Week 1

Fall 2024

9/1/2024

Central Passage: Genesis 1-3

As with all literature, ancient literature requires us to recover the text’s meaning as recorded by the author and received by the readers. Thus, when reading Gen 1-3, we must guard against superimposing our modern expectations onto the text. We might expect that a creation account should satisfy our curiosity for prequels that explain the story leading up to the more well-known history of Israel. And we might expect it to answer our scientific questions about how old the earth is and how we got here. But, as Moses wrote these creation and fall accounts to Israel after miraculously exiting Egypt and preparing to enter their promised land, consider why God revealed these early chapters through His prophet.

From the very beginning of Genesis, God’s concern was to reveal Himself to Israel as the unchanging, promise-keeping God who has woven Israel into His story of salvation. The very first verse of the Bible sets God apart from all other ancient Near Eastern pagan gods: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The heavens, often thought by pagans to be the dwelling place of the gods, were created by the God who called them out of Egypt. He is not just another god to which they could give tribal allegiance—He is the God of all creation.

Furthermore, we tend to think that the days of creation communicate something about the age of the earth or a precise sequencing of events, but I would suggest a different literary function. Note the repeated phrase after each day of creation: “And there was evening and there was morning.” The time in between is nighttime, showing that God diligently, skillfully, and carefully created like a craftsman who works all day and clocks out in the evening before returning in the morning. Contrast this with pagan narratives that claim creation to be either an accidental byproduct of warfare between gods or to do the work that the gods did not want to do. Instead, each day of creation progresses, showing how God carefully created, giving form and purpose to His creation that He fills with life (cf. “formless and void” in Gen 1:2). Thus, the creation narrative was foundational for Israel as they depart from a land of pagan worship. As the story begins, they needed to know the ruler of the cosmos who had called them into covenant relationship with Himself through Abraham by bringing them out of Egypt.

Feel free to take a look at the middle school curriculum for more on Creation and Genesis by clicking here.