On Genesis, Part 1: The Creation Account through Christian Eyes

On Genesis, Part 1: The Creation Account through Christian Eyes

Here we are going to venture a commentary on the Book of Genesis, which, Yahweh God be willing, shall certainly require many months to complete. Some years ago we did a series of discussions here titled Pragmatic Genesis, and we may draw on some of that, or at least repeat ourselves somewhat because our opinions have not changed. So for that same reason, I will probably also repeat things which I have presented in other papers as well, and even some things of which Clifton Emahiser had also written. But most of our past work in Genesis was written only for the purpose of refuting certain heresies which are found in either Christian Identity circles or in the denominational churches. While perhaps I may mention some of those heresies as we progress through the chapters of Genesis here, I will try not to dwell on any of them at length, so as to be a distraction.

Some years ago I also wrote a paper titled On Biblical Exegesis. There I asserted that in order to understand the Old Testament, and Genesis especially, one can only do so through the lens of New Testament understanding, allegorically speaking. In other words, one can only understand Genesis through an understanding of the words of Christ both in the Gospel and in the Revelation. That is primarily because Genesis is not a complete history of what is popularly perceived as the “world”, nor does it offer a complete understanding of the state of the “world” when the Adamic man was created. This is first evident in the words of Matthew in chapter 13 of his Gospel where, after having recorded some of the parables of Christ, he wrote: “34 All these things Yahshua had spoken in parables to the crowds, and without a parable He spoke nothing to them, 35 that that which was spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled, saying: ‘I shall open My mouth in parables; I shall bellow things kept secret from the foundation of Society!’” The apostle was citing the 78th Psalm, but we shall see that this is also evident in subsequent chapters of Genesis itself.

This is not a fabricated opinion. Rather, in addition to the statement in Matthew, the fact that Genesis can only be understood through the Gospel of Christ is also explained in allegorical language by Paul of Tarsus in 2 Corinthians chapter 3. In that chapter Paul had made an analogy contrasting the letter of the law by which men had been condemned to the letters of the apostles which pronounced the way to life found in the Gospel of Christ. So continuing the analogy he wrote: “12 Therefore having such expectations we use much openness, 13 and not as Moses placed a veil upon his face, for the sons of Israel not to gaze into the fulfillment of that which is being left unemployed [the Old Covenant]. 14 Yet their minds were hardened; even to this day today the same veil remains upon the reading of the old covenant, which not being uncovered is left unemployed in Christ. 15 Then until this day, whenever Moses is read a veil lies upon their hearts. 16 But when perhaps you should turn to the Prince, the veil is taken away.”

When one turns to Christ, the allegorical veil which prevents an understanding of the Old Testament is removed, and therefore only a Christian can truly understand Genesis, if he has the words of Christ. Therefore no Jew nor any other spurious infidel can ever begin to understand Genesis, and in the first place, neither can they understand Christ if He did not come for them. Ironically, throughout history Christians have turned to Jews for Old Testament understanding, and they are still in darkness because the Jews, according to Paul, shall never understand it themselves. No Jew nor any other spurious infidel can understand the truth because the truth is not in them.

Furthermore, while the Greek word γένεσις primarily means origin, Genesis is not a complete record of how all things came into existence. Rather, it is only a record of what things God had created which are visible to man, and as we shall see, very early in Genesis there are things which exist which Yahweh God did not take credit for having created. Then there is also the question of angels, and the word angel can refer to different things, since it really only means messenger, but it is also evident that there are otherworldly angels, if we must use that term, which are seemingly human but which are not normally visible to man, but who have appeared to men at diverse times. So as Paul of Tarsus had also stated, in Romans chapter 1, in Colossians chapter 1 and also in Hebrews chapter 11, there are things which are invisible, and those things are not described in the Genesis creation account. But as we proceed through Genesis, we shall find that there are even people who are not accounted for in the creation account, and their origin is not explained until the incarnation of Christ, in His parables and in the Revelation. As Christ Himself had said, in Matthew chapter 15, “Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted shall be uprooted!” So there are plants which Yahweh did not plant, and Christ was speaking allegorically of people.

Therefore our approach to Genesis is once again going to be pragmatic. Our view of the Old Testament is a wholly Christian view, as its protagonists were pre-Christ Christians, and they were never Jews. We are also going to avoid speculating on things which later Scriptures or Christ Himself did not explain. We are further going to avoid long discussions of prehistory, which can mostly only be speculation, and we are going to resist scientific examination or any debate with so-called “science”, because what is called “science” today in relation to the origins of the universe, man and society is actually only a religion in itself. Christians do not have to answer to the world. Rather, the world is going to have to answer to God.

