Chron 9.26; 8.7-8).
  

Other First Testament passages reinforce that it is the Promised Land in view in Genesis 1:

• Jeremiah 4.19-31 is Jeremiah's lament over the fall of Jerusalem. In this passage the prophet pictures the land going back to its pre-preparation state, using language directly from Genesis 1—"I looked on the earth [land], and behold, it was formless and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light" (v.23). This text is specifically about the "whole land" of Israel (v.20) and not the earth as a planet. In judgment, God returns the land to its Gen. 1.2 condition.

• Jeremiah 27.5 is part of another passage which predicts judgment on the Promised Land. This verse looks back on what God did in Genesis 1 and links it specifically with that particular place—"I have made the earth [land], the men and the beasts which are on the face of the earth [land] by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and I will give it to the one who is pleasing in My sight." The passage is clearly about God's right to give the Promised Land to whomever he chooses, and in that light he hearkens back to the fact that in Gen. 1 he formed and filled that land with creatures by his divine strength.

• Some believe that Exodus 20.11 contradicts this view: "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy." This verse seems to summarize all of Genesis 1, including 1.1, thus saying that the entire universe and not just the Promised Land, is the subject of the six creation days. However, Moses does not use the merism, "the heavens and the earth" in Exodus 20.11 but rather a list of four separate things: (1) the skies, (2) the land, (3) the seas, and (4) all that is in them. This is a summary of what God did in Genesis 1.2-31. During the six days, he did not create the universe; rather, he prepared the skies, the seas and the land for life and then filled them with lights, living creatures and human beings. The ultimate focus is on the Promised Land.

In fact, the focus, not only of Gen. 1-2, but also most of Genesis 1-11 is on what happened in this part of the world—in and around the Promised Land. We might call this section, "The Early History of the Promised Land."

Specific geographical references are nearly absent in Gen. 1-11 until you get to chapter 10. At that point, the author records how the various nations became "separated into their lands" (10.5, 20, 31-32), and then tells the story of how that occurred at Babel (11.1-9). Except for Genesis 1.1, there is NO worldwide focus in Genesis until we begin to read about the nations (ch. 10), the tower of Babel (ch. 11), and the promise of blessing to Abraham (ch. 12).

Instead, what we see in Gen. 1-11 is a series of ever-widening geographic circles.

• We start in "the land," (ch. 1), which correlates with Eden and the Garden (ch. 2-3). The boundaries described are those of the Promised Land.
  

• Next, Adam and Eve are exiled to the east, out of the Garden, but apparently still in Eden (3. 24).
  

• Cain kills Abel and is subsequently exiled farther east, to the land of Nod, east of Eden (4.16).

• There are no geographical references in the genealogy of ch. 5, but ch. 6 concludes the account with several references to "the land" in 6.1-8. The land is where the sons of God took the daughters of men for wives, where the Nephilim lived, where the wickedness of humans grew, where God was sorry that he had made man, and where he determined to blot out humans.

• The emphasis on the land continues throughout the story of Noah. At this point in Genesis, all humankind is still dwelling in the vicinity of the land, and therefore it is this land that suffers God's judgment when humans fill it with evil. The flood was a disaster that befell the region of the Promised Land, not the entire earth. It is not until Noah's sons emerge and begin to multiply that humanity begins to spread beyond this locale.

• Genesis 11.1-9 tells the story of how that migration began. Note how the story begins: "Now the whole earth [land]...journeyed east...found a plain in Shinar and settled there" (11.1-2). Noah's descendants stayed in the land until they all decided to move even farther east. The land of "Shinar" is the region of the city of Babylon, which they founded. From there, God scattered them into their own lands around the world.

Thus, the geographical movement in Genesis 1-11 is from the "land" where humans were first created, moving eastward ultimately to "Babylon" and finally, to being scattered "over the face of the whole earth" (11.9). It is in this context that God leads Abram and then later his descendants back to the original land and promises to use them to restore his blessing to all the families spread throughout the earth.

All this reinforces the interpretation that Genesis 1.2-31 is not about the creation of the universe (that is the point of 1.1). Rather, the six days of Gen. 1 describe how God prepared a specific place within his universe where he created humankind and blessed them.

Understanding the creation days...

• The record of the seven days of creation in Genesis 1 poses many challenges to the reader and interpreter of Scripture.

• We must first ask: what is the genre of this material and what is its primary intent? Since God revealed his Word through specific human authors to people in real historical and cultural settings using human words and literary conventions, the type of literature and what it was designed to communicate to the original audience matters.

