Genesis Study: Week 20 - 2:4
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The Generations of Creation
The Generations of Creation
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh God made earth and heaven.
The word for “these” is “elleh”: אֵלֶּה, which is a proximity marker similar to how we say “this” for something nearby or “that” for something a distance off. So “these” would be a form of “this” meaning that “the things which are nearby”. So it seems the most likely that “these” is now referring to what comes after in close proximity to the use of the word (ie: the following ideas and sentences).
The word “generations” is the Hebrew word “toledot”: תּוֹלֵדוֹת, which carries with it the following meanings:
Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Hebrew (Old Testament) 9352 תּוֹלֵדוֹת
1. LN 10.26 genealogy, i.e., an account or birth record of a family-line’s descendants (
This is an extremely important Hebrew word because it has everything to do with proper lineages, which is used for inheritances and tracking which tribe and family you belong to — and therefore the part of Israel which is your “birthright” so to speak. But in the same way that a genealogy is “an account” of a person’s relational heritage — whether written or spoken — this clearly means that what is following “these are the generations” is a lineage or an accounting of the events of whatever comes after.
— HAVE SOMEONE READ Genesis 5:1 —
This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
This word here is the same word used in the Genesis 2:4 verse.
A person’s “toledot” is absolutely critical to their sense of identity. Being a descendant of Abraham, being a descendant of Isaac, being a descendant of Jacob (through whom all promises have been made) is one of the single most core ideas throughout Israeli and Jewish thought, and might even be at its absolute peak in 1st Century Israel.
— HAVE SOMEONE READ Romans 9:7-8 —
nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s seed, but: “through Isaac your seed will be named.”
That is, the children of the flesh are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are considered as seed.
— HAVE SOMEONE READ John 8:31-44 —
So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you abide in My word, then you are truly My disciples;
and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s seed and have never yet been enslaved to anyone. How is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.
“And the slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever.
“So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
“I know that you are Abraham’s seed; yet you are seeking to kill Me, because My word has no place in you.
“I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father.”
They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you are Abraham’s children, you would do the deeds of Abraham.
“But now you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God. This Abraham did not do.
“You are doing the deeds of your father.” They said to Him, “We were not born of sexual immorality; we have one Father: God.”
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come of Myself, but He sent Me.
“Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word.
“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
So now we have a good idea that we are about the discuss “the generations or accounts of the things which are at hand in the narrative”, but what are they the generations of?
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created….
“These are the generations of the heavens (sa-mayim) and the dry land/earth (eretz) in which they were brought about.”
The word here for “brought about” or “created” is the same as at the very beginning in 1:1: bara - בָּרָא .
So let’s discuss: — ASK EVERYONE: Do you believe that Genesis 1:1 is a statement isolated and therefore everything that follows afterwards is separate and sequential to verse 1 or do you think that verse 1 is general and encompasses everything that follows after in Chapter 1?
Our answer to this should inform the patterns of thought we default to in the following verses and chapters.
…in the day that Yahweh God made earth and heaven.
“in the day (yom — same word as all the other “days” in chapter 1) that Yahweh God brought about dry land/earth and heaven.”
In the past studies, we have at least explored the idea that the word “yom” can mean a literal 24 hour period or can also mean “an indeterminate period of time”.
— ASK EVERYONE: How many days did God decide to take to create the heavens and the earth? —
The answer is obviously 6 days (yom) + 1 day (yom) of rest.
— ASK EVERYONE: How many days does it say Yahweh God created the heavens and the earth in in verse 4? —
The answer here is a singular “yom” — one day. So it is entirely possible that the 6 days in Genesis 1 are 24 hour periods, however, we now have direct access to the idea that “yom” can mean “a non-24 hour period or periods of days that are literally 24 hour but therefore is still more than 1 24 hour period”. There is no debating that this must, without question, be using the word “day” to mean that all previous “days” used occurred in 1 single day, or they were many days (6 + 1) that all roll up into “one period” of time under the word for “day”: yom.
My opinion as the answer to the last question:
God created the heavens and the earth in generations or “periods”. Whatever the specific amount of measurable time it took in the sense that humans NOW measure time, is entirely irrelevant. God made the heavens and the earth in a period of time which includes any subdivisions, and those subdivisions are some amount of time which are in themselves made up of other divisions or more granular time. Why make a hard line in the sand about something which is open-ended?
It makes more sense to me that “a cycle of the earth on its axis” wasn’t happening before the earth (dry land) was even made, and it seems obvious to me that when Light was made, and the heavens and the stars and the sun and moon were not made “of the waters of the earth” which means that the earth was made from the same stuff everything else was made of.
This is also the first time in the narrative that we are given the name for the God in Chapter 1 which is “Yahweh”: יהוה.
— HAVE SOMEONE READ Exodus 3:14 —
And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
— HAVE SOMEONE READ Exodus 6:2-3 —
God spoke further to Moses and said to him, “I am Yahweh;
and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name, Yahweh, I was not known to them.
Tradition has held that Genesis was written by Moses, and it makes sense that Genesis would have within it the Name of Yahweh given that he (Moses) was the first man that God seems to have revealed His own personal Name to: “I AM THE ONE WHO IS”, “I AM WHO I AM”, “I AM WHOM I SHALL BE”, “I AM WHO IS”.
So we are now explicitly told that “The God” (Elohim — the Singular Plural from the entire 1st Chapter) is “Yahweh” — the God of all Creation.
