Exodus 32:1. 1. there is the usual mark of a pause. Passing now from the subject to the verb in this sentence, we observe it is in the perfect state, and therefore denotes that the condition of confusion and emptiness was not in progress, but had run its course and become a settled thing, at least at the time of the next recorded event. The Spirit of God was the first Mover; He moved upon the face of the waters - He moved upon the face of the deep, as the hen gathereth her chicken under her wings, and hovers over them, to warm and cherish them, Matthew 23:37 as the eagle stirs up her nest, and fluttereth over her young, ('tis the same word that is here used) Deuteronomy 32:11. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the [Note: Nahum Sarna, Understanding Genesis, p7.]. united as "one flesh" and strive for marital unity, harmony and love (Genesis Ecclesiastes 7:20. The correct chronological (day-to-day) sequence of events is stated might have been between that cataclysm and the re-creation described in Genesis We have already heard that before God had perfected the world it was an undigested mass; he now teaches that the power of the Spirit was necessary in order to sustain it. Nothing is said about any other region throughout the bounds of existing things. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 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 whole world, which now lieth in wickedness, presents to the enlightened mind a lively image of this original confusion and emptiness. God "sanctified" the seventh day by resting on it. Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird Sanctify means . 3. are necessary for reproduction. Treat.'). or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe? [Note: Gleanings in Genesis, 1922 ] L. S. Chafer held it [Note: Systematic Theology, 1947-48, 6:67.] Next Lesson: Crucial Lessons From Knowing God Is Our Creator. 15. ", [Note: Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, p181. The present sentence, accordingly, may not stand closely conjoined in point of time with the preceding one. 4. A completed event is expressed by the former of the two states, or, as they are commonly called, tenses of the Hebrew verb; a current event, by the imperfect participle; an incipient event, by the second state or tense. The Spirit of God.—Heb., a wind of God, i.e., a mighty wind, as rendered by the Targum and most Jewish interpreters. [Note: Sailhamer, "Exegetical Notes . Hence, the settled condition of the land, expressed by the predicates “a waste and a void,” is in studied contrast with the order and fullness which are about to be introduced. How besmeared its history with idolatries, barbarisms, wars, butcheries, oppressions, crimes, blasphemies! For this doubt might occur to the mind, how such a disorderly heap could stand; seeing that we now behold the world preserved by government, or order. Questions about this lesson? 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. What happened on the seventh day of creation? and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that It is described definitely by the three states of the Hebrew verb - the perfect, the current, and the imperfect. In view of this, ‘Spirit’ is the most likely meaning. . This supports the badness of the condition that resulted from Satan"s rebellion. Match. The complex, systematic order that characterized it later could never have evolved from chaos. It was as competent to him with his limited information, as it is to us with our more extensive but still limited knowledge, to express the all by a periphrasis consisting of two terms that have not even yet arrived at their full complement of meaning: and it was not the object or the effect of divine revelation to anticipate science on these points. he calls the global ocean (the "deep") in Genesis 1:2 a "desert." Without form, and void.—Literally, tohu and bohu, which words are both substantives, and signify wasteness and emptiness. things. Rather, Genesis 1:2 in some way clarifies Genesis 1:1. The primeval chaos that characterized this early phase of our planet is most significant. He Who is all that is significant would bring significance to this shapeless mass. Genesis 1:2. Verse two describes the earth as it came from the hands of the Creator and as it existed at the time when God commanded the light to shine forth. l. 2. c. 10. p. 33. , of the form of an egg; and in the rites of Bacchus they worshipped an egg, as being an image of the world, as MacrobiusF4Saturnal. Again, it is true of intellectual life. This word also would lead the mind up to the thought of the agency of a Person. The traditional Jewish and Christian belief is that Geneses 1:1 declares that God created the original heaven and earth from nothing (Lat. 