There is a lot of controversy over the creation story. Theologists to scientists theorize on timing, methods, even evolution. But there is much we can learn from the Hebrew context starting with Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” From the first verse in the omniscient voice, the narrative says that God created, “bara” in Hebrew which in context with scripture elsewhere means to organize or to give function. In other words, this is not a record of material creation, “the earth was unformed and void,”(1:2a), in Hebrew the word is tohu v’ vohu, which translates into something like “chaos”. Light and dark are already existing, but God is dividing them into time, day and night.
In verses 6-10 of chapter 1, the water also is already existing, God causes the waters to be gathered together into “seas” to organize and make them functional. At some place in primordial time God had brought these materials into existence, explaining the aged dating of fossils, etc. Each day, God organizes His creation, the lights in the sky are to be “for signs, seasons, days and years” (1:14a). He assigns living creatures to fill the sky, sea and land, God saw that all was good, and then He blessed them telling them to “be fruitful and multiply” (1:22), that was their function. Then God Himself says in verse 23 of chapter 1, “Let us make humankind in our image, in the likeness of ourselves…” Who is He speaking of?
Made in the image and likeness–God has no image because He is spirit, but this is speaking of His nature. The Hebrew word for image is tzelem, the root means “shadow,’ which is an imperfect likeness of the original. God then forms the man from the ground, adamah (Hebrew) and that’s how Adam gets his name. God breathes the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils and he becomes a living being. God created a wife for Adam from his own body, “a companion suitable for helping him” ( 2:20). Unfortunately, that didn’t go so well when Eve was deceived by the serpent into partaking of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam also ate from the tree that God had commanded them not to eat, and that was the beginning of the fall of man.
However, God had a plan from the foundation of the world to redeem mankind through His Son Jesus, the Seed of the woman referred to in Genesis 3:15, which is called the Gospel in the Garden. Through His foreknowledge of the weakness of humans, God would make His glory manifest in that weakness through the work of His Son. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus is the source of all life, as told in John 1:3: “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing made had being.” And this is only in the beginning. There is so much more to the story, so many levels, that inform, guide and transform our lives by the redemption plan of God.
