R.K. He made the stars also. This is true in some cases, but not always (cf. Whatever merit the gap theory may have, it cannot explain the extinction and fossilization of ancient animals. In relation to the character and attributes of Jehovah--to His revealed will and the whole range of His service--to the objects and pursuits connected with a spiritual and eternal world, it is altogether out of joint. Flowering plants require pollinators (insects, including bees) to carry out It is impersonal. Not until the resurrection will we have immortality (1 Corinthians 15:52-54). Crucial Lessons From Knowing God Is Our Creator, The Bible and You: Practical Answers—Real Hope, The Great Teachings of the Bible and What They Mean for You. But this unseen material force, wind (John 3:8), has ever suggested to the human mind the thought of the Divine agency, which, equally unseen, is even mightier in its working. 1. This state of things is finished in reference to the event about to be narrated. Genesis 2:21-24 Also, in Romans 5:12 we read that death is the result of Adam's sin. in the sky. [Note: Waltke, Creation and . the Bible and What They Mean for You, God's Plan for You and the Entire Another function equally necessary and important, which the Spirit of God performs in the new creation of the soul, is that of purification. The first and second chapters of Genesis 1 are jam-packed with important And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The Genesis 1 storyteller describes the unfolding scene of the six creation days from a vantage point somewhere just above Earth’s surface, but below the clouds, as God prepared a suitable habitat for humanity. This word, from a root signifying confusion or disturbance, is poetically applied to the ocean, as in Psalms 42:7, from the restless motion of its waves, but is used here to describe the chaos as a surging mass of shapeless matter. We should also take tohu wa bohu to mean either unformed or evil. What better way to teach the people that the God who will lead them out of the wilderness and give them the promised land is the same God who once prepared the land for them by dividing the waters and producing the "dry land"? and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that 2. 6. of pagan origin. Chapter 2, verse 4 through 25, speaks of the creation of man. dinosaurs, long after God first created the earth (see "What ], "an easy explanation for the fossil strata. Yet the mind of man is at work, though invisible, animating his body; and it is truer to speak of his mind as planning the house he builds, and the steam engine he sets to work, than to say that the materials came together into their right places, though that is all that we see. It is translated "creature" in Genesis 1:24; 2:19; The statement, so often made, that the conjunction and (ו ) at the beginning of Genesis 1:2 forbids the supposition that Genesis 1:1 is a summary of the whole chapter, is seen to be futile by a comparison of the immediate sequence of other headings of sections named above. 2,000 years, various scholars and other Bible students have proposed another It is covered with water. the flora and fauna during the age of dinosaurs. Wight. It is truer to say that the Invisible Mind, the unseen Spirit of God, moved upon the formless earth and brought it to its present ordered form, than to say it happened so. a dark portion. It here probably signifies the communicating a vital or prolific principle to the waters. [Note: For a good explanation of the gap theory, as well as the atheistic evolution, theistic evolution, progressive creation, and fiat creation views, see James M. Boice, Genesis, 1:37-68. What is described beginning with Genesis 1:3 is God's renewal of the earth and its creatures. No expression can more strikingly point out the state of an unawakened, unregenerated soul, than that of darkness covering it. The Hebrews use them when they designate anything empty and confused, or vain, and nothing worth. God had no design to form creatures for misery, but for happiness, as the apostle declares when speaking of the Christian dispensation: “God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain mercy by Jesus Christ.” So here He had determined to make man; but to make him, not a child of sorrow, but a comfortable and happy creature: He therefore first begins, with infinite goodness, to prepare him a pleasant and goodly dwelling place. awesome potential and purpose. Start studying Genesis 1 and 2 comparison. II. App-6. It was not in the form it now is, otherwise it must have a form, as all matter has; it was a fluid matter, the watery parts were not separated from the earthy ones; it was not put into the form of a terraqueous globe it is now, the sea apart, and the earth by itself, but were mixed and blended together; it was, as both the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem paraphrase it, a waste and desert, empty and destitute of both men and beasts; and it may be added, of fishes and fowls, and also of trees, herbs, and plants. However there are several indications in the Old Testament that informed Israelites identified the Spirit as God (cf. Hence, it appears that, so far as the current significance of this leading term is concerned, the scene of the six days‘ creation cannot be affirmed on scriptural authority alone to have extended beyond the surface known to man. Thomas Chalmers promoted it in1814. ], [Note: Modern Science and the Genesis Record, 1941. Vocabulary: We should translate the first word in the verse (waw) "and" or "then" (not preferable grammatically) and the verb (hayeta) "became" (possible but not preferable). Not created tohu (Isaiah 45:18), but became tohu (Genesis 1:2. Furthermore, he used bara of the creation of some animals ( Genesis 1:21) and asah of the creation of other animals ( Genesis 1:25). The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: that is, the earth lay a hideous, barren, and desolate heap; as a waste, howling wilderness, earth and sea mingled together. Genesis 2:2 "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made." The chaos was a condition that resulted, God judged the earth that He had originally created good. In the Old Testament tahom refers to the ocean, which the ancient world regarded as symbolic of chaos and evil that needed overcoming and which Yahweh overcame. the demons? from all His work which God had created and made. was. Romans 8:5, Romans 8:9, Romans 8:14. The relation of this to the preceding verse has been the subject of much discussion; some considering that there is but a very loose and remote connection between them, while others maintain that the two verses cannot be separated, because they both refer to the pre-Adamite earth-the former asserting that it owed its origin, in common with all things else in the universe, to the fiat of Almighty power, and the latter declaring what was its condition prior to the establishment of the present terrestrial order of things. Evangel. Rather, Genesis 1:2 in some way clarifies Genesis 1:1. 