Genesis 1

Tuesday January 01, 2008 | Filed in: Genesis

Dear Sydney,

You said that we should start the Bible like any good book, at the beginning. All right then, Genesis 1, chapter 1, verse 1, here we come!

Genesis in Hebrew means "beginnings.” It is the beginning of a great invention—time. The eternal gives us finite time. Then God adds the physical universe, the beginning of life forms within the universe, and the beginning of humanity. It is also the beginning of sin and death, and the beginning of God’s plan to give us a second chance.

God inspired Moses to write Genesis about 3,400 years ago, who also wrote the next four books of the Bible. Together these five are called the Pentateuch, or the Torah. In Genesis Moses recalls days earlier than his own lifetime, from the beginning of creation to Joseph dying in Egypt.

In verse 1, God says “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” This was written originally in Hebrew, as was the rest of the Old Testament, and the word used for God is elohiym. Elohiym is a plural noun (like "cars") but is being used here as a singular one (like "car"). It is technically a grammatical error. It could be that God doesn’t know the proper rules for grammar, but I think it’s safe to assume that is unlikely. Instead I believe that in this first verse of the Bible, God is already eluding to His triune state – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

As a sidebar, it is interesting how all languages seem to flow toward Jerusalem. The languages originating east of Jerusalem, like Greek, English, Spanish, etc., are written left to right. While the languages originating west of Jerusalem, such as Hebrew, Sanskrit, Aramaic, etc., flow right to left. We’ll talk more about this later in our conversations about the deliberateness of God, but for now just file it away as a fact that you can pop out at parties.

Every culture, civilization, and religion, no matter what the era, has its own creation story, but what verses 1 and 2 say is radically different from all of them. The other stories tell of creation being the result of intergalactic dramas, cosmic chaos and gods running amuck. Humanity is always the pawn in a prize of planetary battles. You can read more about other creation stories in James Pritchard’s ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN TEXTS RELATING TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. What is described in Genesis, however, is unique. Something is created from nothing (ex nihilo in the Latin), many other things too, and each creation is a deliberate act by God.

If you read the Bible all the way through, a question you might have at the very beginning will never be answered. God is a given. It is further assumed that we intuitively know that. There are no elaborate arguments trying to prove that He exists. God is too sane and self-confidant to need to prove Himself to anyone. He has always existed and always will!

You indicated that you understood verses 3 through 25 because they are self-explanatory, so I’m going to add only one comment. See what God did. He created the universe, and then He filled it—first adding vegetation, then putting lights in the sky, then animals under the sea and in the sky, and finally humanity. When I think of this, I am reminded of renaissance painter like Michelangelo. He starts with a blank canvas, paints the background, adds figures to the foreground and keeps adding details, sometimes painting over sections he’s not happy with, all the while being deliberate, highly skilled and confident as to what the painting will look like when it is finished.

In verse 26, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” This single verse has so many important things to talk about. Why did God use the word “us” instead of “my.” There are three explanations. The first is that God is speaking with the Angels and saying, “Let’s make humanity like us.” But there is nothing in the story about Angels assisting in creation, and Angels have not even been introduced as characters in the Bible yet, so it would seem unlikely that is what God means.

Second, there is the “Royal We,” as in the way kings and queens talk about themselves, or a certain high school teacher we both know: “Todd, we are not amused by your talking out of turn.” God could be talking like Mrs. Kanipplemeyer did, but He doesn’t do so anywhere else, so it would seem unlikely that He would start here and just drop it. The third and most likely explanation is that God was precise in His words and referring to “us” because He is a triune being – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In my estimation this would appear to be the second hint of the plurality of the Godhead in the Bible. We’ll talk about what the means later in our conversations.

In the passage above the word “man” does not mean male: rather it means the generic term of mankind or humanity. Male and female are shown by God to be fundamentally equal in the very structure of the verse that follows. A man does not represent the image of God nor does a woman. Together they do. This also applies to Whites or Blacks or Asians or any other race. God is too big to be defined by one group. Thus all the races together give us a clearer sense of the image of God. This same concept applies to churches, cultures, styles of worship, personalities, and the like.

Additionally, the concept of “in our image” is called the Imago Dei in Latin. It is from the Hebrew word tselem and means shadow. The “us” that God makes in His image is a reflection or a shadow of the “We” who is God. You and I and the whole world combined cannot be God; we can only be like Him. The Imago Dei is an important concept in the Christian faith. It is one idea that separates Christianity from other religions. Because God created humanity in His image, every human has inherent value, independent of his or her utility or function.

Mrs. Kanipplemeyer would scream if she could hear what I’m going to say next. Syd, I’m going to ask you to write in a book. With a pen if you like. Get out your hardcopy Bible and in verse 27 circle “created” and mark it with an A. Then circle “in his own image” and mark it with a B. On the next line circle “he created him” and mark it A’. Circle and mark “in the image of God” as B’. Draw lines between the As then between the Bs. You should end up with an X. The two As say the same thing. So do the Bs. This is called chiasmus and is a literary technique of stating and restating in order to make a larger point (and the shape of an X). It was a common practice in Hebrew poetry. It is a deliberate literary structure and implies balance, harmony, and equality in the text.

In verse 28, God tells humanity to not conquer, pillage or destroy the earth, rather to manage and creatively tend it. This is often times called the Dominion Clause and has been used wrongly over the years as the justification for all forms of exploitation of the planet and peoples.

Genesis 2:1-3 is really part of Genesis 1. They are the same literary unit, and it ends the creation story that began earlier. In Genesis 1:1, the literal position of the words in Hebrew read, “In the beginning created God, the heavens and earth.” Circle the word “created” and mark an A above it. Circle “God” and put a B above it. Then circle “the heavens and earth” and mark it with a C.

Now go to Genesis 2:1 and circle “the heavens and the earth” and mark it with a C. Go to 2:2 and circle “God,” marking it with a B. Then go all the way to the end of 2: 3 and circle “creation” and mark it A.

The first verse of chapter 1 says that “Created God the heavens and earth.” Genesis 2:1-3 reads “the heavens and earth God created.” The backend verse is the mirror image of the frontend verse. Once again, this is not an accident – rather a deliberate literary technique. It takes a story and frames it in a balanced way. It is called inclusio and is very common in Hebrew narrative, as well as in other languages. We will see this technique again elsewhere in the Old Testament.

We have a six-day story of creation in which every day or act of creation progresses towards the completion. Additionally, in every day of creation God says it was good, and at the end of six days He said it was very good! We have been introduced to a God, not of vengeance or chaos, but a God of creativity, order, and love.

Don’t worry Sydney I know we introduced a lot of material this week and only covered one chapter. Nevertheless, a lot of this stuff will serve as a foundation for future weeks, and we do not want to rush this portion of the text. For now just stay in the story that God is telling about His creating everything in six days. Our job as readers is to step into the world of the story and engage it on its terms, not our own. Next week we will get to some of the questions you raised in your earlier email, including when creation actually happened and whether the Bible conflicts with evolutionary theory.

In the meantime, have a great week!

All the best,
TA