The Rest of The Story –

Story 1: The Beginning of Life as We Know It

Genesis 1:1-19
Genesis 1:20–2:3
Genesis 2:4-25
Genesis 3:1-13
Genesis 3:14-24

Genesis 4:1-16
Genesis 4:5, Reader Question
Genesis 6:5-7:1
Genesis 9:1-13
Genesis 11:1-9

More of the Rest of The Story

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Genesis 1:1-19 (7/16/12)

On Aug. 19, St. John’s is going to begin reading The Story, which uses study materials developed by Max Lucado, Randy Frazee, and Adam T. Barr. The Story covers the major themes of the Bible in 31 weeks. In this email study, we are going to work in parallel, but sometimes we’ll cover the material in more depth and sometimes from a different point of view. The readings here will always precede or be at the same time as the church’s schedule, and we plan to post them weekly on the website for reference.

The Story covers the book of Genesis in three weeks; we’re going to start now and take six weeks. Genesis contains many of the basic theological points made by the Bible: What is the nature of God? What is the nature of humankind? What is the relationship between God and humanity? Where did all this stuff – both good and bad – come from? It’s this last question we see answered in the first few chapters of Genesis.

Recently my hubby and I learned a new word: henotheism. Henotheism is the theological position that there are lots of gods, and many of them may be worthy of worship, but I personally am only going to worship one of them. The early Jews were henotheistic (at best), not monotheistic; in fact, it wasn’t until after the Exile that the Jews as a group became monotheistic.

However, the writer of Genesis (widely presumed to be Moses, whose story does give every indication that he was monotheistic) clearly was ahead of the curve on this issue. Most of the Middle Eastern pantheons had a flock of gods and goddesses – sun gods, moon goddesses, male and female gods of fertility, storm gods, crop gods, sea gods, mountain gods, river gods, etc., etc. Genesis says, “There is one God. Everything else is made. The sun is made. The moon is made. The stars are made. Water, air, land, plants, animals, and human beings are all made. And they are all made by God.


Genesis 1:20—2:3 (7/17/12)

Let me say right up front that I’m not a vegetarian, I don’t belong to PETA, and I don’t think my cat should have the rights of citizenship. Nevertheless, I do suspect that the difference between me and my cat is much bigger in my eyes than it is in God’s eyes.

Several verses in Genesis 1 and 2 use the phrase nephesh chayah living being. These are Genesis 1:20, 1:21, 1:24, 1:30, 2:7, and 2:19. Look carefully at how these verses are translated here from the ESV and in the translation that you normally read:

• 1:20, living creatures (small sea animals, such as fish, etc.);
  
  
• 1:21, every living creature (great sea animals, possibly whales and dolphins?);
  
  
• 1:24, living creatures (livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth);
  
  
• 1:30, everything that has the breath of life (every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth);
  
  
• 2:7, living creature (the first human being), and
  
  
• 2:19, living creature (every creature that God brought to the first human being to see what the person would call it).

Many translations use different phrases to describe me and my cat, most commonly creature for my cat and being or soul for me. More accurately, the Schocken Bible uses living being for both, and the ESV uses living creature.


Genesis 2:4-25 (7/18/12)

My husband’s theology professor said that the point of the naming story is not that the man gave the animals names, but that the man recognized that every animal was nephesh chayah, just as he was! I’m more interested in the idea that apparently God entertained the possibility that a suitable helper could be found among the other creatures. It didn’t work out that way, as we all know, but we shouldn’t ignore the fact and God and the man looked for a helper among the other creatures.

This part of The Story is called “The Beginning of Life As We Know It.” As my college biology professor said, “As opposed to what? Life as we don’t know it?” Well, Genesis 2 describes life as we don’t know it: perfect harmony between God and his creatures, and among the creatures themselves.


Genesis 3:1-13 (7/19/12)

This is the real Beginning of Life As We Know It: We know God’s rules, and we break them. We get into trouble and blame someone else. We hide from God when he calls us. And we die.


Genesis 3:14-24 (7/20/12)

Things are in a sorry state in the Garden. The serpent, the man, and the woman have all conspired to disobey God, and now they are in trouble. Please notice that the serpent is cursed because of what it has done, just as the ground is cursed because of what the man has done. Sins have natural and inevitable consequences on ourselves and on our surroundings. God also deals out some punishments: enmity, pain, toil, and a degree of separation from God. We continue to see “the beginning of life as we know it.”

Just a word on names. The man adam was so called because he was made out of soil adamah, and gradually it became his name Adam. The woman Eve chavah is the mother of all things living chay: the explanation in vs. 20 makes perfect sense in Hebrew.


Genesis 4:1-16 (7/23/12)

So far we’ve read three chapters of the first book of the Bible, and we’ve seen the answers to some important questions.

• How many gods are there? One, God, because everything else is a made thing.
  
  
• What’s the basic nature of all that God made? It’s good, because God does good work. It originally formed a harmonious whole.
  
  
• What is the nature of humanity? We are also God’s creature, made in the image of God. Except that we can’t keep our hands in our pockets, apparently, because the very first thing we did was break the only rule God gave us!
  
  
• Where does the evil in the world come from? Our sin, which is anything that separates us from God.

That’s a lot of theology for three short chapters.
The answer to a Reader Question on this passage is at the bottom of the page.
The situation keeps on deteriorating, and we see the first murder in Ch. 4. Pay particular attention to vss. 6-7. Cain’s offering was not rejected because he was a murderer. It was rejected because he had already started “not doing well,” and because he was the type of person who would try to solve his problems by murdering his brother instead of by working to become acceptable. As Pastor Craig pointed out today, the first violent action we see is not the beginning of the problem.


