Chapter 1 GENESIS
There are two major themes in the Bible. The first is what has gone wrong with our world and the second what can be done to put it right. But before we get to it we first need to consolidate the background.
The first Hebrew scroll has as its first words “In the beginning”. That is how the Hebrew reader knew this book was the first book. It was not until the bible was translated to Greek that it gained the title ‘Genesis’ which is Greek for ‘origin’. Whenever you give something a name it influences the perception of its character. An unnamed disease is always worse in perception than a named one. When the Greeks named the book, it inadvertently changed its emphasis. ‘In the Beginning—God’ is only concerned with the character & purpose of God. ‘Genesis’ is concerned with ‘Beginnings’. Understanding that, enables us see that Genesis is not just the first book but the foundational book of the Bible. If you take Genesis out of bible the Bible makes no sense. It becomes no more than a distant nation’s history. All the Old Testament is built on this book. Genesis is quoted more in the New Testament than any other book, (other than perhaps Isaiah). When asked questions, Jesus would often take his enquirer back to Genesis.
The Pentateuch or first five books of Moses, (also known as the Torah to Hebrew readers), was mostly written down by Moses and appended by Joshua after Moses’ death. So we have to ask, “How did Moses gather all the Ancestry”? There were several sources of ancestral records. First, the elder of each tribe would keep a record, usually in a pitch lined box to stop insects eating the papyrus. Judging by the structure of Genesis, this was probably the prime source. Genesis has several sections starting with “These are the generations of”, and these look very much like the records kept by elders. There were other writings about, Jude alludes to writings such as Enoch7.
Genesis ends three-hundred-years before Moses was born, so he needed to draw on some records. We still have to question, How did he know about Genesis one through Three, These are pre-history. Psalm-one-hundred-and-three says “God made known to Moses” and that part of Genesis is certainly totally different in style to the rest of the writings. That does not exclude the use of the three major university libraries existing at Egypt, Ur and Ebia, these contained the writings of Hammurabi who besides writing law also documented ancestry.
Names are important in scripture and to the Hebrew people, both for their meaning and relationship. Names make relationships possible. God has a name making him relatable. The Hebrews called Him YHWH but there are no vowels in early Hebrew, so we say Yahweh. Yahweh is derived from the Hebrew meaning ‘I Am’. In Hebrew that means - ‘I was, I am and I will always be’. Malachi-chapter-three8 puts it this way “I am the Lord, and I don’t change”. In any relationship it is the person in authority that gives the name. Moses asked the name of God to show submission to Him. Adam was given the task of naming to establish his authority or dominion. It was God who named Adam colloquially “Earthy” or “Dusty”. Adam named Eve “Lively”. From what we read of this pair they are well named to their characters. Jesus often nicknamed people because names influence behaviour and relationship. Whenever Peter was rash or impulsive Jesus called him Simon, when he showed spiritual insight he called him Peter.
Whether you consider them symbolic or physical, the two trees in the garden had names that give them significance. It is not their fruit that counts but the spiritual principle they express. God is Holy and has limits in his relationship with sinful creatures, (we will deal with this when we get to Leviticus). The significance of the name and nature of the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ is in the relationship. Knowledge requires experience and, in this case, enough knowledge to Judge between good and evil. God reserves for himself that right because he alone has experience of Satan which Adam and Eve did not. God wanted them to remain innocent because without it the relationship between them would be affected. If Adam and Eve sinned out of a learning curve there was room for correction through confession and repentance. But a stubborn resistance or defence has no return to the original bond and must consequently end in separation from God. God is Holy and Pure and cannot allow sin in his presence for consequence of corruption. The Tree of Life is significant because, as it name implies, it limits the life of sin. If God allowed evil to be eternal, He would allow his universe to be evil forever.
We are introduced to the issue of sin in chapter-three. We are shown the distinction between a mistake that comes out of ignorance such as it might from a learning curve, and a deliberate choice that questions God’s authority. We can see the questioning of God’s authority, first in the deliberate statement of Satan “Not so, you will not die but become like God”. The crux of this matter is in the deliberate decision to, “Become like God deciding good and evil”. This is not an innocent mistake of eating fruit. There is always a way back from acts of ignorance but never from defiance. Evil was not always in the world. It did not start with human-beings it started in the spiritual world with Lucifer. Evil isn’t something physical -it is moral and spiritual. It is an adjective not a noun and requires a noun to live in. If Adam had said, “No”, Satan could not have corrupted the earth. “By one man’s offence death reigned in all, is a statement about one man’s defiance of God which gave sin permission to enter creation.
