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Wednesday 7/15/26
Thru the Bible: Old Testament Review – Genesis
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Thru the Bible Old Testament Review – Genesis
Well it’s been a LONG journey from January 17, 2017 to last week!
She may not remember it, but it was the suggestion of Stephanie that we do a study through the bible, because, being newer to the faith, she wanted to get better familiarized with what the scriptures say.
At first, I thought it was ill advised to commit to such a thing, primarily because it felt as if it would be leaving spiritual inspiration in the dust. However, I found my concerns to be baseless.
One of the big take-aways for me in this walk ‘Thru the Bible’ wasn’t just found in the study and teaching itself, but in the various forms of delivery the entire series called upon me to give myself to.
I found myself drawn at various times to expository teaching, topical teaching, textual teaching, narrative teaching, biographical teaching and then my all too familiar extemporaneous teaching and I found they all have a place and they all deliver value and NONE of them requires you to set aside the leading of the Holy Spirit.
But for certain, what had historically been a bit of a weak point for me, is now perhaps my strongest and that is expository and textual teaching. Which is literally how we began our first lesson – by first looking at and examining Genesis as a book.
As such, necessity pressed me into deeper study of that book and subsequently all of the rest of the Old Testament books.
To have to grapple with the grammar of the text, the nuances of both the words and the collective overall and intended goal or point. Many times we found that the opening chapters literally spell out for us the purpose of the book which served as a continual and contextual compass to keep us focused and to exclude from consideration themes and topics which were actually antithetical to the stated point.
We had to tie in to the various translations and how they arrived at their decisions for a particular wording. Always giving room for the fact that the writers were inspired men, not men taking dictation.
We had to take into consideration the time period, the author and their personal background when available to help us grasp what was being communicated. The heart and experiences of the writer had an influence NOT on the clearly made points, but on their delivery. Each employed language, idioms, turns of phrase and figures of speech which were rooted in their life, time in history, their experiences and what was going on in Israel at the time in order to faithfully deliver to us and all generations God’s inspired words.
These were our tools in our tool belt which equipped us for the real work of this study which was to wrestle with God as well as our own preconceptions about Him.
To attempt as best we could, to set our gaze upon God for Who He really is, rather than Who we thought He was or, God forgive us… Who I wanted Him to be.
In truth, this is a struggle for every human, even the atheist has had to confront this in order to support their non-belief.
In the end I am certain that this study has taught me volumes more than I was able to successfully deliver to you, and I am a wiser, richer and a far more humbled man as a result.
Now of course we started our trek, ‘Thru the Bible’ in Genesis and so I thought that to be the best place to begin our review.
My literal and opening statement 9 years and 7 months ago was this…
Genesis as a Book
Genesis is a Greek word meaning “Origin” or “source” and the reason we are focusing upon this first book rather than say – the Pentateuch as our first focus of review is due to its preeminence in all of scripture.
Every New Testament author quotes or alludes to the book of Genesis. The New Testament has at least 60 allusions to the first 11 chapters alone and the number grows to over 160+ when you include the rest of the book. When you consider that the New Testament only has 27 letters containing 260 chapters, that is quite the statement!
It can be safely said that every book in the New Testament draws theology from the book of Genesis, and about 65% of those point back to the first 11 chapters and the fundamental reason for this is because it is in these chapters that God, by inspiration, laid down much of the fundamental truths regarding Himself and our relation to Him.
It is safe to say that Genesis was held by Jesus and the Apostles as both a literal and foundational book upon which ALL other doctrines in the Bible rely.
Is it any wonder then that the book of Genesis – ESPECIALLY the first 11 chapters – has undergone such an unprecedented attack in the modern age?
There are more people who accept the possibility of Jesus rising from the dead, than there are of those who believe in a straightforward and literal understanding of the first 11 chapters of the Bible.
Yet everywhere New Testament authors reference these chapters, they do so citing it as real and reliable history.
In the Beginning…God!
One of our foundational lessons about Genesis and by extension the rest of the Bible was found in the answer to this question.
Q: What is the subject of the first chapter of Genesis?
A: The most prevalent noun in the first 3 chapters of Genesis is – God!
This establishes that the story of scripture, the story of human history and the point of everything finds its “source” and “origin” in God. It is His-Story.
