Week 4: The Creation of the Heavens & Earth

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Q.  What strikes you most about this passage?

Q.  What does verse 1 refer to when it says God created the heavens and the earth?

Q.  If  the heavens and the earth refer only to sky and the ground, what does this leave out?

-  The angels and heaven.  The problem is Hebrew uses the same word for the sky as it does for God’s heaven.  

-  The heaven and earth is a comprehensive statement that God created everything.  

Q.  How do we know that the heaven in verse 1 does not refer to the sky?

-  The sky is not created until day 2 in verse 8  

-  However, the statement still could be taken as a summary statement of what God does on day 1-6. The verb create is in the perfect tense and then the following story is in something called the vav consecutive.  Typically a verb in the perfect tense before a vav consecutive refers to background information before the story gets under way.

-  We know that this passage refers to God’s heaven and earth because of other passages in the Bible:

1.  Colossians 1:16  Here Paul makes a direct reference to Genesis 1:1 making the argument that Christ as the image of God was also involved in the creation of the world.    Paul goes on to say in the parallel line that the heaven and earth correspond to all things visible and invisible.  He reverse the order which is actually a rhetorical way to strengthen the connection.  A B B A.  He goes on to mention thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities which were all ancient Jewish terms for angels.  Here he is establishing that Christ is greater than the angels.  

2.  Psalms 115:16  Once again we see this two part division of creation into the invisible heaven which belongs to God and the visible earth where man lives.  This is also a comment on Genesis 1:1 because Genesis 1:1 is quoted in the previous verse.  

3.  Nehemiah 9:6  Nehemiah also quotes 1:1 and distinguishes between the heaven of heavens and all their hosts with the earth.  

-  The Bible does not view God’s heaven as a place that could be reached by getting in a spaceship.  Heaven is an invisible dimension coexistent with our own.  At times people are given supernatural senses to reveal this world to them.  

Q.  Can you think of examples where this happens?

1.  Genesis 28:16,17

2.  2 Kings 6:17

Q.  What does creating everything tell us about God?

-  This shows that God creates everything out of nothing including angels and heavens.  There is nothing that preexisted God and nothing that is outside His control.  This is very different from other ancient cosmogonies.  In the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation epic, Marduk, the creator god, first has to defeat Tiamat, a sea monster representing chaos, and then tears her body in two creating the sky and the land and forming man from the drops of her blood.  Here chaos exists before creation and in the ancient mind there was always the fear that the chaos would reassert itself.  

Q.  How does the Genesis account differ in its view of chaos?

-  Chaos comes after creation and is created by God and God effortlessly addresses it without any sort of battle or struggle.

Q.  There are two problems with creation what are they?

-  The earth is void and without form.  In Hebrew the words for void and without form are tohu and bohu.  

Deuteronomy 34:10  Here tohu is called a waste, wilderness, a desert.  

bohu is a much more rare word but means emptiness.  So the earth before creation is flat and featureless like a desert and empty.

God addresses the problem of tohu v’bohu in the creation days.  

Q.  Does God speak?  

-  God does not speak like we would know speech.  The language is a metaphor.  The image it is meant to evoke is the king issuing decrees.  The king’s power is such that when he speaks the action is performed.  Think of Pharaoh in the 10 commandments “So shall it be written, so shall it be done.”

-  Here God demonstrates his sovereignty and kingship.

Q.  What similarities or patterns did you note in the creation days?

- We can divide the 6 days of creation into 2 triads.  By doing so we can see some similarities:

         Kingdoms                              Kings

Day 1 Light & Dark     Day 4   Sun, Moon, and Stars

Day 2 Sea & Sky          Day 5 Fish & Birds

Day 3 Dry Land           Day 6 Animals, & Man

-  The first 3 days are the creation of the realms or kingdoms and the second 3 days are the kings.  

-  In verse 1:18 God says the purpose of the moon, the sun, and the star is to rule over the day and night.  

-  In verse 1:22 God commands the birds and the fish to be fruitful and multiply, the same command He gives man when he gives man dominion over the earth.

-  In verse 1:26 Man is created to have dominion over fish, birds, livestock, and over all the earth.  

-  We were told earlier that the earth was tohu v’bohu, formless and empty.  Here God solves the problem by creating the kingdoms to deal with the issue of formlessness and the He fills the kingdoms with their kings to deal with the issue of emptiness.

Q.  What is man given to rule?

-  Man is given the whole earth to rule.

Q.  What do we call this position?

-  Man is God’s vassal

-  That is the reason man is created in the image of God.  God is the Suzerain who rules over all creation.  Man is made in his image and likeness precisely to rule over the earth as God’s vassal.  

-  The Hebrew word for image tsalom is the same as used for an idol.  An idol was a physical representation of a god.  In a similar way, man is a physical representation of God’s rule and authority.

-  The Ancient Near East, kings would erect statues of themselves throughout their empire signifying the reach of their rule.  

-  Man as God’s vassal is commanded to subdue and fill the earth and have dominion over it.  Man is to complete the work of God as His obedient vassal.  

-  Man is to imitate God.  Just as God took the formlessness and emptiness of creation and created His kingdom.  Man, as God’s representative is to fill the earth and to subdue it.  

-  On the seventh day God rests.  God’s rest is not a rest of exhaustion or inactivity.  In the ancient cosmogonies, when the god defeated his opponents, he rested.  In the Enuma Elish after Marduk defeats Tiamat and her husband Kingu he builds a temple.  The god is resting from the struggle with his enemies.  For the ancients rest takes place when a king ascends his throne in order to begin his rule.  

-  God’s rest is a picture of God’s enthronement

Q.  We talked about the similarities between the true God’s rest and the ancient gods, what is the difference?

-  God never has to fight His enemies, there are no enemies for Him to defeat.  While creation is a result of the ancient gods victory over chaos, God simply commands order to come into existence.  

-  This is actually a good place to begin because this will help us with our discussion next week about the creation days.