In verse two of Genesis, we find a description of what we could call the blank canvas that God starts with, the pre-creation state. The earth is formless and empty and that darkness was over the surface of the deep, deep means deep waters, bottomless waters, these are ways that the ancient biblical authors are describing non-creation, the opposite of order and life. Formless and empty, a little poetic phrase, the author uses this Hebrew phrase tohu vavohu, capturing the Israelite vocabulary of what’s going on with tohu vavohu, the land was wild and waste, like a wild desert wasteland, uninhabitable.
The blank canvas is like a desolate empty wilderness, but then look at the next phrase, darkness was over the surface of the deep waters, envisioning some sort of cosmic ocean of nothingness and no order, where nothing can hold together in any shape or form, and these are two images to describe the blank canvas with which God begins by breathing his spirit into the emptiness and by speaking his word. Two sets of images have seem like opposites, the desert is a place where there’s no water in life, and the ocean, its place where there’s too much water, but these two images, even though they seem opposites to us, are put right along next to each other in the first page of the Bible, because they’re inviting us in to meditate on something deeper, on what it means for there to be nothing. Then out of that nothingness, where there can be no life, and no order, God breathes and God speaks and results in a garden.
A desert and ocean is something, but the Bible began with God creating out of nothing. The concept of nothing which is almost impossible to imagine and describe, actually has a history beginning with Greek philosophy, but none of that was in the minds of the biblical authors, they didn’t have a concept of nothing. The ocean and the desert were their concepts of nothing, a total void where no life can live, unless the life of heaven is poured out upon it, to bring order and life. Day one is about God speaking into the darkness and penetrates it with his light. God’s own light penetrates the darkness, but God doesn’t eliminate the darkness totally, what God does is contain it, and then make darkness work within a purpose and a rhythm, every one of the days of God working, is marked by evening and there is morning, involving patterns of light and dark.
On day two, God separates waters above and below, look up at the blue sky, ancient people imagined the world, that water comes down from above and it’s being held up there, white clouds brush up against the face of the blue ceiling becoming dark, filling up with, there’s an ocean of water up there according to the biblical authors, that’s how ancient people imagined the world, water comes down from above, and it’s being held up there. The water’s below, we can go to the driest place on the land, and if we can find the right spot and dig down deep enough, we will hit water under there. Day two is about God separating the waters above and the waters below vertically.
Day three is about God separating the land from the waters horizontally. When we get light and then we get water, we plants. Days one through three God creates the globe and then the last thing is all about these plants that just start growing up out of the ground, and specifically fruit plants, plants with fruit that have seed in them, and then they drop their fruit onto the ground, causing itself to exist. God’s the one who is, but once God sets plant life going, it just goes on forever and every plant grows up and then before it dies, it deposits in the ground, its own future self, auto regenerating, this picture of God’s own infinite fountain of life within God’s own self.
Days four and five, God fills this heavens and earth, God delegates and shares that responsibility with the lights above. The lights become images or symbols of God’s own light, they are the rulers above who govern day and night, because once these domains have been ordered, then each of these are named and appointed the inhabitants of those domains, the sun and moon and stars are the things that we can see, that help us know and track the pattern that God has made, the fish and the birds live in the waters above and in the waters below as the inhabitants of those weather realms, this is the order that the author’s trying to communicate, but we get hung up on numbers and days, we give a chronology of the processes by which the world came into physical existence.
The blank canvas is like a desolate empty wilderness, but then look at the next phrase, darkness was over the surface of the deep waters, envisioning some sort of cosmic ocean of nothingness and no order, where nothing can hold together in any shape or form, and these are two images to describe the blank canvas with which God begins by breathing his spirit into the emptiness and by speaking his word. Two sets of images have seem like opposites, the desert is a place where there’s no water in life, and the ocean, its place where there’s too much water, but these two images, even though they seem opposites to us, are put right along next to each other in the first page of the Bible, because they’re inviting us in to meditate on something deeper, on what it means for there to be nothing. Then out of that nothingness, where there can be no life, and no order, God breathes and God speaks and results in a garden.
A desert and ocean is something, but the Bible began with God creating out of nothing. The concept of nothing which is almost impossible to imagine and describe, actually has a history beginning with Greek philosophy, but none of that was in the minds of the biblical authors, they didn’t have a concept of nothing. The ocean and the desert were their concepts of nothing, a total void where no life can live, unless the life of heaven is poured out upon it, to bring order and life. Day one is about God speaking into the darkness and penetrates it with his light. God’s own light penetrates the darkness, but God doesn’t eliminate the darkness totally, what God does is contain it, and then make darkness work within a purpose and a rhythm, every one of the days of God working, is marked by evening and there is morning, involving patterns of light and dark.
On day two, God separates waters above and below, look up at the blue sky, ancient people imagined the world, that water comes down from above and it’s being held up there, white clouds brush up against the face of the blue ceiling becoming dark, filling up with, there’s an ocean of water up there according to the biblical authors, that’s how ancient people imagined the world, water comes down from above, and it’s being held up there. The water’s below, we can go to the driest place on the land, and if we can find the right spot and dig down deep enough, we will hit water under there. Day two is about God separating the waters above and the waters below vertically.
Day three is about God separating the land from the waters horizontally. When we get light and then we get water, we plants. Days one through three God creates the globe and then the last thing is all about these plants that just start growing up out of the ground, and specifically fruit plants, plants with fruit that have seed in them, and then they drop their fruit onto the ground, causing itself to exist. God’s the one who is, but once God sets plant life going, it just goes on forever and every plant grows up and then before it dies, it deposits in the ground, its own future self, auto regenerating, this picture of God’s own infinite fountain of life within God’s own self.
Days four and five, God fills this heavens and earth, God delegates and shares that responsibility with the lights above. The lights become images or symbols of God’s own light, they are the rulers above who govern day and night, because once these domains have been ordered, then each of these are named and appointed the inhabitants of those domains, the sun and moon and stars are the things that we can see, that help us know and track the pattern that God has made, the fish and the birds live in the waters above and in the waters below as the inhabitants of those weather realms, this is the order that the author’s trying to communicate, but we get hung up on numbers and days, we give a chronology of the processes by which the world came into physical existence.