Literally, the first word of the Book of Genesis in the oldest copies of the Hebrew text is Bereshit (בְּרֵאשִׁית). This is a prefixive word. The ‘Be’, in Be -reshet, is a preposition meaning “in”, “at” or “with”. The word reshit is a noun derived from the root word rosh (רֹאשׁ), which means “origin,” “first principle,” “chief part,” or “source“. The next word is bara which means “create”. In this case it means to bring into existence out of nothing – creation ex nihilo.
The next word is Elohim which is itself one of the most fascinating and discussed names for God in the Hebrew Bible due to its unique grammatical structure:
Grammatically it is plural. The suffix “-im” in Elohim is the standard masculine plural ending, much like adding “-s” to a word in English.
Despite the noun being plural.
The singular root of the word is Eloah, which means “power” or “might.”
By using the plural Elohim, the text implies that God is the “Ultimate Power” or the “God of all gods”—the singular source, out of which and from which comes everything.
In Genesis 1:1, the verb for “created” is bara (בָּרָא), which is strictly singular (“He created”). Indicating that if the Trinity is a true representation of God, the only one of the 3 persons of the Godhead was the active agent of Creation – ergo, the Creator which the New Testament identifies as Jesus Himself.
“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” – Colossians 1:16-17
And
John 1:3,
“All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him not even one thing was made that has come into being.”
If the text meant “gods created,” it would use the plural verb baru (בָּרְאוּ)
Now I went back through all of this for a reason. Well, maybe for two reasons.
The first was to illustrate how the story is ABOUT Him – “In the Beginning God.” For while the literal opening words of the book of Origins is “In the Beginning God”, the implied subtext which is agreed upon by many scholars is “God is the source of all things”.
In biblical Hebrew, a source of something is often called its “beginning.” Therefore, a secondary, deeper reading of Bereshit can mean “In/with the Source…”
So it is that when the Gospel of John opens with “In the beginning was the Word…“, early Christian theologians noted that if Reshit (The Beginning/The Source) is a personification of the Divine Wisdom or the Word, the it follows that Genesis 1:1 can be read as: “In/By way of the Source (the Word), God created…”
Again making God, and specifically Jesus Himself, the center focus of the passage and by extension the entire book of Genesis.
So it is that we learned early on that we are part of the story HE is telling or revealing. That we all share our own brief moments on stage, but the author and architect of the story is God. And unlike any other play ever composed, our Author is not only the playright, he is the main character.
He isn’t outside the story, influencing it from a distance. Neither has He injected Himself into our story. Rather, He has injected us into His and THIS is the basis of the first and primary lesson of Genesis and the Bible as a whole.
As soon as we begin to look at, read and study the Bible with ourselves at the center focus of both the study and why we are studying, we have already missed the point by 180O,
This is seen in the very first word of the first verse.
Sages have noted that the Bible does not start with Aleph (the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, representing God’s singular infinity), but rather with Bet (the second letter). The implied meaning is that the physical universe is a “house” created for or with a dual purpose—allowing the divine Source to dwell within the creation He made.
So again, teaching of the entire bible begins with God as preeminent. He is the source and reason for all things. Making REVERENCE, RESPECT and unwavering DEFERENCE towards God foundational to all knowledge.
Just as the Psalms, Proverbs and Job affirm – “The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge, understanding and wisdom”. [See Proverbs 1:7; 9:10; Psalm 111:10 & Job 28:28] “
What this lesson looks like in practical application is trust.
How that trust expresses itself in studying scripture is to begin with the notion already settled within our hearts that God is smarter than us. SO smart, in fact, that He was able to say what He meant and mean what He said. And that it is recorded in such a way that it is 100% accessible to anyone who seeks HIM. Not those who are simply seeking knowledge ABOUT, but who seeks Him.
One of the practical expressions of this is that we have to approach scripture with the assumption that unless clearly stated otherwise, all that is written are not the opinions of man passed off as God’s ways, but are in fact a depiction of Who God the Father truly is.
Jesus lived the law perfectly and as a result told us, that if you have seen Him, you have seen the Father. What can this mean but that the written word of God is His personal self-disclosure. It reveals the person and face of our Creator!
It is THIS fact that gives the scriptures their authority.
It is precisely this that makes the morality of the scriptures immutable. They are based upon the never changing character and person of God Himself.
