Genesis 1:5-10

2006.Mar.28 20:26

In which God names (and makes) stuff

Read Genesis 1:5-10 | Full Chapter

In Genesis 1:5, God names something for the first time recorded. He calls the light (that is the separated from darkness light) “day”. God is actively creating language as well as “stuff”. In particular, he is creating a vocabulary, introducing those things which he wants us, humans, to identify distinctly. He then calls darkness, “night”, and in verse 7 distinguishes between “earth” and “sea”. As with separating light and darkness, God is using words to train us to think in distinctions, in boundaries.

Okay, that’s not where I thought I was going with this. But it makes sense.
Then, the question is why this would be so important to him as to occupy a fair part of the creation story–or perhaps, so important to those who wrote it–begging around twenty questions; since I choose to believe God could speak even through us crazy humans, I’m not going to indulge them at the moment. It seems, he is building up to the distinction between the trees, and between righteousness and sin.

It is important that these distinctions relate to where it is easiest for humans to thrive. Humans are better suited to land than water, to light than darkness. Both the sea and darkness impede our natural abilities, the former through a less suitable environment, the latter through loss of sight. While we can survive in these situations, trying to act out normal tasks is draining and difficult. On the other hand, night is when we tend to get rest. The heavens, likewise a domain ill-suited for humans, is one which we equate with God, oddly enough. Again, it is distinguished from the earth, but it also has its own set of water–clouds, I assume–again, distinct.

So, even the less hospitable of the pairs provide good things. So, what am I saying here? I have no idea. Perhaps because the tree of knowledge does contain something good: knowledge (2 Peter 1:6, tells us to grow in knowledge among other things). However, it is also destructive. It is that choice between living with something that brings both bad and good, versus living only in good. Could any of us really have chosen the latter? Would it have been better had we not eaten of the forbidden fruit. Well, now, that is a complicated question.

None of the above makes much sense, does it? Oh, well, these are my rambling thoughts.

Genesis 1:3-4

2006.Mar.19 14:19

Creating Light

Read Genesis 1:3-4 | Full Chapter

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
(Genesis 1:3-4, NASB)

God’s first step, post creating “the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) is to create light. It’s interesting that it specifies “light” rather than, for example, “energy”. (http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/9_literal.html also uses the term “light” in its translation, so I’m going to more or less accept that). Creating light, particularly in contrast to “energy”, implies sight. And then he separates light from darkness. That is, he prepares a situation in which most humans can visibly see for part of the time. The use of sight, light and darkness are often used, in the Bible and elsewhere, to symbolize spiritual realities.

Then, it seems clear, that God deliberately wants us to get used to the idea that we don’t know everything, and he is, indeed, explicitly hiding some knowledge, some understanding from us. This is reiterated with the trees, later. In this, God calls light “good” but has no recorded comment here on the darkness. The darkness is not so much good, perhaps, as necessary. The darkness of the night is the absence of one sort of energy, just as a lack of certain knowledge is also the absence of a desire to sin in humans. To see some of the things God can see, we must be aware of the ability to hurt others. It might have been nice had that knowledge remained absent, but, then…well, perhaps that’s another subject.