So beyond this brief introduction we shall also avoid comparative religion, for the most part, because the God of the Bible is true and Yahshua Christ is God incarnate, and therefore we are not concerned with other religions, all of which are false. They are either complete corruptions of Christianity, such as Buddhism, Judaism and Islam, or they were introduced by the ancient enemies of God, such as Hinduism and all other sorts of paganism, both in the East and in the West. We shall only mention any of them in a limited context on a few foreseeable occasions.

Instead, we shall focus on understanding Genesis in accordance with the words of Christ and His apostles, and in accordance with what we can understand from recorded history and later Scriptures. However recorded history is not actually pertinent to Scripture until Genesis chapter 10. That being said, we must also understand that none of our Scriptures were recorded at all until Moses wrote, perhaps nineteen hundred years after the flood of Noah and a thousand years after the separation of the families of his sons as it is recorded in Genesis chapter 11. However there were certainly historical writings which predated Moses, some of which have survived in inscriptions, and the writings of certain prophets also, as the apostles of Christ had made mention of certain writings and had attributed them to Enoch, which are not in our Scriptures but certainly should have been, seeing that the apostles cited them.

Many Genesis interpretations treat the Biblical account of the Creation as if it must be a scientific treatise, and they are backed into a corner when new information arises or when they are confronted by “science” and archaeological discoveries, of which the interpretations are not always as certain as the claims of those who make them are bold. As soon as they find themselves in such a predicament, they usually respond with childish assertions that “God can do anything”, or something similar. So, for example, the denominational churches all too frequently maintain irrational arguments in defense of a 6,000-year-old universe, as it is in Bishop Ussher’s 17th century chronology based on the Masoretic Text. Or they surrender to “science” and accept the pagan evolution theory, and then they attempt to reconcile the Genesis account with that, thereby making their god subservient to “science”. But we shall do neither of those things here.

Rather, we see the Genesis creation account as a statement on the origin of life, a summary explanation of what things God had created which are visible and which He desired to make known to man, and a statement on the order of His creation. It is a treatise, but it is not a scientific treatise and it is not a complete historical treatise since many details are not understood or made known until the coming of Christ. The words of Christ and His prophets and apostles then inform us that this was His design, and not merely incidental.

So rather than being scientific, it is a treatise which provides a preliminary foundation for the organization and functioning of an orderly Society, the “world” of the children of Israel as they are being organized into a Kingdom. They being the recipients of these Scriptures, Genesis describes their origin. Upon this foundation was set the law and the prophets and later, the Gospel and the apostles of Christ. As we shall also assert, Genesis chapter 1 contains the first declaration of Christ Himself, as it is also described in the words of John the Baptist recorded in the Gospel of John.

The Genesis creation account is also a refutation of the pagan religions of the surrounding nations. The Egyptian creation accounts from Heliopolis, of which there were multiple contradictory but similar versions, had their sun god Atum separate the waters of chaos to create the first gods. The Egyptians of Memphis attributed the creation of the world to their own idol, Ptah [1]. While there are themes in the Egyptian and other creation myths which are also found in Scripture, this should not be a marvel since according to Scripture, both the Egyptians and Hebrews had a common origin in primeval Mesopotamia. The Akkadian and Babylonian creation myths also have both life and the gods having been produced from a sea of chaos, called Tiamat, who was later represented as having been a serpent [2]. The substance of these pagan myths, that life originated by emerging from a sea of chaos, has itself evolved into today’s so-called theory of evolution. Men and animals do not evolve, but lies do evolve as they change form over the centuries.

[1 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament 3rd edition, hereinafter ANET, pp. 3-4, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press. 2 ANET pp. 60-61.]

Furthermore, the Egyptian myths reflect a struggle between the sun god and a serpent, a personification of the constellation Draco, and the serpent is overcome by Seth, the son of their sun god. The Akkadian (Assyrian) creation myths reflect a struggle between order and chaos, in the form of a war between Marduk and Tiamat, who is depicted in their legends as having created serpents and dragons as her choice weapons. Later, Tiamat was also depicted as a serpentine figure herself. This too reflects a Biblical theme, which is only alluded to in Genesis but which is later explained in the New Testament in the parables and the Revelation of Christ. Once again however, this should not be a source of bewilderment, as the Assyrians also have a common origin with the Hebrews.

