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.