1 The Days of Creation Genesis 1:1–2:4

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The Days of Creation Read Genesis ı:ı–2:4

God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. Genesis ı:3

The first chapters of Genesis tell of God creating the heavens and the earth; filling the earth with plant, animal, and human life; and proclaiming it all good. The story was written when the Jewish people lived in the city of Babylon between the years 597 BC and 539 BC. Babylonian armies had invaded Judah and had captured and deported the leading Jewish families. Jewish aristocrats now farmed to feed themselves. They knew that they had failed God.

In Babylon, stories about the Babylonian gods tempted the Jewish people. The Babylonian story of creation is filled with violent images. It says that humans were created from the bad blood of a bad god to be slaves to the gods. In spite of its violence, this story was attractive to the Jewish people in exile. They had lost the land that God had given them. To the rest of the world, this meant that their God had lost. Were the Babylonian deities more powerful?

Jewish religious leaders wrote Genesis 1:1–2:4 to counter these influences. In the Genesis account, God lovingly speaks, and life comes into being. The first man and woman are blessed and meant to live in harmony with nature.

The Genesis creation story is structured like a workweek, since creation is God’s work. On day one, light is created and is separated from the darkness. On day two, God divides the waters with a dome called the sky. Earth and vegetation are created on day three. On day four, God creates the sun and the moon and the stars. On day five, God fills the waters with living creatures and the air with birds. On day six, God creates the human family: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Human beings are not created out of the bad blood of a bad god. They are made in the image of the God who blesses and who calls them to bless one another. The man and the woman are created equal and are called to multiply and fill the earth.

On the seventh day, God rests.