We mention these things briefly, only to demonstrate that we are certainly cognizant of them, but that we are not disturbed by them. First, we would expect related peoples to have similar primordial myths, and if they did not have similar myths only then would we be left in wonder. Secondly, we would expect the nations descended from Noah, other than the Hebrews, to hold these myths with a pagan perspective, rather than a Christian one, and they naturally would have embellished these myths from a pagan point of view and favorable to their own nation or tribe. So while we consider the Genesis creation account to be a refutation and a correction of the myths of these and the other Adamic nations, it should also be understood within that context. Therefore here in Genesis the Creator is presented as a God of order, while the pagan nations professed that life had been derived from chaos.

That Moses had written the books which are attributed to him is professed by Christ in the Gospel, so there is no valid reason to doubt the association. That Moses was acknowledged to be a famous law-giver and founder of a society as it is described in those books is corroborated in Greek classics such as the writings of Strabo of Cappadocia and Diodorus Siculus, as well as those of Manetho, Hecataeus of Abdera and Flavius Josephus. According to the autobiographical aspects of the Exodus account, Moses was raised as a prince in the house of the Pharaoh of Egypt. Such a young man was typically well-educated for roles expected of a prince, such as general, ambassador, administrator or statesman. Moses would have been familiar with all of the creation accounts and other myths and literature of both the Egyptians and the surrounding nations. So while his writings were certainly inspired by Yahweh God, he must have also been familiar with all of the competing and pagan myths.

So since we have asserted that this Genesis account was written so that it may serve as the basis for the founding of a Society, we should discuss the Biblical concept of society, or world, at least briefly. The phrase “foundation of the world” appears in Scripture in the New Testament on ten occasions. On each of those occasions, the Greek word for world is κόσμος. Yet κόσμος means only order or arrangement, and does not refer to any physical aspect of the creation, but only to the order of things created, to the arrangement and function of the general creation or of a particular society. So depending on the context, κόσμος may refer to the order of the entire universe, or to the order of a particular segment, such as a region, nation or even a government. For that reason, in the Christogenea New Testament we have usually translated the term as society.

This is supported in the Wisdom of Solomon, in chapter 18 where we read, in reference to the garment of the high priest of Israel ordained at Mount Sinai: “24 For in the long garment was the whole world, and in the four rows of the stones was the glory of the fathers graven, and thy Majesty upon the diadem of his head.” Those four rows of stones represented the twelve tribes of the children of Israel, and they were the world of the prophets and of the apostles of Christ. Genesis chapter 1 describes the world which Yahweh God had created, and that is the world which Yahweh God intends to save. Yet even Genesis was written only for the children of Israel, as we read in the 147th Psalm: “19 He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. 20 He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the LORD.”

Unlike most other so-called religions, the Christian faith is not derived from only one book, but from many, each of which makes a contribution to a portion of a particular narrative, and the whole of which relates a consistent narrative over a period of over 1500 years from Moses to the Revelation, which was indeed the last New Testament book written. However Genesis is not fully explained until the Revelation, and as we proceed through Genesis we shall see evidence of that assertion, especially in reference to Genesis chapters 2 through 6, and chapters 14 and 15. Understanding this, one may perceive that the true author of all of those books certainly is Yahweh God.

As for the text of Genesis, here we shall follow the King James Version, while also checking at least many of the readings from the New American Standard Bible, the Septuagint Greek and Brenton’s translation thereof, the Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate, the Dead Sea Scrolls where it is possible, and probably other versions as well. Here we have also chosen to take any of our citations of the New Testament from our own translation, the Christogenea New Testament, rather than from any of the Judaized versions.

So with this, we shall commence with Genesis chapter 1:

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The form for the word rendered as God is אלהים, or elohim, which is the plural form of אל, or el, which is a god. The word may also mean judge. Although the word is plural in its grammatical form, all of the pronouns referring to Creator of Genesis chapter 1 as well as the verbs describing His actions are singular in form. On well over two thousand occasions elsewhere in Scripture, the word, plural in form, refers to a singular entity, Yahweh, the God of Israel. Every occurrence of the Hebrew word for god in the Genesis creation account is the plural form. The singular form of the word for god, which is simply el, does not appear in Genesis until chapter 14, where Yahweh is referred to as the “Most High God”. The singular form אל appears in Scripture as god in reference to Yahweh or to idols on far fewer occasions than the plural form refers to Yahweh as God.