So Genesis teaches us that our trust in Him manifests itself in believing that what God wrote and His intentions in writing it, is something we can discover.
In fact, it is something that if we respect Him first and seek Him first we will never fail to discover.
This is the basis for the decision we made early on, to read the scriptures as they are.
Seek the understanding of difficult passages using all the tools I mentioned earlier with the point of 1st priority being to discover how God is revealing HIMSELF in what was written.
“In the beginning God!”
Now one of the first rules of studying any passage will be familiar to you if you ever studied basic English. The first rule is to discover the…
- What (or who)
- Where
- Why
- When
- and How’s
…of a passage.
We already discovered the What (or Who) in Genesis 1 and that is GOD. He IS the subject!
The ‘where‘ in this case is quite unique because the “WHERE” is BEING CREATED as we read.
The ‘WHY‘ will not be discovered until later and the ‘HOW’ is by His Omniscient knowledge expressed through omnipotent power.
Now before pressing further, I want to juxtapose this first principle of “What is God revealing of Himself in scripture”? With the modern distortion of the purpose of scripture.
Perhaps the WORST question modern teachers pose to people in the church is “What does this passage mean to you?”
Oh, it’s a slick enough method of attempting to establish a reason to listen by getting the student to assign the value and relevance of a passage – but it completely misses the point of all scripture.
Peter tells us that NO scripture is of any one private interpretation.
“(16) For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
(17) For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” (18) we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain.
(19) And we have the prophetic word MORE fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, (20) knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.
(21) For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” – 2 Peter 1:20
The apostle Peter is explaining that Scripture’s origin is divine, meaning it did not come from a prophet’s own personal ideas or human initiative. Peter emphasizes that the prophets were guided by the Holy Spirit, making the Bible’s message directly from God rather than a human invention.
If we follow these initial understandings and rules we can avoid a great number of the pitfalls countless people fall into regarding scripture.
- We will understand the actual point of the scriptures.
- We will avoid jumping to conclusions about passages
- We will learn how to understand and conduct ourselves in relation to our Creator.
Now the rest of Genesis essentially serves as a progressive revelation of human history, God’s goals and purposes in creation, introduces the main players on the field of human history and introduces God’s personal interest and involvement in humanity – the one creation in which we know for certain God has chosen to place His image and likeness.
We get the initial start to the human race – Adam and Eve.
Their individual relation to God and each other.
The fall – the narrative of which aptly depicts all future incarnations of males and females – their tendencies, their strengths and weaknesses, the purposes and authorities and ultimately how they both together and independently represent and reflect the persons of the godhead.
We literally see the inner struggle to appeal to what we believe are our strengths and shun what we perceive to be our weaknesses. To cling to what we believe is our safety and salvation and turn from anything that seems vulnerable or life giving.
Then we get Cain/Able in which the above struggles are clearly embodied and represented.
Then Seth, who together with Cain are the progenitors of both the godly and ungodly lineages.
Then the intermingling of the godly with the ungodly which turned the hearts of the godly offspring of Seth away from God so that on the whole earth only one man still sought God.
This is a continual theme throughout scripture.
Time and time again God has to swat His children on the hand and tell them to stop intermarrying with the lost. Warning them that they will in fact, turn our hearts away from the only true God to false gods.
Once the initial godly lineage is established and saved through the flood, we begin phase two of human history with a fallen – post-flood world and a new covenant relationship with God.
Now animals fear us and we hunt them for food.
Now have or at least have firmly established – 4 seasons. Contrary to the way it appears in English translations, the historical Hebrew text both linguistically and grammatically, the text strongly implies that this seasonal cycle is temporary and limited specifically to the current era of human history, rather than an eternal, immutable reality that will persist after the earth is renovated by fire.
We then get the tower of babel and the division of language and nations.
We then get Job (which is not mentioned in Genesis, but IS where he fits in history).
Then Abram and Sarah.
Then we get the wisdom of God to Abram which explains a LOT regarding human history and the rise and fall of all nations on the earth both then and forever.
Then we get Issac and Ishmael.
Then Jacob and Esau.
Then the 12 sons. 11 of whom were the father of 11 of the twelve tribes. Joseph being excluded, but his sons being included and Levi being set apart for special purpose.
And then Moses which brings us to Exodus–Deuteronomy.