1. Are these words straightforward reporting, written as though a journalist were watching and recording God's acts over seven 24-hour days?
2. Does Genesis 1 teach creation in a way that correlates with modern science, with the "days" representing long ages of time that allow for evolutionary development?
3. Is this narrative a strictly chronological account of things that took place (whatever the time factors involved), or are these historical events presented within a literary framework that is intended to portray God and his work in a certain light?
   
4. Is Genesis 1 myth, an a-historical artistic representation of cosmology, like the mythological accounts of the Ancient Near Eastern nations around them?
5. Is this text poetry, designed originally for use in worship liturgies?
   
6. Is the Genesis account primarily a polemic narrative, designed to present theological truths—setting forth a picture of God the Creator using the language and perspectives of the Ancient Near Eastern world in order to counter the myths of Israel's polytheistic neighbors?

• To start with, it is clear that Genesis 1 is not poetry. Nor does it contain the fantastic elements that characterize Ancient Near Eastern myths such as tales of the gods and warfare with great creatures representing the forces of chaos. It is prose, a simple and elegant narrative description of things that actually took place. However, it is also apparent that Genesis 1 is a highly structured narrative. The story of the days of creation has been written with great literary skill.

1. There is a clear parallelism between the first three days and days four through six. On Days 1-3, God separates light from darkness, waters above from waters below, and land where edible plants begin grow to from the waters of the seas, forming the environment where his creatures will live. On Days 4-6, God fills this environment by setting lights in the sky, forming air and sea creatures, and then creating land animals and human beings. (1/4) Light/lights, (2/5) Sky and sea/birds and fish, (3/6) Land and plants/animals and humans. Perfect parallelism, even down to the fact that day three and day six contain multiple acts of creation while the other days have only one. On the first three days God forms, the latter three he fills his creation. Only Day 7 stands apart from this parallel scheme.
   
2. Each creation day follows a specific, highly ordered pattern. (1) Each begins with the divine word, "And God said..." (2) Each day contains a statement affirming God's work, "And it was so..." (3) Each day (except day 2) portrays God evaluating his work: "And God saw that it was good..." (4) Each day ends with a summation: "And there was evening and morning, a ___ day."
3. The narrative is also structured using the number seven in various ways. The following are pointed out by Cassuto in his commentary:
   
1. Genesis 1.1 has seven words.
2. Genesis 1.2 has fourteen words (7x2).
   
3. The seven-day week is described in seven highly patterned paragraphs.
4. Each of the three main nouns in verse 1 are repeated a number of times that is a multiple of seven—God (35), heavens (21), land (21).
5. Seven times God utters the creative word, "Let there be..." or a similar command.
6. "Light" and "day" are found seven times in the first paragraph.
7. There are seven references to "light" in the fourth paragraph.
8. "Water" is mentioned seven times in paragraphs two and three.
9. The "living creatures" are mentioned seven times in paragraphs five and six.
10. The seventh paragraph about the Sabbath (the seventh day) has 35 words, and also contains three sentences of seven words each. In the very middle of the verse is the phrase, "the seventh day."

• It is obvious, is it not, that we are dealing with a text that has been carefully written and arranged. Such structuring must be taken into account when interpreting Genesis 1. This is no journalistic prose!

• So what kind of literature is Genesis 1, and how should we approach it in order to grasp its teachings? For my own conclusion I will quote C. John Collins here from his book, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary:

All of this leads us to conclude that the genre of this pericope is what we might call exalted prose narrative. This name for the genre will serve us in several ways. First, it acknowledges that we are dealing with prose narrative, and thus its purposes will be related to other uses of prose narrative—which will include the making of truth claims about the world in which we live. Second, by calling it exalted, we are recognizing that when we come to examine the author's truth claims, we must not impose a 'literalistic' hermeneutic on the text. Further, to call it exalted points us away from ordinary narration and leads us to suppose that its proper function extends well beyond its information to the attitudes that it fosters....

...We may conclude from this high level of patterning that the order of events and even lengths of time are not part of the author's focus; this is at the basis of what is often called the literary framework scheme of interpretation. In this understanding, the six workdays are a literary device to display the creation week as a careful and artful effort.

• In addition to this general statement about literary type, the reader will also note that the author describes God's creative acts in ways that would have stood contrary to the mythological assertions of their polytheistic neighbors. Though it is subtle, there is a great deal of polemic against false gods and other worldviews here.