Archaeologists refer to this use of a plural in reference to a singular entity as a Plural of Majesty [3] while grammarians describe it as a Plural Intensive. In an article titled Why is Elohim Plural? [4] by one Daniel O. McClellan we read in part:

‘Elohim (אלהים) is morphologically plural, but as everyone knows, it’s frequently used in reference to singular subjects (primarily the God of Israel). The Bible is not the only place this happens, though. The Akkadian word for “gods,” ilanu, frequently occurred in reference to singular subjects in the Amarna Letters (almost always in correspondences written by Syro-Palestinians to Egyptians), in Akkadian texts from Ugarit, and at Taanach and Qatna. The Phoenician ‘lm [probably elim, עלם] is used the exact same way. This usage predates the appearance of this phenomenon in Biblical Hebrew and is no doubt at the root of it. The distribution of this kind of usage moves from the coast to the valleys and then to the highlands.

[3. ANET, p. 276. 4. screenshot of article.]

McClellan then describes other uses of plural words in Hebrew which are not literal, but which were used as expressions of abstract meanings, and cites occurrences of the phenomenon elsewhere in Scripture. There he also noted that at least one grammarian has proposed terms to describe such a phenomenon.

So here we have an opening declaration, that God created the heaven and the earth. In Hebrew, the word for heaven, שמים or shamayim, is said to be a dual form, which indicates two or a pair of something. The dual grammatical form is not used in English, where there is only a singular and a plural, so with many words that aspect of the meaning is lost. However of this claim for this word we may be skeptical that it is a dual form, since the dictionaries are following modern Hebrew vowel points, and other nouns use the same suffix to indicate a simple plural. So because of the form of the noun, other translations have heavens rather than heaven, which is more proper, however the word is singular in both the Septuagint Greek and the Latin Vulgate. Now the earth is described, but not from a geological or scientific perspective:

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

There must be land, as the word for earth is also land or ground, but it does not emerge until verse 9, on the third so-called day. While we would not object to the use of the term day, since there were several such days before the sun or moon are created, then by using the word day the text cannot be referring to our literal twenty-four hour period which we call a day. The Hebrew word יום or yowm is either a literal day, or more broadly, a longer period or division of time. Here we would assert that a day could be a thousand years, or an even much longer period than that. In 2 Peter chapter 3 we read that “8 … one day with the Prince [or Lord] is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.”

Now while the earth exists, as does the heaven, the first words of God within His creation are recorded:

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

This light must exist, as it is the first spoken act of the creation of God. But this light is not readily seen or identified by man. The sun, moon and stars are not created until the fourth day. Aside from those, man can only see light produced by other natural phenomena, such as lightning from weather, or the light made by fire or other recognizable sources, either natural or man made. Without these, or the light of the heavenly bodies, there is only total darkness.

Here we shall assert that this light is different than the light of the natural world or the sun, moon and stars, because this light is an announcement of the presence of God Himself within His creation. The first time it is recorded that this light appears to men may be the occasion of the burning in the bush which Moses had encountered in Exodus chapter 3, where we read that “ 2 … the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” The angel was not an individual which Moses had seen, but rather, the light itself was the messenger of God, since the angel did not call out to Moses, but Yahweh Himself did where it continues and we read “4 And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.”

The next time this light is seen by men is where we read later on in Exodus chapter 10 that “22 … Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: 23 They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days: but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.” Subsequently, the pillar of fire signified the presence of Yahweh as He Himself had led the children of Israel out of Egypt.

Finally, we read in John chapter 1, where it speaks of Yahshua Christ, that “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Yahweh, and the Word was Yahweh. 2 He was in the beginning with Yahweh. 3 All things were through Him, and without Him was not even one thing. That which was done 4 in Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness; yet the darkness comprehends it not. 6 There was a man, having been sent by Yahweh, whose name was Iohannes. 7 He came for a witness, in order that he would testify concerning the light, that they all would believe through him. 8 Not that he was the light, but that he would testify concerning the light. 9 The light was the truth, which coming into the Society enlightens every man.”

