In The Beginning: When God builds a house…
In Bible study we’re currently doing a whistle-stop tour of the Bible. Last week we looked at the opening verses of Genesis. It often goes unnoticed what God is actually doing in the account of creation found in the opening verses. Today I’d like to do a short post covering the first part of our discussion and speak about the literary structure of the first chapter of Genesis.
In Chapter 1, verse 2, after affirming that “God created the heavens and the earth”, the author says that “the earth was formless and void” (Hebrew: “tohu wabohu”). The rest of the chapter sets about explaining how God solved both of these problems…
Problem #1: Formless
On the first three days, God solves the problem of “formless”-ness by creating time, space and habitat:
Day #1: God creates time
“Let there be light”…. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night
Day #2: God creates space
God made the firmament and separated the waters… And God called the firmament Heaven
Day #3: God creates habitat
“…let the dry land appear.” The earth brought forth vegetation…
If we were to imagine this creation account as a house building project, we would now have the framework of the house built, together with the rooms. However, there’s a problem. The rooms are all empty! So, although the problem of formlessness is now resolved, things are still “void”. So, how does this problem get fixed?
Problem #2: Void
Over the subsequent three days, the Lord solves the “void” problem by populating each of the realms created in the first three days:
Day #4: God creates sun, moon & stars
God made the two great lights…; he made the stars also
Day #5: God creates fish and birds
Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above
Day #6: God creates land animals and man
Let the earth bring forth living creatures… So God created man in his own image…; male and female he created them
We thus now have rulers for each of the realms. The earth is no longer “formless” or “void”. Chaos has now been transformed into cosmos!
God then completes his building project, by crowning it with the Sabbath (Genesis 2:1-3). There is now a habitat for humanity; our house is now built! We’ll see next time, however, that the Lord didn’t just built a house, but a temple…