Lecture 03: The Book of Genesis - Dr. Bill Barrick

we were looking at the text of Genesis 1 and just had gotten started on it we'd talked a little bit about verse 2 and I just wanted to go back over again some of the things that I've said here with regard to whether or not there's a gap here the so-called gap theory has been proposed to try to explain long ages of time and to try to place all that time into this gap so that at the creation you have a perfect creation and then sometime after that you have then Satan disobeying God rebelling and being cast out into the earth causing a supposedly a destruction of the surface of the earth causing then chaos which is then taken as the meaning of Tohu of ohoo here in verse 2 and that then God reconstructs and restores the earth prior to beginning then his six days of creative activity starting then with verse three now as I mentioned last time there are several different points against a so called gap theory number one is that the Hebrew grammar in verse two does not seem to allow for the earth to become empty and formless or formless and empty the word there hai-yah is a perfect and it's a perfect state Eve meaning it's a static state Eve not a dynamic state Eve it doesn't have the idea of becoming but the rather of state of existence and so it was existing as this condition as a direct result of God's creative activity the septa Junt uses a form of genome I in order to focus on our excuse me not you know my avoids the use of genome I and uses a form of a me here the imperfect of a me Ain the same imperfect same form the verb used in John 1:1 in the beginning was the word he it was in a state of existence he didn't come into being which is the argument say for example of Jehovah's Witnesses but rather he was continually existing in the state of B and this is consistent with a septa Junt translation throughout Genesis one using a form of genome I for an imperfect of hi-yaah using a form of ami for the perfect of hi-yah then we also have the fact that in Exodus chapter 20 in verses 8 through 11 we have the command for the Sabbath observance the fourth command for Sabbath the fourth commandment for Sabbath observance in which we're told very specifically that in six days God created the heavens the earth the sea and all that is in them which means that verse one is included in day one it has to be included within the six days of creation so those two points alone would put a huge question mark on a so called gap theory secondly is the fact that if we have a fall of Satan prior to God six days of creation and he's been cast out into the earth and limited to that sphere of existence then how can God's finished creation at the end of the six days in Genesis 1:31 be called very good if this earth houses a rebel like Satan who is going contrary to the will of God it appears far more logical and far more consistent with Scripture overall to place the fall of Satan sometime after the seventh day in Genesis chapter two prior to the temptation of course that we see in Chapter three how soon very soon I mean look at it God told Aven even be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and Eve obviously was not pregnant yet she had not conceived a child so that that child would not then be an exception to all other children by being a child who was born to sinless parents and then not being fallen so that would help us to see and understand that here we have a situation took place very rapidly after the creation where Satan then would rebel I would refer to Ezekiel chapter 28 verse 13 as a reference to that fall where you have him as being the one who empowers the Prince of Tyre and you have a description of what it was like for him and then later in Isaiah chapter or earlier in NIH's a chapter 14 we have another description that helps to see how Satan fell and what's involved in his fall then we'll talk about it again when we get to chapter 3 of Genesis and look at it in addition to that the only reason to have a gap theory is to allow millions and billions of years in accord with secular science theoretic conclusions there's no absolute conclusions we've got with regard to origins it's um there were no men there present and nothing that happened in creation can be replicated in the library in the laboratory not the library the laboratory and so therefore it's a matter of faith for both secular scientists and for us as Bible believers to believe what we believe about origins because there is no direct scientific evidence or nothing that can be repeated in the laboratory to demonstrate or to prove it and so we're both left on the same ground of having to look back and say well I believe it is this way the difference is that we believe the way we do about God being the creator and creating an as he said in Scripture because we accept the Scriptures as his word as direct divine revelation we accept them as the word the one who is the creator so he was present he was the eyewitness to these events and then conveyed it to his chosen prophet Moses and in order that he might record it and keep it so that's the difference between our two viewpoints and sometimes we have to in our discussing this with secular scientists are those who yield a secular science we have to admit that what we accept here is by faith there's nothing to be ashamed in that and there's nothing to be denied in that we can't say I've come to this conclusion on purely rational grounds I've not reached this conclusion by observation or by rational grounds I've reached it on the matter of faith accepting that God's record is true and is accurate and that's where we must stand and if that brings them the blast of those who deny the authority of Scripture then let it come we stand firm in what we believe about it so as we are going through the text now I want us to then take a look at how the text continues in verse 3 because in verse 3 we have God said let light come to be notice the use of the imperfect yehi and there's where