• Also, though the text is not poetry, its symmetry makes it poetic and therefore useful in instructional and liturgical settings. As Bruggemann says in his Genesis commentary, Genesis 1 is not an abstract musing on origins, but rather a theological and pastoral document addressed to real people in actual historical settings with genuine faith questions and concerns. This text was designed to form the faith of God's people and equip them to worship the true and living God.

Prelude to preparing the land—Genesis 1.2

"Now the land was an uninhabitable wasteland, covered with water and thick darkness. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." (Gen 1.2)

After making the bold declaration that it was God and God alone who brought this world we know, the earth surrounded by skies, into existence, the author of Genesis tells how the God of creation provided a good land where his creatures might live in his blessing.

The author's focus changes at Gen 1.2. Verse 1, in clear and concise terms, proclaims that God created the entire universe, terrestrial and ethereal. Now, in verse 2, his attention turns to a specific land, the land that God prepared for his people. English versions obscure this by translating the Hebrew word as "earth." However, the focus here is on something much more specific.

It is the Promised Land that is in view beginning at 1.2. As we will see in further studies, the "land" of 1.2 is described in Genesis 2 as the garden God formed in Eden.

The uninhabitable land. As an introduction to the seven-day scheme of Gen 1, the author describes what the land was like before God prepared it for humankind. It was, as we have translated, "an uninhabitable wasteland." This phrase translates two Hebrew words often rendered, "waste and void."

Throughout the history of Biblical interpretation, the understanding of these words has mirrored the scientific concepts believed in the interpreter's day. When Greek cosmology held sway, this phrase was interpreted to refer to a formless mass of chaos, which was then organized into cosmos by the creative acts of God. Today, scientifically savvy readers might picture the Earth in its primordial condition—with an evolving atmosphere of swirling gases over a surface of molten magma.

However, the original author of Genesis could not have had such concepts or images in mind. Furthermore, interpretations that reflect these scientific viewpoints take the perspective that the author is talking about Planet Earth in these verses. But he had no such global concept. Instead, he is now looking at the Land, the terrestrial space that God gave to his people where they might live.

Therefore, the phrase tohu wabohu in Gen 1.2 refers to a land that is unprepared for human life, uninhabitable, not "formless and empty." In other Biblical passages this phrase is used in context with the wilderness or desert, the place that did not welcome human settlement and cultivation.

Of course, this would have resonated with the original readers, who had just spent forty years wandering in the wilderness of Sinai and were about to enter a Promised Land prepared for them by God. The original condition of the land described in Gen 1.2 was like the wilderness, but God transformed it into the "good" land. In fact, the word "good" forms a continual refrain through Gen 1. It is interesting to note that, in Hebrew, this is the word "tob," which sounds very much like the word for "waste"—"tohu." Gen 1 is about how God turned the wasteland into the good land, from "tohu" to "tob."

In the text, we read why the land was uninhabitable—it was covered with water and darkness. In order for God to make this land "good," the waters would have to be removed, and the light would need to break through the darkness. Once again, these words would have spoken meaningfully to those who had seen God part the Red Sea and lead them by a pillar of fire. God leads his people to the Promised Land by overcoming the waters and the darkness.

The Spirit of God. The first part of Gen 1.2 paints a bleak picture of an uninhabitable land. However, hope appears with the presence of God's Spirit—"And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." "The Spirit" pictures the Divine Presence at the ready to act upon the wasteland in transformational power.

This phrase can also be understood as "a wind from God," or "a mighty wind." Though the idea of "wind" might be appropriate, bringing to the Israelites' minds the mighty wind that divided the Red Sea, "Spirit of God" is a better translation here. The word "hovering" does not reflect the activity of wind; it is used in the Torah to describe birds hovering or brooding over their young. Here, it likewise portrays the active presence of a personal Being.

In his commentary, John Sailhamer points out that God's Spirit is present at the beginning of God's building project just as he was present upon Bezalel when he began the construction of the Tabernacle (Exodus 31.1-5). In both texts, the Spirit prepares the place where God will meet with man and bestow his blessing.

To summarize: at some point after "the beginning," God prepared to form a land where he could provide a home for human beings. That land was at first in uninhabitable condition, covered with water and thick darkness. But God was there. His Spirit was watching over the land and preparing to act. Soon God would speak his powerful word, break through the darkness, part the waters, and change the wilderness into a good land of blessing for his people.

As the introduction to Israel's Torah, nothing could be more appropriate. The God of the whole world is also the God who was preparing to lead them out of the uninhabitable wilderness into the good Land of Promise.