Yahshua Christ is Yahweh God incarnate, and John’s statement that Christ, the True Light, was in the beginning with Yahweh connects Him to this light which was first uttered by the Word of God here in Genesis chapter 1, and Yahshua Christ is also that very Word made flesh, as John had also explained. With this understanding we may also see the truth in the fact that Paul of Tarsus had described Christ as the “first born of all creation” as well as the being image of the invisible God, in Colossians chapter 1.

So once again, we assert that this act of creation is Yahweh God’s announcement of His presence in the world which He created. It manifested itself in the Exodus, and finally, in the coming of the Christ. Therefore we may interpret the next statement as being true both literally and allegorically:

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Notice that God is not said to have created the darkness, it simply existed, and we may assume that the state of darkness may not even be discerned if there had never been the presence of light. So as John had said of Christ, in chapter 1 of his Gospel, “5 And the light shines in the darkness; yet the darkness comprehends it not.” Likewise the darkness here is literal darkness, but it is also an allegorical darkness representing the state of the world without the Light of God, as men have always equated good and truth with light, and evil, lies and deception with darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

The last clause is literally “and evening and morning were a day”, as there is no ordinal number in the text. Both the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate have a cardinal number one in the text. We have already discussed the word for day. Without a sun or moon, it cannot yet describe our literal day. We would rather interpret it as an indeterminate period of time, which we would call an age. Each of these ages may represent a few thousand years, or a few million. While millions seems fantastic, and it may be, that does not even matter. As we shall discuss in relation to Genesis chapter 2, this earth, or planet, if we may call it that, evidently had a long history prior to the creation of Adam, and brief glimpses of that history are revealed later in Genesis, and especially in the Revelation of Yahshua Christ.

Here we see a day divided into “evening and morning”. In the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans the day was divided into twelve hours, which were generally observed using a sundial. The night was divided into four roughly equal periods called watches, which is also evident in the New Testament. There was, at that time, not much use for the exact minutes and times of day which we have in our modern society, because they were difficult to determine. Evidently, evening referred to the time of dusk, or later, and our modern conception of a day ending at midnight may be a little later in the night than the ancient Hebrews reckoned the end of a day, but it is fair enough for our general purposes.

Continuing with the account of creation:

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Unlike the first “day”, here the word second appears in the Hebrew text, as it also does for the days which follow.

This passage is interpreted in many fantastic or whimsical ways which we shall not fully address here. The Hebrew word for firmament is רקיע, or raqiya, which is an extended surface or an expanse. In the Latin Vulgate the word is caelum, which is heaven or sky. Like the Hebrew raqiya, the Greek word στερέωμα is a body that may be either material or immaterial, and citing this very passage of Genesis the 9th edition of the Liddell & Scott Greek-English Lexicon has “firmament, i.e. the sky, the heaven above”.

So here we see that “God called the firmament Heaven” and therefore in this context the word does not describe any solid object, but only the expanse of heaven, the atmosphere between the waters above and below. Evidently, the waters below becoming the seas, those which are above must be the clouds in the upper atmosphere, with the expanse of heaven, or the sky, being between them. While we cannot accurately describe the antediluvian world, in Genesis chapter 2 we read “5 … for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.” While the scope of that passage is not necessarily universal, perhaps we can imagine that the atmosphere was heavier, being more humid, and perhaps the canopy of the clouds was also more dense than it is now, if not on the entire earth, or planet, then at least in this particular geographical location which is the perspective of the vision given to Moses.

That heaven is simply the sky is evident elsewhere in Scripture. For example, where it is speaking of the desolation coming upon Jerusalem in Jeremiah chapter 4 we read: “25 I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. 26 I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger.” In 2 Samuel chapter 21, in verse 10, there is a reference to the “birds of the air” and the word for air in that passage is the same word translated as heaven or heavens here and in that passage of Jeremiah chapter 4. The form of the Hebrew word shamayim in Genesis verses 1 and 8 and in both of these passages cited here is the same dual of plural form. The same phrase, “birds of the air”, appears several times in the Greek New Testament, where the word for air is οὐρανός, a word which is usually translated as heaven elsewhere in the King James Version. Therefore since the raqiya, or expanse, is the heaven it is utterly ridiculous to imagine that it is a fixed, solid dome of some sort.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Speaking of men who would scoff at God, Peter wrote in chapter 3 of his second epistle: “5 For this willingly escapes them: that the heavens were from old and the earth from out of water and through water had been put together by the Word of Yahweh, 6 by which the Society at that time was destroyed having been inundated with water, 7 but now the heavens and the earth are being preserved by the same Word, being kept for fire for a day of judgment and destruction of the impious men.” The creation itself informs us that there is a Creator, and men who willfully ignore that fact subject themselves to His judgment in spite of their their denial of Him.

