Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Genesis 1:1-3:24

The profound simplicity of these chapters asks for an explanation, even more than their various details do. 

In this reading, one cannot help notice the immediate impression given of the activity of God as creator.   He creates, He sees what He has created that it is good.  He commands, at various stages, that things are created, and that further things come about from what He has created.  "Plants yielding seed (1:11)"; that "the earth bring forth living creatures (1:24)"; creating man "in His own image" and speaking _to_ them, male and female (1:26-28).

The first thing listed in Genesis 1 that God said "to them" was to both the man and woman in 1:28-30.  However, this is not the first thing God had said to the man.  Chapter 2 describes a time prior to that, before the creation of Eve, in which man "was formed of dust from the ground."  Then God "placed" (2:8) the man he had formed in a garden, commanded him concerning one of the trees in it (2:17), and only then "fashioned" a rib from Adam into a woman (2:22).


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