The Potter and The Clay
How did everything come into Existence?
How was it all made?
Moses’ careful intent is evident in the majestic arrangement, symmetry, and subtle craft of his writing.
Arrangement. A quick read reveals that the six days of creation are perfectly divided, so that the first three days describe the forming of the earth and the last three its filling. The two sets of days are a direct echo and remedy to the opening statement that the earth was “without form and void.” The earth’s formlessness was remedied by its forming in days one to three, and its emptiness by its filling on days four to six. This is exactly what happened, and Moses was at pains to make sure his hearers did not miss it.
Correspondence. There is also a remarkable correspondence between the first three days and the last three. Day four corresponds to day one, day five to day two, and day six to day three.
It is all so beautiful! On day one the light was created. On the corresponding day four there came the sun and moon to rule the light. On day two God created the expanse that he called the sky, separating the waters above from the waters below. And on the parallel day five God filled the sky and waters with fowl and fish. On day three God separated the water and dry land and created vegetation. On the matching day six God filled the land with animal life and created man to rule over it all.
FORM
FILLING
DAY 1
Light
DAY 4
Luminaries
DAY 2
Sky (waters below)
DAY 5
Birds and fish
DAY 3
Land (plants)
DAY 6
Animals and man (plants for food)
On days three and six the correspondence is especially emphasized by the double repetitions of “God said” and of “it was good”—emphasizing a formal correspondence between the final days of forming and filling the earth. These correspondences reveal an astonishing record of the symmetries of creation.
Perfection. The late Hebrew University professor Umberto Cassuto points out that the structure of the days of creation is based on a system of numerical harmony, using the number seven. He wrote, “The work of the Creator, which is marked by absolute perfection and flawless systematic orderliness, is distributed over seven days: Six days of labour and a seventh day set aside for the enjoyment of the completed task.”
Light. The first day reads, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day” (vv. 3–5). For the first three days light shone from a source other than the sun. Thus we observe that the Bible begins with light but no sun and ends the same way—“And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5). Calvin said of this, “Therefore the Lord, by the very order of creation, bears witness that he holds in his hands the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and moon.” The rhythm of evening beginning the day, in Jewish reckoning, begins here because the darkness over the face of the earth was followed by the first light for the first day.
Day two. Light shone on the glistening deep of the unworked, unordered earth. Then God spoke again: “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day” (vv. 6–8).
The expanse (raqia) signifies a kind of horizontal area, extending through the very heart of the mass of water and dividing it into two layers, one above the other, creating upper and lower layers of water (Cassuto). It was the visible expanse of sky with the waters of the sea below and the clouds holding water above. It is the blue we see. God called it “Sky” (alternate translation of the word “Heaven” in verse 8). This is a phenomenological description of the earth’s atmosphere as viewed from earth.
The naming that took place of the “Day” and the “Night” on the first day and the “Sky” on day two was understood in biblical culture to be an act of sovereign dominion. Later God would entrust his dominion over the earth to Adam by letting him name all living creatures. Here the naming dismisses the pagan gods of sky and sea without a word.
Day two. Light shone on the glistening deep of the unworked, unordered earth. Then God spoke again: “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day” (vv. 6–8).
The expanse (raqia) signifies a kind of horizontal area, extending through the very heart of the mass of water and dividing it into two layers, one above the other, creating upper and lower layers of water (Cassuto). It was the visible expanse of sky with the waters of the sea below and the clouds holding water above. It is the blue we see. God called it “Sky” (alternate translation of the word “Heaven” in verse 8). This is a phenomenological description of the earth’s atmosphere as viewed from earth.
The naming that took place of the “Day” and the “Night” on the first day and the “Sky” on day two was understood in biblical culture to be an act of sovereign dominion. Later God would entrust his dominion over the earth to Adam by letting him name all living creatures. Here the naming dismisses the pagan gods of sky and sea without a word.
Notice that the sun and moon are identified as “two great lights.” Moses consciously avoids using their names because they are gods in the Egyptian pantheon. Moses is saying that the sun, moon, and stars are not gods, but God’s creations! He asserts Israel’s majestic monotheism over the degraded pagan polytheism of his day.
With just a “mere” word—the expression of God’s will—the solar system was set like a jeweled watch in the midst of the universe. The focus is geocentric indeed! The universe gets only a throwaway line—“Uh, he also made the stars.”