The third day continues:

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

These are the first living things of the creation, and we must note that the earth is described as having brought them forth, because these things depend on the earth in order to survive, as God had ordained. But it is also evident that plant life typically requires the light of the sun, or at least most plants cannot survive. Perhaps here the plants are purposely described as having been created before the sun so that men may realize that God is the source of all life, and that the sun is not the source of life at all even if it is necessary to sustain life. Then, while plants do not rely on eyes to see, men and most beasts do need eyes and the light of day in order to survive, and they are depicted as having been created later, after the sun. As we have already asserted, one reason why Genesis was written was to serve as a refutation of the pagan religions of the surrounding nations, and this would also challenge the pagan worship of the sun as a creator of life. The refutation was not for the benefit of the surrounding nations, but for that of the children of Israel, as the Israelites of the Exodus had once worshipped the idols of Egypt. Therefore only now is there mention of a sun:

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

Of course, not all of the purposes of the sun are mentioned here, and neither is the precise function of the moon, but these are primary functions. Once again, the word for firmament where it appears here is raqiya, signifying an expanse. It does not matter that the lights in the firmament are actually above the cloud canopy, since where we read in verse 8 that “God called the firmament Heaven”, the word for heaven in Hebrew is actually plural, or dual, so they are still in the expanse.

In the manner in which these terms are used all throughout Scripture. it is childishly ridiculous to believe that the heavenly bodies are fixed upon a solid dome. This is what the earliest pagan Greek writers had believed. So we read in Hesiod’s Theogony [5] that “Atlas through hard constraint upholds the wide heaven with unwearying head and arms, standing at the borders of the earth before the clear-voiced Hesperides; for this lot Zeus assigned to him.” The concept that Atlas held the earth on his shoulders is a medieval error. The ancient Greeks believed that Atlas held the dome of heaven on his shoulders, while standing on the edge of a flat earth. Later, by the start of the Hellenistic period, the Greeks themselves had lost confidence in such myths and turned to philosophies which were even more vain. These are pagan concepts, but they are not found in Scripture even if a misunderstanding of certain idioms and metaphors may lead one to believe as much.

Continuing the account of the heavens:

[5. Hesiod, Theogony, lines 515-520, Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1914, p. 117]

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

The firmament did not bring forth the heavenly bodies like the earth had brought forth plants, but God Himself had spoken them into existence as they are solely within the providence of God. If indeed the firmament had any material substance, perhaps it may have brought forth the heavenly bodies. But the firmament, being only an empty expanse, brings forth nothing in this account as we shall see that even the birds are described as having been brought forth by the waters.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

The word for whales here is תנין, tanin or, according to Strong’s, tanniyn, and apparently it was often used to describe much more ominous creatures, where it is evident that the word described large sea creatures of any sort. For that reason the New American Standard Bible translates the word here as sea monsters. Although it is “large whales” in the Latin Vulgate, the wider meaning is also apparent in the Septuagint Greek where it is κῆτος, which according to Liddell & Scott is “any sea-monster or huge fish.”

While of course all of these things were created by Yahweh God, just like the earth had brought forth plants here the waters are described as having brought forth both the creatures of the sea and those of the air. Both fish and fowl depend upon the waters for survival, just as plants depend upon the earth for their survival, and next, we shall see the same thing of the other beasts:

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

The phrase translated as living creature is חי נפש, or chay nephesh, and really only describes something which is alive and animated. It is the same Hebrew phrase which appears in Leviticus 11:46 where it says “every living creature that moveth in the waters”, so it also refers to living things in the water. But here in this passage the words “cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth” qualify what living creatures were meant.

The Hebrew word for cattle is בהמה, or behemah, a term which most often describes large animals or beasts of burden, such as oxen or camel. So the Septuagint has τετράπους or quadruped. The word translated as “thing that creepeth” is רמש, remes or remesh, and it is explained that this word “describes the locomotion of small animals, especially reptiles”, where it appears primarily in the account of creation and in the prohibitions against unclean foods [6]. The word was translated into Greek as ἑρπετόν, which could describe a walking animal, but which was generally used of reptiles or snakes.

