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Looking at the Creation Account Hebraically

When Christians begin to study the Hebraic context of the Scriptures, we quickly learn that the Bible makes much more sense to us when we understand its Eastern way of communicating. Our Western culture places a high value objective scientific data, chronological order, abstract ideas and philosophical reasoning. In contrast, Eastern societies emphasize relationship and family, and use stories and concrete physical images to describe reality.1

Because of this, our Greek background makes us expect our Bibles to speak in sophisticated abstractions about eternity and the nature of God. We might be put off by the seemingly simplistic Old Testament stories about eating apples, building arks and talking to burning bushes. Until we learn to grasp the Bible's very different way of communicating, it will be a struggle for us as Westerners to fully appreciate the profound truth that is being relayed in a very different cultural language.

Nowhere is this more true than in the book of Genesis. When we read its stories through Greek eyes that focus mainly on external detail, we can easily miss the point of the story. For instance, the flood account is often discussed in terms of its impact on geology. But this perspective misses its profound ideas about the sinfulness of humanity and God's response. We overlook its important theological statements about the universal corruption of man, and how through the covenant with Noah, God committed himself to find a way to redeem humankind rather than to condemn it.2 If we don’t realize that the biblical writers were explaining theology through story, we may miss seeing that the flood actually points ahead toward the work of Christ.

What if we took another look at the creation account of Genesis 1, considering that it is a deeply Hebraic text? Let's listen to Genesis through the ears of an ancient Hebrew like Abraham, and find out what he would have heard.

...In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth

How would Abraham have reacted to this first line of the Bible? It may be a surprise that this was likely not the first story that he would have likely heard about the creation of the world. Several myths are known from the ancient near east that circulated in his time.3 Most creation stories featured wars and relationships between human-like gods and goddesses. These myths taught that through sexual procreation, or by acts of violence and murder the creation was formed - the seas, the sky, the land. The gods were limited in power and intent on gaining dominance over the other gods, and the world was created as a product of their wars. Humans were created to serve as their slaves, to cater to their whims.4

The biblical account is utterly unique among the creation stories of its time. The revolutionary idea that all that exists was the handiwork of one vast, powerful God was almost unbelievable to polytheists, who imagined that many small gods reigned over the earth. Also, the idea that the creation was "very good" and that humankind was special to God was utterly unheard of. In pagan cultures, humankind was a minor afterthought of the gods, and humanity lived in fear of the capricious gods who cared nothing for them. It is important to realize how many foundational ideas are contained in this first chapter of the Bible, and how radical they would have been in their time.5

To Abraham's culture, it would have been obvious that the biblical creation account was deliberately contradicting the pagan myths that were widespread in that day. It would have shocked them to hear that the things that most people worshipped, like the sun and the moon, were simply inanimate objects that were created by the true God (Gen. 1:16). Neither the sun or moon are even named, except to call them the "greater light" and "lesser light," in order to hint at their insignificance. Similarly, magical sea monsters like the tannin (a large reptile) and leviathan were regarded as gods in many myths, but Genesis specifically says that God made the tannin along with other animals of the sea (v. 21), thereby stripping it of its divinity. In this way, the Bible was "demythologizing" the world and teaching that there is only one God, creator of all things.6

The idea that God endowed every living thing with the ability to make more like itself would also have been significant in ancient times. In delightful Hebrew word plays, God said, "Let the earth sprout up with sprouting things, plants that seed seeds, fruit trees that bear fruit, after their kind, which is their seed, upon the earth." The seas were to swarm with swarming things, and then God told them to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the seas, and let the birds multiply (based on Gen 1:11-12, 20-22).7 These sentences are loaded with words about growing, reproducing and filling, which are repeated to emphasize that God is the one that empowers reproduction and uses it to his own glory to fill the earth. The main reason people worshipped idols to cause them to give fertility of their animals and crops, which was basic to their survival. Certainly this would have been a powerful statement to them about the fact that all procreation is ordained by the One True God.