1. This is a waw disjunctive, not a waw consecutive. “The earth was without form and void”; and the heart is without grace, or capacity of spiritual discernment, till the Spirit of God moves in His creative, enlightening energy, upon both the one and the other. They thought of the Spirit as a power or influence of God. l. 3. c. 11. p. 115. : and the Zophasemin of the Phoenicians, which were heavenly birds, were, according to SanchoniathoF3Apud Ib. For example, plants It is not necessary to postulate billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 in order to help God find the time to do all that He did for our earth. Exodus 20:11 obviously means literal 24-hour days, not eras of thousands "Waters" is also capable of being interpreted the same way as "deep." היה hāyah “be.” It is to be noted, however, that the word has three meanings, two of which now scarcely belong to our English “be.”, 1. We should interpret the chaos (tohu wa bohu) as an evil condition (not necessarily so). What does Genesis 1:2 mean? This indicates still a conjunction of things, and not a series of events. Tracing back through the biblical genealogies we can determine the age of the universe to be about six thousand years with an error of not more than two per cent. 7. l. 234, 235. . ", [Note: John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, The Genesis Flood, p92. Opinions as to the import of this second verse are no less diverse than in regard to the degree of relation which it bears to the first, because, according to one class of expositors, it describes the primordial state of the earth when newly emanating from the hands of the Creator; while another class consider it as pointing to a great physical catastrophe which at some subsequent period befell the earth, and from the extensive derangements occasioned by which it gradually emerged when the present mundane system began to be introduced. Without the fiat of Almighty God, the unaided chaos would have become more and more chaotic. The primary purpose of this lesson is not to show the many things wrong It probably refers to what covered the earth, but it also suggests chaos. In Genesis, God makes a good world and installs humans as its rulers. It existed at present only as an incoherent waste of emptiness. Bereshit Rabba, fol. Sequence: This interpretation involves no gap in time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. 3. and fol. joy?". Genesis 1:4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. . the Sabbath day and hallowed it. He made the world to be lived 113. Moved.—Heb., fluttered lovingly. Next Lesson: Crucial Lessons From Knowing God Is Our Creator. the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. might have been between that cataclysm and the re-creation described in Genesis The immediate agency of the Spirit, by working on the dead and discordant elements, combined, arranged, and ripened them into a state adapted for being the scene of a new creation. How short and wretched must have been the existence of creatures, if God had doomed any to dwell in such a state!--how utterly impossible would it have been for them to fix a comfortable habitation, or to remedy one even of the existing evils! It also defines a day as being composed of an evening and But, further, the word here translated “moved,” literally means settled or brooded, and it is understood by some to express that act of the Holy Spirit by which He imparted life and activity. “Be,” as a change of state, “become.” This is applied to what had a previous existence, but undergoes some change in its properties or relations; as מלח גציב ותהי vatehı̂y netsı̂yb melach “and she became” a pillar of salt Genesis 19:26. Genesis 1:3 describes God bringing order out of chaos, which continued through the six creative days. This planet is Response. Franz Delitzsch supported it in1899. or millions of years. what a resemblance there is between the empty void of nature, before the lights of heaven were introduced into the creation, and that of the human soul before the light of grace hath passed upon it. were created on the third day, while insects were created on the sixth day. The moral and spiritual nature of man forms quite another world from the material universe, and yet how closely the two are linked in the human body and soul! Here we must differ from those critics who understand Genesis 1:1 of the primordial matter of the universe, and the following verses of a subsequent series of growths. waw, "and") is a conjunction that indicates consecutive occurrences. “And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.” This could also be translated ‘wind of God’. If so it may have been some white cloud like the Shechinah. Do we not apply indiscriminately to infants and animals the impersonal pronoun “it”? Other means may be used, indeed, and ought to be used. The chaos (tohu wa bohu, "waste and void," perhaps another hendiadys) describes an evil condition (cf. The wicked man is said to “walk in darkness” (1 John 1:6); “darkness blindeth his eyes” (1 John 2:11); his “understanding is darkened” Ephesians 4:18); his “foolish heart is darkened” (Romans 1:21); he “loves darkness rather than light” (1 John 3:21); “he knows not nor understands, but walks on in darkness” (Psalms 82:5); and if he repent not he “shall be cast into outer darkness” (Matthew 25:30). [Note: Young, et al. It is here intimated that God is a spirit. It is true of physical life. It is plain, then, that a change must be wrought in us if we would be saved: for think not that God will pollute His heavens with such creatures: think not that He will suffer the holiness and harmony of heaven to be interrupted by unsubdued, deformed man. And God intended for marital relations to enhance and strengthen This is the peculiar office of the Holy Spirit, “it is the Spirit that quickeneth,” saith our Saviour: “the Spirit giveth life,” says St. Paul: it was the Spirit that “raised Jesus from the dead”: it is the Spirit that shall breathe upon our dry bones, that they may live; for in like manner it was the Spirit of God that entered Adam, and man became a living soul. The simplest possible existent must have being, and text to which this being belongs, and, moreover, some specific or definite character by which it is what it is. 3. He was there ready to act upon it. The Targums are expanded translations of the Old Testament made during the Babylonian captivity in the Aramaic language.]. And Adam said: "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; The Spirit of God moved (מרחפת, brooding, comp. ), I. EMPTINESS OF GOOD. God created everything. place only 6,000 years ago. 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