The phrase translated as beast of the earth is חי ארץ or chay erets, and it appears throughout Scripture to describe animals in general, and especially the predatory beasts. So we read in 1 Samuel chapter 17: “46 This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts [חי] of the earth [ארץ]; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.” This phrase was translated in the Greek Septuagint as θηρίον, which is a wild or savage beast or game animal.

There are some heretics who insist that hominids other than the Adamic man are described as having been made by God on this day of the creation. However an examination of the way in which each of these terms are used throughout Scripture, and how they were translated into Greek or Latin, precludes that possibility with only a few exceptions, where certain of these words appear to have been used as pejoratives in reference to certain people. But generally, all of these terms describe animals and there is no compulsion to imagine that any other race of presumed men may be included in this sixth day creation. Now continuing with the creation of this day:

[6. Harris, et als, Theological Wordbook of the OT 2177.0]

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

In verse 26, the pronoun where it says “Let us” is plural, and all of the verbs are plural. But in verse 27, describing the actual act of the creation of man, the verbs are all singular, so that God alone created man, and not the plural “us”. The text of verse 26 is only a proposition for the creation of man, and the pronouns and verbs are plural: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” But the text of verse 27 describes the execution of that proposition, and the pronouns and verbs are singular: “27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” There is speculation concerning the “us” of verse 26. It may indeed refer to the angels of heaven, who must have existed before the creation of Adam although their creation is not explained in this account. But it may also simply be an extension of the Plural of Majesty. Or the “concretized abstract plural” as it is evident that some plurals were used in Hebrew to express abstract meanings, even if those meanings are unknown to us today.

While all other living creatures were brought forth by either the earth or the sea, because they depend on the earth or the sea for their survival, man was created solely by God, and therefore one lesson conveyed here is that man depends solely upon God for his survival. Another is that man was created at a naturally higher level than all other living creatures. Then, while practically all animals were created male and female, which is obvious in nature, of man it is explicitly stated that God had created them male and female. In our opinion there is a greater moral lesson in this statement. The practice of polygamy was never explicitly forbidden, and actually on certain occasions it was required by the law, such as when a brother died leaving behind a childless wife. The act of divorce was also permitted under the law, as Christ Himself had said, on account of the hardness of the hearts of men. An examination of the laws concerning divorce actually reveals the fact that they were set down to protect the women being divorced, and the men who would come to their aid once the woman were put out of the homes of their husbands.

So where Christ was challenged by His adversaries on the matter of divorce, as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 19, He cited this very passage were He said, in part: “4… Have you not read that the Creator from the beginning ‘has made them male and female’?” Then following that, He cited another passage from Genesis chapter 2 where we read: “5 And He said ‘Because of this shall a man leave father and mother and attach himself to his wife, and they shall be two into one flesh’, 6 so that no longer are they two, but one flesh. Therefore that which Yahweh has yoked together man must not separate!’” Therefore while the law made allowances for an imperfect world and for the sins of men, the divine will of Yahweh God is that a man keep the wife which He had created for him, and here we see that expressed as an element of His creation. He created them male and female, not male and females, or even males and female.

The Hebrew word for man here is אדם, or adam, and it is the same word used to describe the sons of Adam as a distinct race of men throughout the Old Testament, even if more general terms meaning man were applied to other races at diverse times. Only a descendant of Adam can be an adam, and not all so-called men descend from Adam. Here, this Adamic man is described as a collective unit of men and women, and man, as we use that word in the same way today, was given what we may call a Dominion Mandate, or Dominion Commission. That collective first begins to appear in Genesis chapter 5.

The word translated as dominion in this passage is רדה, or radah, a verb which means “to rule, have dominion, dominate, tread down”, according to Strong’s Hebrew lexicon. In Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament (p. 758) the primary definition of the verb is to tread, and for that reason it is also defined as to subdue, rule over, and even to take possession of something. So the Adamic man was commissioned to tread down and subdue every other living thing upon the earth, and here there are no provisioned restrictions to that commission. This is the purpose of the Adamic man, and in chapter 3 we shall see that he failed in that purpose, although there are also promises of his ultimate restoration in Christ. The Adamic man is the pinnacle of the creation of Yahweh God and ultimately, God will not fail in what He has created, so Adam will indeed fulfill this commission, albeit through Yahshua Christ. As we shall see in Genesis chapter 2, there is an account of this same act of the creation of Adam which is more detailed, and leads us into subsequent events in the development of the Adamic race as we know it from Scripture and history, which is the race being addressed here.

