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| Covenant of Creation
The aspect of the creation story that is the most important—and the most misread— is the seven-day format in which creation is set. It is especially here that readers, viewing the biblical narrative through the lens of modern science, reduce the biblical narrative and thus miss the meaning that the seven-day structure is meant to convey. Like any good story, creation begins in Genesis 1:2 with its own conflict: the land (“earth” in many translations, but the Hebrew is eretz, “land”) is “without form and void.” In response, the first three days of creation solve the problem of formlessness: God gives form to his creation by separating light from darkness, the sky from the ocean, the land from the waters. The next three days parallel the first three and solve the problem of emptiness or the void: God fills the form he has given. The fourth day fills the first day: day and night are filled with the sun, moon, and stars. On the fifth day, the sky and ocean are filled with birds and fish. Finally, the sixth day fills the land with animals, plants, and man and woman. The temple structure of creation is built in the first three days and then furnished in the second three days. The one day that stands apart is the seventh day. Far from reading this as a seven-day, twenty-four-hour timeframe, the careful reader will notice that although the first six days all have their evening and morning and thus a clear p 10 ending, the seventh day breaks from this six-fold pattern of repetition. The point is clear: the seventh day knows no end. It is wholly different and of a different order than the six days of work. The seventh day is holy and represents divine rest. This still begs the question, why seven days? Midway through Genesis, a story from Abraham’s life illuminates the importance of “seven” and why it is employed as the macro structure of the creation poem and of creation itself. In Genesis 21, Abraham complains to the Gentile Abimelech about a disputed well (Gn 21:25–34). To arrive at a legal settlement about ownership of the well, the two men make a covenant. Abraham brings to their meeting seven ewe lambs. Abimelech asks a question much like the one we are asking about the days of creation: “What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs which you have set apart?” (Gn 21:29). Abraham responds that they are a witness to the oath sworn and the covenant made between them that day. The name of the place becomes Beersheba because there they swore a covenant oath. In Hebrew, beer means “well,” which is the reason for their meeting; sheba can mean both “seven” or the “oath” of a covenant. Thus, the seven ( sheba) lambs were a sign of the covenant oath (sheba) that Abraham and Abimelech swore regarding the disputed well. In the Ancient Near East, many people grew up and lived their whole lives among extended family with whom they shared a bond of trust. Outside the family, foreigners were suspect. As in Abraham’s conflict with the foreigner Abimelech, a well that provided water in the midst of the desert was a matter of life and death; its use required a trust and honesty typically found only among family members. In such situations, where a family bond did not exist but was needed, a covenant was made by swearing an oath ( sheba), which joined those swearing the oath in what was, in essence, a family bond. Thus, covenants made kinship bonds where they did not previously exist. With this background, we can begin to unpack the significance of the number seven in the days of the creation poem. God’s creation of the world in seven days signifies that he is making a covenant with his creation. Because the number seven is connected with the creation covenant, the seventh day is holy, as is the seventh month, the seventh year, the seven-times-seven years known as the Jubilee. In fact, the many uses of “seven” throughout Israel’s liturgy all relate to the celebration p 11 and worship of the covenant God made with his people. Thus, God’s creation of the heavens and the earth in seven days, as recounted in Genesis 1, communicates the resplendent theological truth of how, at the foundation and beginning of the story, God seeks to enter into a covenant with his creation, making man and woman not simply his creatures, but his sons and daughters. The continuing narrative of Genesis reflects that there is a new covenant relationship between God and man after the seventh day of creation. In Genesis 1, God is referred to simply as “God” (in Hebrew, El, a generic name for divinity). But in Genesis 2, after the covenant on day seven of creation, God is referred to as the “L ORD God” ( tải về 6.33 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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