the Septuagint translators use a form of genome I it comes to be it happens so light happened light came to be like came into existence or was allowed to perform its duties as we look at this we see a pattern and this is where I want to go next and you have a PowerPoint presentation of this also that is presented in the course documents that you can turn to and see the full chart there but verse three begins with why you'll marry what God said we have what he said yeah he or then we have the result of his command or speaking in Wagga he or and then we have his evaluation well Jana he saw he told that it was good and then we have a further act of God in dividing well yeah BL here he divided between the light and the darkness and he called ye claw the darkness night and the light he called day so this is then we come to the end of that verse five and we have day one and that's and evening came to be and morning came to be Yom Akkad day one so as we're looking at this we see a pattern developing because as we move to day two we see a similar pattern God speaking giving the command using Yehia again let something come into existence and then again it comes into existence and then a further action of God he made something there and then instead of having the evaluation notice the evaluation where Jana he saw that it was good is missing notice that below why Jana we have a blank but in we we have a new addition where he came that shows up and it came to pass thus this is a way in which you find for example and I believe his first Kings chapter 5 verse 42 or the second I think of second Kings chapter 5 verse 42 you have the same type of statement being made about an event that takes place and these events throughout the Old Testament use the same thing if a prophet said this will happen and it came to pass this is what the writer gave adds to declare that it happened just exactly as it was said so why you Cain actually has the meaning and it happened just that way it happened just that way it's an emphatic declaration that what is recorded as what God commanded is exactly what happened and the way it happened and then you have him naming that body of water sees yamin and the dry land then is going to be named earth later so you have vert day 3 begins to say wait same way well you'll mare and then you have him collecting and then you have why you came changing place interestingly and then his naming and then we have then he saw that it was good and then on day three we have a second round of this format of God speaking calling for the earth to sprout with herbs and then it came to pass just that way so now notice we have a switch of the order of why you cane it's beginning to set a pattern that is going to occur earlier rather than later like it did in day two and so it brought forth and then we have God saw that it was good and then we have the conclusion of day three so what do we have thus far going through those first three days we have God speaking we have the speech that he spoke we have the result of those commands we have God's view given in verse four at this stage we have God's work we have the results stated in it happen just that way this is the same as the result that's earlier here in day three and then we have naming and then we have God's view again coming and this becomes the pattern for the rest so as we go on through this then we that's what we have and notice that the evening and morning on the day as the a.m. the p.m. and the a.m. this is why the Jewish community today begins the Sabbath at 6 p.m. at sundown on Friday and goes over into Saturday morning and the Sabbath ends at 6 p.m. on Saturday why the reason for that is because this is the time pattern that God set when he created you see you have the evening stated first and in the morning why because darkness did exist first and then God said let there be light why you he or and then we have the light coming and that light is the day and so that tells us that the measuring of the days are the evening and the morning interestingly when I was in Bangladesh working on Bible translation early on and my learning the Bengali language I was at a handicap because our team was working in Bengali and translating and I would give them input from the Hebrew as we went as I was learning Bengali and at one stage we reached the end of Genesis and we were preparing to publish it and I said we need to go through it one more time I said I'm just now getting to the stage when I can where I can understand all the Bengali involved and I have been asking one of our men to back translate from the Bengali manuscript into English for me so I can double-check and I have found at least one mistake and they said what mistake did you find I says our current translation has eight days of creation not seven and they were somewhat astounded said well how did that happen and I said it happened because one of the team after we had our discussions decided on their own that when it said that darkness existed first and then it says there was evening and there was morning day one they in their mind interpret Oh evening that's the latter part of a day so the evening is actually the last part of the previous day day one and the morning is day two even though it says day one but it began on day one with the evening and I said by doing that then what we've inserted is an extra day that isn't there and we made it eight days instead of seven and we know that that's not right and so I went back to the man who had done the back translation because he did not catch that his back translation missed it entirely he gave it in the traditional way there was evening and morning day one never said anything about the rest of the text in the Bengali that added that extra day in there and so I asked him why didn't you see that why didn't you tell me why didn't you translate exactly what's there in the Bengali so we could make this correction earlier than now and he said well I couldn't figure out why that was there