The word translated as replenish in the King James Version is מלא or mala, and it simply means to fill, and not to fill anew or again, as we understand replenish today. The verbs of the address in this passage are all plural, so God is speaking to man collectively, whether they be male or female. Likewise, the Hebrew grammar indicates that God continues speaking to a plurality of men in verse 29, where although the acts of the creation are completed, He continues by addressing the collective man of His creation:

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

This general address to the collective of the Adamic man is the very last act of the creation of God. The fact that every green thing is given to man for food also reveals that when men are restricted from elements of God’s creation by governments, that is unjust tyranny. All elements of the creation of God can be abused, but that is not a proper excuse for preventing men from using them for the purposes for which they were created, which are beneficial. An examination of the true motives for restricting certain natural plants or foods reveals that those who would suppress their use are truly only tyrants seeking after their own profit.

Some heretics use this passage to somehow prove that man was not meant to eat flesh. However as we had said, this is not a scientific account, nor is it a complete or thorough explanation of the will of God for man. Rather, many things are not explained until later in Scripture, if they are explained at all. There are even animals who are carnivores and naturally only eat other animals. But the very fact that man was created in order to tread down and subdue all of the other beasts of the creation serves to prove that man was expected to domesticate animals, or to hunt them down if they could not be domesticated. The only motivation for man to do those things is if he could use them for food. So what this passage may also reveal is that man should eat only those beasts which are herbivores, and not carnivores, which also seems to be a general theme in the food laws handed down later in history.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Everything which Yahweh God had created is good. But as we have said, there are now things which exist, even people, which Yahweh God did not take credit for having created in this account, and which must have therefore come through other means, such as the sins of men or angels. For that reason Christ had said, as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 15: “13 … Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted shall be uprooted!” For that reason also, in a parable recorded in Matthew chapter 13, we see that there are bad kinds, or races, of men where we read in an allegory: “47 Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like a net having been cast into the sea and it gathers from out of every race, 48 which when it is full, bringing up upon the shore and sitting they gather the good ones into vessels, but the rotten ones they cast out. 49 Thusly it shall be at the consummation of the age, the messengers shall go out and they shall separate the wicked from the midst of the righteous 50 and they shall cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!” Since Christ came to forgive sins, the wicked must be wicked for reasons other than their sin, as the word race is used to describe the various fish in the net.

Now, because the chapter divisions are often unfortunate, and because we believe with all certainty that the first few verses of Genesis chapter 2 belong with chapter 1, we shall continue through verse 3 of that chapter.

2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

For verse 1, Brenton has in his translation of the Greek Septuagint: “And the heavens and the earth were finished, and the whole world of them.” But the word for world, κόσμος, would have been much better translated as order in that passage, which is the primary meaning of the word. In the same place Douay-Rheims version has furniture, from the Latin word ornatus which is equipment, apparel or decoration, among other things, and κόσμος was also used in similar senses in Greek, as we have the English word ornament from a related Latin term.

Here the true and original book of Genesis, which is Origin, comes to an end, although several other books were placed with it to become what we have as Genesis in our Bibles today. The view of the creation of God which is presented here in this chapter was inspired in Moses by God in order to facilitate the organization of a society in a Godly manner. So when the society was organized, after the giving of the law at Sinai, it followed this same general pattern of a six day work week and a seventh day of rest. In turn, this account inspires a worldview through which Adamic men can begin to cooperate with one another in the development of a civilization. The scientific details are comparatively insignificant, and have only become tools in the hands of the devils who use them in order to subvert and undermine the Adamic society.

The very next verse in chapter 2, where it reads “These are the generations” in verse 4, it begins not only a new chapter, but we would assert that it begins a new book, an entirely different scroll. That would account for the fact that aspects of the creation here are repeated in that chapter. That would also account for the fact that the Name of God, Yahweh, does not appear up to this point, this being only a general account of creation. But it does appear in the very next verse of this chapter, which we believe begins a separate book and a more detailed account of the creation of the Adamic man which we have seen as the pinnacle of the creation of God in this first account. 

This account does not precede the next book, which runs from chapter 2 through 4 and through the end of chapter 5. Rather, this account spans or over arches chapters 2 through 5, because the collective of the children of Adam whom Yahweh God addressed here are being born into creation from chapter 5.