Beresheet - Genesis 1:1-6:8
Here we are at our first section of the first five books
of the Bible, or Torah. This portion is known in the Hebrew as Beresheet, which we know more commonly
as Genesis, or more literally ‘In the beginning.’ In the Hebrew canon, the
names of the books of the Torah, and some others in the Tanakh, are based on
the first word written in that book. For example, Leviticus is known as Vayikra (And He called). The names of
the portions work the same way. So for Genesis 12:1-17:21, it is known as Lech-Lecha (Go forth, yourself).
Trying to find something interesting to write about for
this well-known passage of scripture was tricky, but I believe that I have
found something that will help us in our understanding of this part of the
Bible, in particular, what is has to say about the human condition and how it
points us to the coming of Christ.
The Human Condition
At the culmination of the act of creation, after dividing
the sea, sky and land and filling them with his creatures, we find a break in
the poetic flow of Genesis 1 with this declaration:
““Let us make man
in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of
the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all
the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man
in his own image,
in the image of God
he created him;
male and female he
created them.”
(Gen 1:26-27).
Here we learn that unlike the other creatures God made,
people (HaAdam) were created ‘in
God’s image.’ Much has been written on what it means to be 'in the image of
God', and generally it is considered to mean we share in His characteristics. Although this is a good description, I do however believe that when we
examine this word for ‘image’ we find a more nuanced meaning. The word for
image, beselem, is based on the root
word tselem which is the word the
Tanakh uses for idols. For example, “Then
all the people of the land went to the house of Baal and tore it down; his
altars and his images (tselem) they broke in pieces” (2Kg 11:18).
In short, we were created to be the idols of God. In the
Ancient Near East, it was understood that idols weren’t really gods, but rather
vassals for the spirit of that god to dwell in. Thus, that idol became that
god’s representative on earth. What this means is that we were created to be
God’s spirit-filled representatives on Earth to reflect His glory and His
character to the world. Perhaps this is the thinking behind the image of God as
the potter and us as the clay.
But when Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the
fruit from The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they rejected God’s
authority over their life choosing for themselves how to live. And as a
consequence, the human heart was corrupted and no longer willing to live
for God’s glory, and therefore unable to fulfil their purpose. But in this midst of this was a promise. In Genesis 3, God
declared to the serpent who deceived Adam and Eve: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your
offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise
his heel.” Here is the promise of one who would come and defeat the
ultimate deceiver, Satan, and restore humanity to its original function as tselem of God.
As we read on in this section of Genesis, we find humanity's nature
worsening in the murder of Able by his brother Cain, culminating with this
damning report of the human heart:
Notice that it doesn’t say that people did bad things. It
says that the intention and inclination of people’s hearts was to live in
opposition to God’s will, which 1 John 3:4 defines most explicitly as 'sin.' The
problem of sin from the beginning was not just a problem that needed
behavioural modification, it was a deep-seated heart problem. As we see in
Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick;
who can understand it?” Which goes to show that the advice to ‘just follow your
heart’ is not a great idea. The human heart wants to sin, and therefore if we
follow it will deceive us into sinning. Sometimes temptation is not from
without, but within.
But in the midst of this broken and wicked world, was a
man called Noah. And I just love the wording of these final words of our
portion of scripture. After reading about how God regretted creating people and
wanted to blot them out, we find these beautiful words:
“But Noah found favour
in the eyes of the Lord.”
When the Old Testament was translated into Greek in
what is known as the Septuagint, this word for favour, chen, was translated as charin
which in the New Testament is translated as grace.
Noah found grace from God. So the idea that ‘there was no grace before
Jesus’ is simply untrue. Interestingly, Moses is the only other person in the
Tanakh who was explicitly described as also having found grace with God (Ex
33:17). Because, as we will see in next week's portion, Noah had a right relationship with
God, which was founded on grace, he was chosen to maintain the line of the
promised seed from Genesis 3.
As we follow the narrative of the Bible to the prologue of John's Gospel (Jn 1:1-18) we find that this promised seed was none
other than the God who created all things. He would put on flesh and dwell
among humanity and ultimately redeem them from the curse. He would come and
restore humanity back to the purpose it was created for: to reflect the glory
of God to the world. And he would do that by healing the evil and wicked
inclination of the human heart. As Paul wrote in Colossians 3:9-10, “you have put off the old self with its
practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge
after the image of its creator.” By the work of the Spirt, we are being
conformed back into tselem of God.
So when people say that we make mistakes because we are
human, based on what we know from this portion of scripture, we can say that
people make mistakes because they are less than human. Being fully human means
that we reflect the glory (the goodness, righteousness, holiness) to the world.
And it is only in Christ, that we can find our full humanity.
Next week’s portion
is Genesis 6:9-11:32
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