but I figured you people are the ones who know what you're doing and so I just assumed that it's correct and that this is what was intended gneisses but you know you're born Bengali the Bengali language is your native language you know that what it says is an extra day well yeah I know that but he says the man who serves as your Bengali advisor he says one of my own brothers and a Bangladeshi he says is a college teacher he knows the language better than I do so I assumed that there was something about the language I had not yet learned that's the problem you go through with the idea of informants and language helpers etc when you're doing Bible translation because sometimes they they look at someone else that's on the team and say well he's he's higher than I am he has more knowledge than I am so even though I see what appears to be a problem I must not rightly understand it and so I told him I says from now on when you're asked about such things I said you give it the way you see it we'll handle the issues the relationships to everyone else on the team it was a fascinating time unfortunately the Bible Society had already published 10,000 copies even though we had told them wait until we approve it we sent it to them only so they could see that we were moving along at a good pace and had completed Genesis and were in the final stages so from that time on we stamped I had a special stamp made and the top of everything I went to Bible Society had a stamp on the top of her page that said not ready for publication so that when it was finally ready for publication that stamp was missing and they knew we were ready ten thousand copies of eight days of creation sitting out there that's a nightmare for a Bible translator it really is it's terrible yes Daniel no I don't think so because we have the same thing done for example in numbers chapter 7 when we're talking about the 12 days of the dedication of the tabernacle when each of the tribes brings a set sequence of offerings and gifts to the tabernacle one by one and we have the same basic usage of akkad there as well if I remember right it seems that it's just a the way it's given is perhaps then we can only say perhaps because we weren't there I'm not a native biblical classical biblical hebrew speaker no one on the earth today is because all native speakers are hebrew today are speaking modern hebrew and so we have no way of knowing what was the absolute intent but it would appear that the use of akkad was primarily demonstrate that you have two parts here united into one because F Codd is used later also of the man and woman being one flesh and you have other usages of F of akkad used that way where you have a unity being expressed rather than say a uniqueness that is usually done with something like yo keed and so and again we can't be definite on that because numbers in their use in Hebrew are notoriously difficult to nail down as to what's an ordinal and what is not an ordinal what's a cardinal number they sometimes vary in their usage and sometimes you'll have two different forms used for the same meaning to the two forms used as a as an ordinal or the two forms used as a cardinal so with that in mind we have to be very cautious about being definite on why it would be stated but there's no reason not to accept it as just being ordinal okay good question all right as we look at this then and see it we see this pattern developing as we go through day four we have the same pattern continuing and we go through day five an identical pattern continues with the addition that on the end of the day you have a blessing from God for the very first time so he blessed them the animals he created and told them be fruitful and multiply on the face of the earth and then on day six we have a similar type of occurrence that we that we have in the structure of day three day three has two rounds of God speech day three hat hour day six excuse me has three rounds of God speech perhaps to demonstrate that this is the climax of creation perhaps to point out the significance of the creation of mankind on the sixth day that we have this now as we go back over this and look at it and day seven comes through very differently and notice day six has a blessing in it and day seven we have the seventh day blessed by God so blessing is days five six and seven and as we go back through this we have to go back to these two errant members the way yannick eat ov and why he wagga he came at the beginning that seemed to be out of the standard order because way Yana then is later placed here at the end and ye Cain has moved forward up here right after the fulfilled the statement excuse me of the command so whenever we see something that is out of the ordinary anything that is not the same structure that is an exegetical key that tells us that we have to ask the question why all right this this applies with everything we look at no matter what we're looking at whether we're looking at Psalms that are the same nature excuse me whether we're looking at Psalms that have the same nature two laments personal laments rather than corporate laments whether we're looking at two genealogies of whether we're looking at two narratives whether we're looking at poetry following a narrative but build upon that narrative we have to always ask the question why the differences why the differences what are they there for why breaking the normal pattern the normal structure so as we look at that I think that the first one the way yata he told on the first day is in order to help us see very early on that everything that God does is good the quality of its creation is not bad it's not mediocre it is good and indeed later in chapter 1 verse 31 it is very good but this is significant important a good God produces a good creation a good God prepares for the climax of his creation mankind by presenting mankind with a very good environment in which to live and to breathe and to serve Him this tells us something about God upfront the focus