“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous”. 9
In Genesis-Chapter-three we see the issues of the Old-Covenant and the New-Covenant in its full light. They are placed here side by side and remain so. From that point on, all creation will have a choice to accept one or the other. We will not have to wait until history and time allow for the events of Jesus and the cross to have taken place before we can enter the New-Covenant, it begins immediately. God’s covenant to put things right is in God’s promise. Adam and Eve submitted to Satan as humans, so a human must overcome Satan. The promise one of their seed would overcome Satan took immediate effect as if it already had taken place. The event was not immediate but the promise and the effect was. As we have seen already in chapters-one-through-two God’s word is all that is required for things to happen. The assurance of salvation in Hebrews10 is sure because God cannot break a promise. That is why people like Job could say with assurance:
“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.11
Over the next few centuries we see some significant events. Cain and Abel are next. It is said, “The sin of the first man caused the second man to kill the third”. The basic cause here was envy. God favoured Abel to carry the seed line to Messiah, and Cain thought he was the better man for the job. Jealousy was the temptation. Jealousy always lurks at the door when someone else is favoured above me. Cain had the choice between the Old-Covenant or the New. He was warned and there was a chance to repent, but jealousy gave place to defiance. Lamech chose defiance claiming for himself, “If Cain is being avenged seven times, then Lamech will be avenged seventy-seven times”.12 God never actually said so.
God regretted he had put human beings on the earth by the time of Noah. Nimrod and his tower in Babel chose to challenge the Old-Covenant, not so much in the building of a tower but in the claim “to build a Name for ourselves”, That is pride and is punished either under the Old-Covenant as defiance, or dealt with under the New-Covenant by repentance leading to forgiveness.
Moving on to Abraham, we see a man who chose to live under New-Covenant terms of Faith and obedience. Rejecting the Old-Covenant conditions of defiance and self-determination, God was able to befriend this man and make three promises to him. First, his seed, or offspring would not only be numerous but also the line through which his promised Messiah would come. Second, he would have a land for this line to claim as its own. Third, the line would be the means by which God could bless the whole world. These promises are reconfirmed to each patriarch that follows. Time shows us these promises have been kept. Despite numerous attempts to thwart them, the seed line did come down unbroken through Seth, to Jesus the Messiah. Despite the times of exile and alien dominance, Abraham’s descendants still live in the promised land today. Despite the hostility and attempts of extermination, God blessed all the people groups of the world through Jesus and the church by adopting as many as chose to live by the new covenant into his kingdom.
Jumping to Joseph, Joseph was not the oldest sibling but was given the job foreman or spokesman for Jacob. His coat marked him out as being the father’s spokesperson, rather like bowler hats used to mark authority over cloth caps. Once again we can see jealousy lurking at the door in his brothers. Joseph is the fourth generation and not included in the title Patriarchs. Angels spoke to Abraham Isaac and Jacob but not to Joseph. God is never spoken of as “The God of Joseph” and God never speaks to Joseph directly. There is nothing mentioned about shortfall or sin in Joseph’s life which marks him out from all others Old-Testament characters. You might think this man marked his children out for special treatment. Ephraim and Manasseh thought that should be the case and sought to claim extra land and special privileges for themselves because of their linage13. Because of this self-appointing spirit, once again God rejected them, and they came to nothing beyond the promises God had made to Joseph.
Sometimes in church or in our own lives, it seems God is silent. After Joseph there came the first of two periods of four-hundred years when God was silent14. It is not entirely the fault of Israel they had to wait to go back to their promised land after going down to Egypt. God gave the land to them but because of their own plans they had left it to join Joseph in Egypt. They had gone to Egypt during a famine, become comfortable and stayed. Now things had worsened, and they wanted to go back, they had to wait first until the evil of the occupiers reached maturity, second until they recognized their own plans had failed, third until they were sufficiently confident in God’s ability to trust Him, fourth until Moses was made ready and finally until Pharaoh was humbled. Sometimes our impatience leads us to examine why God is not instant on granting our requests. Besides the hackneyed answer, “God says Yes, No or Wait”, it is a good idea to examine the five reasons above while we wait, if for no other reason than we seek to understand what God is doing behind the scenes.
7 Jude 1: 14.
8 Malachi 3: 6.
9 Romans 5: 17 .
10 Hebrews 6: 16-20.
11 Job 19: 25.
12 Genesis 4: 24.
13 Joshua 17: 14-18.
14 The second was between the old and new testaments during the time of Greek occupation and the Maccabee brothers..