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. (This verbal form, by the way, is the basic characteristic of narrative in the Hebrew Bible. . created all things. (J. Davies, B. D.). The various forms of vegetable and organized existence--the tenants of the ]and, and those that wing their flight through the regions of air, were seen to burst forth from its capacious bosom, until every quarter of the universe became peopled with its appropriate inhabitants. To their eye it presented merely an irregular surface bounded by the horizon. Chagigah, fol. creeps on the earth." The last clause introduces a new and unexpected clement into scene of desolation. World. l. 1. p. 7. , whose opinion he is supposed to give, thought the system of the universe had but one form; the heaven and earth, and the nature of them, being mixed and blended together, until by degrees they separated and obtained the form they now have: and the Phoenicians, as SanchoniathoF16Apud Euseb. (46) He therefore asserts that this mass, however confused it might be, was rendered stable, for the time, by the secret efficacy of the Spirit. He was there ready to act upon it. It Really Matter What You Believe? As we progress through the Bible, we learn more and more about humanity's Write. .," p77.]. Notice what the 24 elders say as to why they are worshipping God: "The Genesis 1:2. to what extremes of wrong, and treachery, and selfishness, and cruelty! Test. The account of this new creation properly begins at the end of this second verse; and the details of the process are described in the natural way an onlooker would have done, who beheld the changes that successively took place. To fill our mouths with praises to Him that made us what we are, and might have continued, without His free and infinite mercy. Look at this bioplast; the most powerful microscope fails to detect in it much sign of system, or structure: the most that it detects is a tiny grouping of seemingly unarranged, chaotic material; in fact, so structureless does it seem, that the microscope declines to prophesy whether it will unfold into a cedar, an elephant, or a man. Isaiah 60:2. It is true of physical life. This may be true of the world of the soul. "formless and empty" (a hendiadys meaning unorganized, unproductive, and uninhabited) before God graciously prepared it for human habitation (cf. The world is under a Divine ministry. 1. It emphasizes how God Spell. The deeps were fluid, unshaped, dark and mysterious. It would be rash and out of place to speculate on the nature of the brooding here mentioned further than it is explained by the event. Genesis 2:19 If not, feel free to write It implies He stopped or desisted from His creating work. The earth was [became] without form, and void; and darkness was on the face whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. 3. Motion, which is the essential element in change, originates with God"s dynamic presence." “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. The idea of an immortal soul inside each person is not biblical, but is actually The God of the Pentateuch is One who leads his people from the wasteland to the promised land." The more popular theory among evangelicals now is the no-gap theory in either one of the last two forms described above. The Hebrew grammars and lexicons consider 1:2 to be an explanatory noun clause which describes a state contemporaneous with that of the main verb in verse 1 (cf. The content of chapter 2 is a complement Hist. 1. Flashcards. tohu va bohu. Verse two describes the earth as it came from the hands of the Creator and as it existed at the time when God commanded the light to shine forth. “While Genesis 1 focuses almost entirely on the physical creation–what God made or made happen and in what order, Genesis 2 begins to elaborate on the why, or purpose, of creation. The chaos was a condition that resulted, God judged the earth that He had originally created good. It is purposefully instructive. There have been three primary views concerning the chaos referred to in this verse. ‘The deep’ - ‘tehom’ (in Ugaritic ‘thm’) means ‘the deeps’, thus usually referring to the oceans and seas. The verb (hayata, "was") can and should read "became." And He [Jesus] said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not Note that all that was outside of God and was visible was described as ‘the deep’, and that everything that happens is seen from the point of view of earth. Nor is the Spirit merely the author of light, purity, and order, in the formation of the new creature, but life itself: that which is essential to the exercise and enjoyment of all other endowments in His special gift. The Spirit of God must move or brood upon the worse than darkness of sinful and godless hearts. The first subject then for our consideration is THE STATE OF THE WORLD IN THE BEGINNING OF TIME. 'Tis here called the earth, (tho' the earth, properly taken, was not made 'till the third day, Genesis 1:10) because it did most resemble that which was afterwards called earth, a heavy unwieldy mass. That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural: then that which is spiritual. “And darkness was on the face of the deep.” The point is that without God’s word there is no light. of God, an International Association | For the absolutely one, the pure monad that has no internal relation, no complexity of quality or faculty, is barren, and must remain alone. 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