and emphasis and on the character and nature of his creation I think also it is to counter any possible misunderstanding of verse 2 which is a misunderstanding conveyed by some of those who believe in the gap theory that verse 2 represents chaos that represents a prior destruction of the surface of the earth that it represents the intrusion of evil that this lets us know from the very start even when only light has been called into existence by God by his command at this point besides the physical earth space interstellar space the heavens that it is good it is good you say well why would God do that well I think there are two reasons number one God is omniscient he knows all things remember he has a plan a but no plan B we know that in spite of what some have said in the idea of neo theism and there's another name for that I was going to use pardon open theism thank you neo theism open theism those who believe in that like John Sanders for example who wrote the book the God who risks he says that God was caught by surprise by man's disobedience and fall and he had to move to plan B well if that's true then why do we have 5 times the New Testament declared that before the foundation of the heavens and the earth before the earth was created the Son of God had already been chosen and appointed to be a Redeemer of mankind fallen mankind and that he had got it also chosen whom he would save before the foundation of the earth that would indicate he was not surprised at all he was already aware and already begun to plan even before he created and even before there was man and before the fall there is no such thing as God being surprised by this unless we outright deny the explicit statement of Scripture there is no plan B plan a and plan a alone God knew all of this ahead of time so he understands that fallen man is going to twist the scriptures and is going to in some fashion attempt to attribute some sort of evil destruction or chaos to God's original creation and four makes it clear from the start if it is not that then this I'm omniscient God knows among whom his people will be living and what fallen man in the ancient Near East will do with their myths and legends in which they will make creation a battle between a mighty supernatural being and a another coexistent being or condition known as the chaos monster that he will have to defeat in order to create in fact even going so far as making evil almost Co eternal with God or making the physical universe Co eternal with God as the ancient near-eastern myths do either way God knowing anticipates the questions of his people who will come in the ages to come and he responds and answers and I believe that's something he does all the way through scripture we talk about God accommodating his revelation to us this is one of the ways in which he accommodates his revelation to us he anticipates our questions and he provides us with answers long before we even asked them he provides that is necessary now you say but wait a minute this is recorded as revelation given to Moses much later so couldn't it be that God already then is experiencing this in Israel after all when Israel is in Egypt some of them began to worship you Gyptian gods we see that next is chapter 32 where they build the golden calf to worship while Moses is up on Mount Sinai could this just be a immediate reference where God is then putting this in after all this is part of the narrative framework not part of the dialogue in Genesis 1 right it's not what God said when he created it is his revelation to Moses about what he thought when he created and his evaluation of it so you could take that view as well and it still amounts the same thing because God is saying this is really how I believed and felt and this is the answer you must give to any who feel differently or believe differently this is the answer you have in the midst of the peoples the pagan peoples among whom you live you must remember that my creation is good and I have thought that discerned that and he come to that conclusion in my evaluation since the day I created from that very time on and that this would be it either way it comes the same position and it answers and anticipates those who begin to work then in some way trying to either conform the creation narrative to the narratives or legends of the ancient Near East or who in their thinking are seeking in some way to explain PO who have o who by means of some intervention that was external that God either could not prevent or chose not to prevent or that he was the cause of in the judging of Satan at that time it creates a disharmony with the overall narrative and God makes this clear by this type of statement being put up front so that's part of the reason let's move to the second one the way you came why is it placed on day 2 but not on day 1 why is it moved forward on days 3 4 & 6 notice it's missing again for day 5 why is it not always there well I think again we'd have to perhaps take a look at verse at the fifth day and see why it's missing from there and say well you know why is it necessary for him to continue to repeat it it's repeated twice in day three already which is already an exception and twice again on day six indicating the significance of these two and we'll come back that later because I believe that there's a answer to that reason for it being twice on each of those two days the total number of times as we look at it here is that we have four five six occurrences and we also have a Yannick Ito of have seven occurrences there the six instead of seven is in order that we might place greater emphasis upon God's creation being good then we place upon it happened just exactly that way he doesn't want to still lose track of that first because there's something significant here going on there's a hint here that this is a key theme that we must follow and observe throughout the book of Genesis not just here later when we get to chapter two we find out that there's a tree of the knowledge