The Creation of the World.
Coming from the ancient world, this account of creation must be seen as quite remarkable. Yet it must not be considered as an attempt at primitive science. Its purpose is wholly theological. The ancients, apart from a few ‘learned men' of a type unknown to Israel, were not interested in scientific explanations. They were practical people and interested in ‘who' and ‘why'. They did not ask themselves ‘how'. We must not tie them down to the speculations of a few Babylonian priests and their like.
What the writer wants us to know is that all we have has come from God. He is not concerned with how God did it, except in the sense that He did it through His all-powerful word.
This is in accord with the Bible as a whole. It constantly describes the world as men saw it and experienced it, using metaphors to describe it which were not intended to be scientific or to be pressed too closely. When they spoke of ‘foundations' they were thinking from their own standpoint of what they saw below them, not speculating as to the nature of the cosmos. When they spoke of a firmament, something which held up the clouds, they were doing the same thing, just as we do when we describe the sun as ‘rising' and ‘setting'. We are describing what we see. It does, of course, do neither. And they described things in the same way without speculating as to their nature.
The account is unique in the fact that it totally and deliberately excludes the thought of any other gods than the One God. The sun and the moon are specifically shown to be merely luminaries and he refers to the stars almost as an afterthought - ‘He made the stars also'. To other nations these stars were important, they were gods in their own right, and the sun and moon were important gods to be worshipped, but to the writer they were inanimate objects made by God.
There may be what seem like vague connections with the language of ancient creation myths, as we might expect when speaking of the same kind of events in the same environment, but if they exist the connections are genuinely indirect and purified. For example ‘Tehom' need no longer be seen as derived etymologically from Tiamat, the creation monster, for it has now been established by archaeology (from Ugarit) as a word in its own right. It is true that there is the idea of emptiness and waste, but there is no suggestion of violent conflict, which is remarkably absent. Rather the emptiness is because he considers that all form and purpose must come actively from God. He does not see a devastated creation, he sees an unformed universe. If he has had in mind anything from ancient myths he has avoided directly drawing on it and has given it a different content and significance.
Approaches to the Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-31.
There are a number of different schemes of interpretation applied to these verses in the modern day, and perhaps we should consider these first of all. But we intend to be brief and would ask those who would like to look into them further to consult those who propose them, for we must not allow these schemes to take our minds away from the central message of the creation account, which is to enable us to recognise how God has, in His own time, established all things for our good. Thus we will not mention them in the commentary, except in passing.
The main interpretations are:
1). The belief that God created the universe in seven twenty-four hour days. This is an interpretation based on comparatively modern views of time claimed as self evident. It also holds that those who accept it either assume that God deliberately planted fossils in the world so as to give an impression other than the reality, to test the faith of the nineteenth and later centuries, or that scientific ‘laws' have changed so that the complexities of fossilisation took place on very different time scales.
Those who hold this view may quite rightly point out that scientific ‘laws' are not inviolate, they are simply interpretations of experience. Scientists vary their scope constantly with new discoveries. They are simply variations of how scientists see things as having always happened, in accord with the hypothesis of cause and effect. They assume these ‘laws' or principles are unchanging, for without them their application at the present time science could not exist, and in practical terms it serves us well. But they are not inviolate. They describe the set up of the world as we see it now, not necessarily as God made it.
Those who hold this view usually also claim that the earth has only existed for a number of millenniums rather than millions of years.
2). The belief that Genesis 1:1 describes the original creation, and that a time gap occurs between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. They translate the latter ‘and the earth BECAME without form and waste'. This latter situation is usually connected by them with the fall of the Devil and his angels. This then leaves room for as many millions of years as they believe the fossils require, while at the same time usually accepting that the seven days are literal twenty-four hour days during which God regenerated the world.
The main problem with this theory is that, although the word for ‘was' can sometimes be translated ‘became' (Hebrew words were not as exact as in more modern languages), this is usually only when the context makes this clear. However in this context it is far from clear. Indeed, the connection between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 is so close and specific that it must be considered extremely doubtful whether the verses can be separated in this way. The writer could not, in fact, have made the connection any closer (there are no verse divisions in the original). The Hebrew is - ‘ ha aretz (the earth) we ha aretz (and the earth)' - and thus we read ‘---created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was ---'. The second verse is describing what was the condition of what was created, not what became of it.
3). The belief that the seven days are not days of creation but days of revelation. They are thus seen as being a comment of the writer as he describes his series of visions. ‘The evening and the morning was ---' being an indication of the day in which he had each vision. The problem with this view is that it does not naturally arise out of the way the words are used in the text. There is no preliminary explanation to suggest that a series of visions are in mind. Nor does it solve the problem as to why the seventh day does not end in this way.
4). The belief that the ‘days' of creation are intended to be read as literal earth days but are not to be taken as factual but rather simply as a mythical presentation. This view is usually held by those who do not see the Bible as God's inerrantly inspired word, although there are those who do hold the latter but see the creation account as a parable of creation rather than as a factual account. The difficulty with this view for the latter is that there really are no grounds for differentiating this account from later accounts in this way. At what point, and how, do we differentiate between parable and history?
5). The belief that the writer did not intend his words to be read as restricting days to twenty-four hours, but as representing a working week of God with the time scale being read accordingly. Thus they are to be seen as ‘days of God', to Whom a thousand years are but as yesterday, and to Whom a few billion years are but a tick of His clock. This position has been argued in detail in the introduction and we will not add anything further at this stage. It is a view held by many of all persuasions.
Many of those who hold this view do consider it remarkable that the writer expressed the centrality of electro-magnetic waves (light) to the basis of the universe, that he differentiated between ‘creation', when God specifically stepped in with something new (the universe, animal life, the human spirit) and ‘making' or ‘bringing forth', which suggest a process of adaptation. Some even argue for evolution or adaptation as Scriptural on this basis.
They usually consider that the sun, moon and stars were created at the beginning, but that on the fourth ‘day' they appeared through the deep cloud and mists and began to exercise their control over times and seasons. They point to the agreement between ‘science' and Genesis 1:1-31 that the world was once covered in water, that dry land appeared as a result of the upheaval of land below the sea, that the earth would be covered with cloud so that for a period the sun would not be seen, although its effects would filter through to aid the growth of vegetation, that various types of vegetation would develop, ‘brought forth' by the ground, that eventually the cloud cover would thin so that the sun would appear and times and seasons be established, that creatures would first arise in the waters, and that from these would come birds and dry land creatures. Many who believe this also argue that the creation of life, and of the spirit in man, were new acts of God.
That is as may be but the writer was not writing as a scientist but as a believer, and he wrote without attempting to explain how God did it. This is why all the above views can find some justification for their positions and many theories will fit the text. This was his genius. He did not try to go above what he knew, or claim to knowledge he did not have.
We will now consider the text in more detail, and as we do so we should note that emphasised throughout it is ‘God' (Elohim). It begins with God, and God is prominent all through it. If we spend our time in studying it from any other aspect of it we are missing the writer's point, God created everything, God produced light, God adapted what He had made, God set the heavenly lights in their places, God established a world ready to receive life, God produced life, God created man. All is of God.