And what a wonder the earth and its environs are! The seventeenth-century mathematician and philosopher Sir Isaac Newton had a mechanical replica of our solar system made in miniature. At its center was a large golden ball representing the sun, and revolving around it were smaller spheres attached at the ends of rods of varying lengths. They represented Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the other planets. These were all geared together by cogs and belts to make them move around the sun in perfect harmony. One day as Newton was studying the model, an unbelieving friend stopped by for a visit. Marveling at the device and watching as the scientist made the heavenly bodies move in their orbits, the man exclaimed, “My, Newton, what an exquisite thing! Who made it for you?” Without looking up, Sir Isaac replied, “Nobody.” “Nobody?” his friend asked. “That’s right! I said nobody! All of these balls and cogs and belts and gears just happened to come together, and wonder of wonders, by chance they began revolving in their set orbits and with perfect timing.” His friend undoubtedly got the point. The existence of Newton’s machine presupposed a maker, and even more so the earth and its perfectly ordered solar system.
The chances against such an ordered cosmic machine just happening are overwhelming. For example, if I take ten pennies, number them one to ten, and put them in my pocket, then put my hand back in my pocket, my chances of pulling out the number one penny would be one in ten. If I place the number one penny back in my pocket and mix all the pennies again, the chances of pulling out penny number two would be one in a hundred. The chances of repeating the same procedure and coming up with penny number three would be one in a thousand. To do so with all of them (one through ten in order) would be one in ten billion! Noting the order and design of our universe, Johannes Kepler—the founder of modern astronomy, discoverer of the “Three Planetary Laws of Motion,” and originator of the term satellite—said, “The undevout astronomer is mad.”
The slant of the earth, tilted at an angle of 23º, gives us our seasons. If it was not tilted exactly at 23º we would not only lose our seasons but life itself—as the vapors from the ocean would move north and south, piling up continents of ice. If our moon were closer, our tides would daily inundate whole continents.
Charles Colson reported in his BreakPoint Commentary that in April 1999 astronomers at Harvard and San Francisco State University announced they had discovered evidence of three planets orbiting a nearby star, Upsilon Andromedae, some forty-four light years away. What they found countered previously held theories about planetary formation. The standard theory derived from our solar system is that the small dense planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are closest to the sun, and that the large gaseous planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are farthest away (the only exception is Pluto).
But this simply is not so with Upsilon Andromedae’s massive close-in planets. “This will shake up the theory of planetary formation,” said astronomer Geoffrey Marcy to the Washington Post. Astronomers are learning that our solar system is even more remarkable and unique than thought before. And there is more. In the past four years some twenty planets have been discovered outside our solar system, and half of them move in egg-shaped “killer orbits” that lead to cosmic collisions. But in respect to our solar system, Dr. Marcy says, “It’s like a jewel. You’ve got circular orbits. They’re all in the same plane.… It’s perfect, you know. It’s gorgeous. It’s almost uncanny.” Colson comments: “Dr. Marcy may not realize it, but his language echoes that of the great Isaac Newton more than 300 years ago. Newton likewise found our solar system beautiful, but he took that insight to its logical conclusion. ‘This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets,’ he wrote, ‘could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.’ ”
Joseph Addison was right in Newton’s day, and it is still true in ours:
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue, ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim!
The seas literally swarmed with living things—the monsters of the deep. There were whales, sharks, leviathan (crocodiles); swordfish reigned amidst schools of tuna and dolphin and thousands of lesser colorful finned creatures—many unknown until the twentieth century. And above, an ornithologist’s delight filled the skies—eagles, cormorants, ravens, gulls, geese, ducks, woodpeckers, finches, cardinals, indigo buntings. The skies and seas teemed with astonishing variety, all from the mind of God. The waving, undulating beauties seen first by the sea diver and the gliding, iridescent arrays of the heavens exist because of God’s thought and at his pleasure—“And God saw that it was good.”
The categories are generic and are meant to encompass every terrestrial beast. Livestock means domesticated animals, creatures that move along the ground signify all manner of small animals, and wild animals represent game. “All creatures great and small/The Lord God made them all.”
We must never forget that the mind of God created all of this. So when we contemplate the heavens, we learn something of God. “Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19:2). Ride the Hubble telescope across the galaxies and learn something of him. Travel in the microscope into the complexity of the human cell and learn more. Go deeper into the atom and its quarks and leptons and learn more. Likewise, that which we touch, taste, and feel does the same. Remember William Blake’s poem?
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
Rulers. It is also most significant that God calls his image-bearers to rule over the earth in verses 26 and 28. God views his image-bearers as royal figures, his vicegerents over creation. This is what astonished the psalmist in Psalm 8:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet. (vv. 3–6)
There is vast dignity attached to being made in God’s image, though marred by the fall.