of Tove and row of good and evil and that good is going to become a very important part of the overall story I think that's one of the reasons why it is being put up front here and being talked about the way it is and why it's seven times and not just the six that we have for ye came but ye Cain is placed near the end of day two because there you have already stated both the command and the result and the gods subsequent work so that now we understand that why you Cain applies to both areas because it follows both areas later it can be set ahead of that area spoken of his command understanding it still applies to any actions that follow and I think the emphasis is and it happened just this way it's the narrator's way under the superintending work the holy spirit to say look God's revelation to me of what he said and how things happen I'm recording and accurately this is exactly what happened it's not the figment of man's imagination it's not man's creative impulse to write a creation story it's not the idea that this is my viewpoint but my viewpoint could be in error because I'm only perceiving this as a human being and I'm trying to put the best spin on it I can with limited knowledge it's not that I'm writing an allegory and you must interpret it spiritually to understand what's being said instead it's that historians declaration of accuracy the same accuracy given later in the historical books the old testament when a prophets statement or prophecy comes true and is fulfilled why he came it happened just exactly the way it's written just exactly the way it's spoken I look at that as one of those things that tell us that this this narrative of creation is accurate and God saw fit to remind us of it all the way through I've been reading in leviticus and it's interesting as we go through and reread the Pentateuch as read the Torah each book has some characteristics to it and the characteristic of Leviticus is how often we have Yahweh spoke to Moses or Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron or Yahweh spoke to the people almost every single area of Leviticus every section of the text is structured to begin with that statement the declaration and it goes on then to summarize and say that Israel is bound to complete to fulfill to obey all these Commandments and statutes and regulations that God has given because he has spoken it makes it very serious it parallels with it the repetition of the root Kadesh that which is holy whether it's referring the sanctuary the holy place when it's referred to consecrating things or in other words to sanctify or to bring into condition of being holy or whether it's just an adjective holy thinking the holy things of God the holy sacrifices the holy vestments of the priests etc and God says you are to be holy because I am holy and when we look at that we see that this is the Matic then of the Book of Leviticus it's telling us that this is under the authority and command of God who is a holy God and desires as people to be holy so as we're looking here at Genesis 1 the first chapter of the Hebrew Bible what do we see as a theme or as an element this emphasis upon this is exactly what took place again why because a non omniscient God understands that what man is not there to see becomes a matter of faith because faith is that which depends upon things which are not seen which are invisible and yet believes accepts what God says about it and right up front we're being told that this is an accurate and historical narrative that we can trust because everything happened exactly as recorded in this chapter we don't have to wait till chapter 12 to start history which is what many evangelical scholars did they do I mean in the debate with Walton and Lamoureux and columns on historicity of Adam its Walton and Lamoreaux especially who said that hey I start accepting as historical at this is chapter 12 Genesis 1 through 11 is non historical or a historical it's without historical foundation and therefore not to be interpreted in the same fashion it's different literature it has a different reason and different purpose and it should not be taken that's historically accurate then why does God six times in chapter 1 record here why he came and why are the only other occurrences in those places in the Old Testament we're talking about the fulfillment of prophecy exactly as spoken it behooves us to respond by saying there's no reason not to accept this as history by the fact that God has made certain by highlighting these two errant themes within the order that the very first occurrence of this is out of order to focus on it and the very first occurrence of this is to focus on it these the two foci these the two emphases that we want to follow them throughout the reading of the entire text one is theö centric it has to do with the nature of God the nature of his creation the second is biblio centric it's revelatory it has do with the trust and faith we have in the written record of whether it's accurate or not its narrative evil in its focus and therefore it helps us to better understand the text let me stop here and ask if you have any questions as we've looked at this in Chapter one he questions yes Daniel I don't know what point the original audience would notice this I would assume first of all that the original audience would be far more sensitive to the Hebrew text than we are so I think that anything we can observe with our limited knowledge would definitely be something they observed and probably dwelt on in some degree in fact we do know that the rabbi's and here we're depending upon things much later the rabbi's may be beginning some of their writing as early as 400 BC but most their writing beginning to formulate and coalesce around 100 BC we have the rabbi's noting these as being different and distinct and if we look at some of the commentaries of Rashi which was much later I mean you're talking about 11th century AD now we're looking at men like Rashi and others they're observing it