What is not said in the creation account

Another great contrast between the biblical creation account and other stories is that no attempt is made to explain the origins of God. A goal of many pagan creation myths was to tell the origins of the gods themselves, as an apologetic to convince people of their existence. In contrast, from the very first sentence of Genesis the reality of God is assumed. This awesome God simply felt no need to explain his own origins. It is a characteristic of this God that in his majesty he simply does not answer every question humans have. The rabbis expressed this truth with a midrash about the first letter of the book of Genesis, which is bet, the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. They asked, "Why do the Scriptures begin with the second letter of the alphabet rather than the first? Their answer: "To show that the Scriptures do not answer every question, and not all knowledge is accessible to man, but some is reserved for God himself." 8

We see this same characteristic later in God's conversation with Job. Job asked God why he allows innocent people to suffer, and God didn't give him an answer. Instead, he responds by asking him questions - by challenging him to explain the mysteries of creation: where the snow and hail come from, and how the foundations of the earth were laid. (Job 38-40). Through this response God was showing Job that he could not answer his questions because the human mind simply cannot comprehend God's reasoning. We forget that God created and designed everything from neutrinos to bacteria to ecosystems to galaxies. As Isaiah 55:9 says, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

In Job we see that when God wants to show that something is utterly beyond human understandin, he chooses the creation, and assumes that humans can never completely comprehend its design. This is good to keep in mind as we read Genesis - that God's infinite knowledge simply cannot be brought down into human terms. The Genesis account is an extreme simplification of God's activity into statements that all of humanity could understand. For instance, it says that "man was created from the dust of the earth" but it says nothing about how God put together each cell. It is like other passages which employ poetic "telescoping" of God's activity, like the phrase that God "brings forth bread from the earth" (Ps. 104:14). This doesn't mean that bread loaves magically arise out of the soil, but that through a complex series of events, God causes plants to grow that we can harvest and eat as bread.

The Grand Symmetry of Creation

Looking more in depth at the story of the first six days reveals amazing beauty and order in God's creative activity. Most Christians are unaware of the symmetry of the design over the days, and the delightful imagery that the Hebrew words employ. At first the earth is formless and empty. The phrase "formless and empty" is very poetic in Hebrew - "tohu va vohu." Interestingly, God addresses the formlessness (tohu) on the first three days by separating the various elements each day:

Then, God addresses the emptiness (bohu) of creation by filling the domains created in the first three days.

Clearly, the structure of the days is meant to show the amazing orderliness and grand design of God.9 He first creates the space itself, names it, and then later fills it in an orderly manner.

The Message in the Creation Account

One important thing for us modern Greek-thinkers to understand is that this account is meant to explain the meaning of all things in God's sight, rather than just the mechanical way in which they were created. As Genesis 2:4 says, "These are the toledot ("begats," generations) of the heavens and the earth: their being created." 10 This suggests that in the same way that genealogies are given to explain the relationships of people, these stories are meant to explain the relationships between the parts of the creation. One implication of this is that the chronological order is not the point of the creation story. We can see this by comparing the account in Genesis 1 to the second story in Genesis 2, where everything is made in a different sequence. Humans are created first, then plants, and then animals (Gen. 2:4-20). This is problematic in Greek thought, but likely wouldn't have been in their thinking, because chronology is not an overriding concern in Eastern culture.11 Even though the sequences and timing are different, both stories have the same extremely important conclusion - that humans are the pinnacle of God's creation, and that we are unique in bearing the image of God, and deriving our life from God himself.

In the Image of God

It is hard to overemphasize the revolutionary impact of the idea that humans are made in the "image of God." Human life is uniquely precious to God, and each person is infinitely valuable to him. This was a powerful idea that was behind the many differences between the humanitarian laws of the Torah compared to all other cultures of the time.12 Through the statement that "God created man from the dust and breathed the breath of life into him," we can see the amazing paradox that unlike the rest of creation, we are the direct work of God's own hand, and unlike animals, we receive our spirit from God himself. We are as insignificant as dust, and yet we bear the imprint of God himself! That should tell us that any time we insult someone, we are not just defaming him, but the God who made him. He is the one who designed and fashioned him according to his specifications. Certainly we will treat each other with respect when we realize that we are looking at God's own handiwork, and a reflection of God himself.

We can even see the basics of the Gospel in embryonic form in these first passages of Genesis. We see the power and majesty of the True God of the universe, his incredible creativity and infinite wisdom, and his elegant design of the cosmos. More importantly, we see his great concern about life and what is good, and even more than that, his precious children, the human race. By understanding our enormous value in the eyes of God, we can see the reason why even when humanity falls into sin and rebels against him, he will go to amazing efforts to redeem us and bring us back to himself.

» Published: July 27, 2006 | Written by :: ©2006 En-Gedi Resource Center, Inc. All rights reserved. This article is copyrighted and may not be redistributed without the written consent of the ministry.

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