The opening verse of chapter 2 should have been included at the end of chapter 1 because it completes the account of the six days of creation. Stephanus, the sixteenth-century printer-scholar who introduced the verse divisions of the Bible that we use today, simply blew it. He should have seen this because Genesis 2:1 is an echo of Genesis 1:1, which begins, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And 2:1 concludes, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.” The echo is technically called an inclusio, which indicates the conclusion of the six days of creation. The story is that Stephanus made his verse divisions while riding horseback. So we must go easy on him.
Stephanus aside, the reading of 1:31 and 2:1 together express the contented satisfaction of God at the conclusion of day six: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.” So we have here the complete picture of the heavens and the earth and all they contain in their harmonious perfection—Rare Earth as scientists are now calling it in the title of a best-selling book that argues that our position in the Milky Way, the juxtaposition and size of the planets in our solar system (especially Jupiter), the function of the Earth’s moon, and numerous other factors make it likely that earth is the only place in the universe where there is life.
However that may be, the first three days of forming creation and the concluding three days of filling it, capped by the creation of man, left creation lacking nothing. All that God had made was worthy of praise, and as such he gave it his highest commendation: “it was very good.” The earth spun perfectly in its orbit around the sun in majestic twenty-four-hour rotation. The well-ordered planet swarmed with life under the joyous watch of the first couple.
GOD RESTS
God had formed and filled the earth, and now on the seventh day he rested: “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (2:2, 3). This seventh day was significantly different from the first six days of creation, as Kenneth Mathews has so clearly noted: 1) There was no creation formula—“And God said”—because his creative word was not required. 2) The seventh day did not have the usual closing refrain—“and there was evening and there was morning”—to indicate the day’s end. 3) The seventh day was the only day to be “blessed” and “made … holy” by God. 4) The seventh day stood outside the paired days of creation because there was no corresponding day to it in the preceding six. And 5) unlike the six creative days, the number of the day (the seventh day) is repeated three times.
This is given dramatic significance because verses 2, 3 contain four lines, and the first three are parallel (each having seven words in the Hebrew), with the midpoint of each line being the phrase “the seventh day.” Here’s how the Hebrew word order has it:
Line one: So God finished by the seventh day his work which he did,
Line two: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he did,
Line three: and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it,
Line four: because on it he rested from all his work that God created to do.
The seventh day stands apart in solitary grandeur as the crown to the six days of creation. This indicates not only immense literary craft but deep theological significance. From the beginning of creation the seventh day was central, not only to creation, but to the ultimate destiny of God’s people, as we shall see.
God rested. Verses 2 and 3 each state that God rested: Verse 2 says, “he rested … from all his work,” and verse 3 adds, “[he] rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” Why did God rest? Certainly not from fatigue. Omnipotence needs no rest because regardless of the amount of power that goes forth from him, his power is not depleted one whit. His omnipotent creating power is infinite. God did not need a breather. Actually the word “rest” means “to cease from.” God simply stopped his creating activity. In fact, though God rested (ceased his creating activity), he still worked. Jesus said exactly that when he healed a crippled man on the Sabbath: “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17). God rested from creating but works in sustaining the world by his power, governing it by his providence, and insuring the propagation of its creatures. In fact, if he stopped working, everything would dissolve into nothing.
God’s rest was one of deep pleasure and satisfaction at the fruit of his labor. This joyous rest of the Creator certainly extended to Adam and Eve in paradise as, in their state of innocence, they lived in blessed peace with their Creator. And this original rest was the beginning of a type of the rest that was lost at the fall but will be restored through redemption and its final consummation.
God blessed. God took such pleasure in the seventh day that he blessed it—“So God blessed the seventh day”—which means that he made it spiritually fruitful. We know that the two preceding blessings in the creation account, first on living creatures and then on Adam and Eve, bestowed fertility because in both instances God said, “Be fruitful and multiply” (1:22, 28). The meaning here is essentially the same but in the spiritual realm. “God’s blessing bestows on this special, holy, solemn day a power which makes it fruitful for human existence. The blessing gives the day, which is a day of rest, the power to stimulate, animate, enrich and give fullness to life.” The seventh day is one of perpetual spiritual spring—a day of multiplication and fruitfulness. This would become of great importance and benefit to God’s people.
God made it holy. So God ceased from his creation labors on the seventh day, pronounced it “blessed” (spiritually life-giving), and then “made it holy.” The seventh day was the first thing to be hallowed in Scripture. It was therefore elevated above the other days and set apart for God himself.
This blessed and holy day has no end. There is no morning and evening. It has existed from the completion of creation and still is. God still rests after the great event.