and seeing and we have no reason to doubt that maybe they're observing it because they're repeating what earlier rabbis had said and going back into say the Mishnah and observing some of the things that are recorded there that indicate that these are phrases of significance whether or not they take them the same way that I'm taking them now is another matter I mean if I remember right the way the first one is taken there is explained a way because of the rabbi's trying to avoid making God like man they viewed this as an anthropomorphism and so this when they said that God saw that these things were good that what he had created was good their first thing is to deny any anthropomorphic interpretation and secondly their focus was to demonstrate that the nature of God is good they didn't really deal that much as I remember it with the idea of the creation itself being good and not at all as I remember comparing it with savers to so that is my own in Thai there I'm taking to verse 2 not something I saw in any of the rabbinical writings it doesn't mean there's no rabbi who didn't note it I'm constantly amazed when I'm reading the rabbi's or when reading the early church fathers that so many things that I think well hey you know this has been noted by commentators at least recently perhaps since the Reformation I'm constantly amazed to find out that Samet have noted this long before for example when we're looking at creation the first thing we see is that the animals and the plants and mankind are created mature and ready to reproduce immediately correct and we talk about that being created with the appearance of age I used to think that the first ones to really talk about this came in the 19th century when you have the early debate against evolutionism going on and you have Christian pastors and scholars beginning to respond to the evolutionary argument of distant ages by saying that the man and the animals and the plants are created with the appearance of age and so therefore the earth itself could be created with the appearance of age it looks old and that was before they even realized that there was a problem with distant starlight that they had to account for it that was unknown at the time to even talk about and so some have even accused creation scientists of then adopting this type of argumentation in recent days but it's something that the early church people never saw or never brought up but Ephraim of Syria in the 4th century AD in the 300s ad made that very observation he was very specific about he sounds like a scientific creationist and he has evaluation he's pointed out so we can see that we're not the first to think about these things we're not the first to debate these things we saw that Agustin thought about these things and even compared it to what secular science was saying this is not a new debate at all and not new observation at all and so I think that there's the the amount of material is voluminous among the church fathers and among the rabbis who knows what might be there that we're just not touching upon or not see we have some men that are working on those various areas and trying to make certain they bring things out and one of the issues that always comes with that too is we have to look at the original language rather than looking at those things in translation let's look at the Aramaic and the Hebrew of the rabbi's you have to look at the Greek and the Latin of the church fathers in order to rightly understand what they're saying because some English translations obscure the meaning or direct us a wrong way and give us an impression that's that's what they said when they that's really not the way they said it or what they said so there's much more to be done there and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find someone among the rabbi's or the early church fathers already made that tie but at this point in my limited research and knowledge I have not found it and I've not read any commentary Tator who has located that himself either any other questions yes sir all right good it's not mentioned in the first day and not mention in the fifth day right in in the first day I don't think it's time yet to mention it because you don't have an action or a work of god proceeding there like you do in verse seven and day two we're there in verse seven in day two notice as we go back here we have that God made the expanse you have an action a creative action there there's being talked about and we go back into verse three when we're talking about God's said let there be light and light came into being notice he did not it does not say he made light doesn't say well you ask Elohim huh or in fact we don't have any such action until we get to verse four when we have God divided between the light and the darkness and that can be taken really as epic so jet achill it can be taken as a result thus he divided because the very fact you have light coming into existence means that now both exist and so it's not that God had to have a separate action of division in order to divide it's the creation of it itself divided and so therefore I think that why you Cain has not used there because he has not actually performed a action as clearly as we find it then in verse seven I think that's why it waits for that to make certain that we understand it's not just the fact that God spoken things happened its idea that God spoke and God worked and in both of those it all happened exactly this way does that help now as to its absence on day five that's another matter some have suggested that its absence in day five is because we have the second use of the verb bara we had bara in verse one and we have bara in verse 21 and perhaps it's not necessary to state the obvious at that point others have said those especially arguing for a poetic nature of the genre here a poetic nature of the literary form have argued that if you add ye Kane here it then makes this de 5 overly heavy because we already have an addition on day 5 of where you've read yea break and he blessed and that could be that type of balance and a sense of balance in the in the wording and in the text is something that doesn't belong only to poetry it is also found in the narratives and Robert Bergen most recently wrote about that with regard to Genesis chapter 22 where we have a narrative there of Abraham offering Isaac up on Mount Moriah he makes the point that in Genesis 22 there are ellipses there are Arrangements there are additions there are the order and structure of the text that show that the writer wanted to balance certain parts of the structure and the narrative and so the fact that we have balance going on here then doesn't tip the scales to us understanding this is poetry it's just what we'd call perhaps poetic prose it is sophisticated prose it is highly structured prose as we're looking at it and so that could be the reason on day 5 another offer here there's been offered according to a rabbi friend of mine I don't know where he got it or if it's his own idea but that perhaps the absence of it in day 5 is because God's desire is not to sort of sort of put more emphasis on the beasts on the animals than on man and he points out that to him it's significant that why he came does not occur on day five when the beasts or the animals are created but it occurs twice on day six when man is created why because men is far more significant than the beasts God values men more than the beasts don't take that as if God doesn't value the beasts all right that's going to an extreme in that could it be that God again being a God who is omniscient understands that sometime in the course of history and it occurred long before Darwin by the way even among the ancient Greeks there was a theory of evolutionism in which man is kind of an advanced form of prior animals it's not new to Darwin he's picking up some of the ancient Greek philosophers and writers and building on some of the concepts and ideas they had as early as Plato they're talking about the origin of man and what his relationship to creatures are and animals and there's already a thought of development from the animals that God in His omniscience foreseeing this then allows the focus to come solely upon man in a way perhaps again here we're reading in the white spaces between lines so we cannot be dogmatic when we get dogmatic about things we see in the white spaces we run into trouble but perhaps it's because for seeing that he wants here in the text to emphasize man as opposed to the animals knowing that later man is going to pervert the view of the relationship of man and animals any other questions yes yes I think there is I think that's a good thing to observe that his blessing comes on days 5 5 6 & 7 here because we're reaching the climax of creation because everything that has to do with his kingdom because notice in days 1 2 3 & 4 we really have preparation for the climax of creation notice that the animals that Adam names in chapter 2 are those created on day 5 not necessarily all those creatures created on day 4 notice that God's making a distinction between land animals as opposed to sea creatures that God is making a distinction between what man is to rule over and govern primarily notice that when we come later in Genesis when we have the ark its land animals and birds that are brought into the ark not sea creatures and water creatures there is a pattern here to the significance of these in such a way that when the animals come off the ark in Genesis chapter 9 they again are blessed and given the same mandate be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and man is also given that repeated mandate at that time it's not something to spoke into the sea creatures and so there's a consistency here throughout the early chapters of Genesis in highlighting this and so this could be covenant anticipation because when we get to this term mixed of having Barack talked about we're going to be talking especially the key is Genesis 12 where God is going to bless the seed of Abraham and through the seed of Abraham is going to bless all nations it becomes a key theme but that blessed that theme of blessing we're going to find throughout in different places but it seems to always anticipate covenant or develop covenant or look forward to covenant if not involved covenant question Josiah that's a good question I like that idea that concept that perhaps that's one of the reasons it's involved I know many people are very disappointed that the new earth was not going to have an ocean especially those that are surfers you know can't imagine existing without oceans that could be the reason it could be that throughout all the ages really we have the concept or idea that the sea is used of that which is restless it's used of that out of which rebellion comes in the book of Revelation especially I be hesitant to try to get into allegorical interpretations or try to figure out the figurative nature of that and how far it should be taken but that could be a reason right there that the focus is upon that which God blesses and what God blesses is what he's going to have continued to exist throughout eternity in the new heavens new earth yes there has been there's been a number of people right on it from a number of viewpoints there been seventh-day Adventists that have written on it there have been evangelicals dispensationalists and reformed theologians who have dealt with it and there are many others in the liberal camp who have tried to deal with this and some who have dealt with it within the context of the ancient Near East and it's same highlighting or not highlighting the oceans and the Seas there's a lot of work out there a lot of material to pursue

Channel: The Master's Seminary

Views: 15,492

Rating: 4.7790055 out of 5

Keywords: The Master's Seminary, John MacArthur, Expository Preaching, Inerrancy, Biblical Teaching

Id: 9HNr7uueoKI

Length: 55min 34sec (3334 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 25 2016