Genesis 4:5, Reader Question (7/24/12)

In Genesis 4:5, what does "no regard " translate from? Is it reject, ignore, or not praise? I think this is key to understanding Cain's response. Something drove the jealousy. Was God testing Cain? And did he fail?

The Hebrew word sha-AH means gaze, as in look steadily or regard with [favor, perplexity, etc.]. So a good American translation might be pay attention to. Several suggestions have been made about why God had regard for Abel and not for Cain.

My least favorite is that Abel offered some sort of animal, and Cain offered some sort of plant. This makes no sense. In the third place, the rules about offerings were handed down much later. In the second place, various plants offerings are required by the later rules! So the technical term for that argument is “silly,” in my opinion. And in the first place, it doesn’t say that the offerings were the main cause of acceptance or rejection: it is Abel and his offering, or Cain and his offering, that is acceptable or not.

No, I take back that the above explanation is my least favorite. I just discover a new least-favorite explanation on the Internet. It is that God “must have told them” what offerings to bring, and Cain didn’t bring the correct one. Now, let me tell you, folks. If you just make stuff up and put it into the Bible (that is, that God told them what offerings to bring, which Genesis Does Not Say), you can get any answer you want. Don’t do that. The technical term for that is “eisegesis,” which means “reading into.”

What you want to do is “exegesis,” which means “reading out of.” For example, a valid exegetical conclusion from this passage is that it’s not good for you to murder your brother, or anybody else, and God will punish you for it, just as he did Cain.

The writer of Hebrews says that:

“By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. … And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. ” (Hebrews 11:4, 6).

This is my favorite explanation, which is why I said what I said originally, that Cain was rejected for being the type of person who would commit murder. He did not have either faith or righteousness at his core.

As to the second question, God does not test people:

Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. (James 1:13)

(The Greek is the same for test or tempt.) So yes, Cain failed, but it wasn’t God’s fault in any way. Sometimes people are angry or jealous because of who they are, and not because of what’s happening around them.

Genesis 6:5-7:1 (7/24/12)

It is not only our sin that affects those around us, but also our righteousness (if any). Noah was “righteous before God,” and because of this, his family and all the species of animals were saved from destruction, and the human race got a second chance. Never say that what one person does makes no difference in the world, particularly if you are that person.


Genesis 9:1-13 (7/26/12)

A number of God’s covenants with humanity are recorded in the Bible. These covenants are like contracts, in that they specify what each party will do, they are binding on both parties, and they can contain penalties for violations. They are unlike contracts, however, in that the two parties are vastly unequal in power, authority, and what they bring to the table. This kind of covenant between God and human beings in the Bible is typically a “suzerainty covenant,” because it follows the pattern of a powerful king making a covenant with a relatively powerless person.

Although the word “covenant” isn’t mentioned in Genesis 1 to 3, there’s sort of an implicit covenant with Adam and Eve: “Take care of the Garden, eat plants, and don’t touch the Tree; in return, I’ll come around every evening for a chat.” We all saw how that worked out.

So God makes a new covenant with Noah: “You may eat plants or animals, murder is a capital crime, and you must not eat blood; in return, I won’t flood you out again (no matter how vexing you get).” The idea that the life of a creature is in its blood, and the life – and therefore the blood – belongs to God alone, is a very ancient one, and as we read through the Bible, we will see it recurring again and again. It might be worthwhile to remember it.


Genesis 11:1-9 (7/27/12)

We tend to think about the first part of Genesis as a series of stories: The Garden of Eden, The Fall, Cain and Abel, Noah’s Ark, The Flood, and The Tower of Babel. In a real sense, however, there are only two stories: a prologue called Perfect Harmony; and Ch. 1 of the main plot of the Bible, a story called Things Go Wrong.

Back in Genesis 1 and 2, we see that God created everything, including us, and everything that God created was good. Not only was Creation in perfect harmony with God, but Creation was in harmony with itself. That prologue really isn’t revisited until the very end of the Book.

In Genesis 3 through 11, the harmony of God’s Creation is destroyed by sin. We start out disobeying the only itty bitty rule we were given, “don’t touch,” we go on to murder, and then our hearts are completely wicked. In the end, far from being thick as thieves, it turns out that we can’t even talk to each other. That “chapter” about our initial sin introduces the main topic of the rest of the Bible: what God is going to do with Creation now that human beings have messed it up.


More of the Rest of The Story

Week 1. Beginning of Life As We Know It
Week 2. God Builds a Nation … Abraham … But Not Lot
Week 2. God Builds a Nation … Isaac…But not Ishmael or the sons of Keturah
Week 2. God Builds a Nation … Jacob…But not Esau
Week 3. Joseph Preserves Two Nations
Week 4. Deliverance
Week 5. New Commands and a New Covenant
Week 6. Wandering
Week 7. The Battle Begins
Week 8. A Few Good Men...and Women
Week 9. The Faith of a Foreign Woman
Week 10. Standing Tall, Falling Hard
Week 11. From Shepherd to King
Week 12. The Trials of a King
Week 13. The King Who Had It All
Week 14. A Kingdom Torn in Two
Weeks 15 and 16. God's Messengers and The Beginning of the End
Week 17. The Kingdoms' Fall
Jeremiah, Prophet of the Exile
Story 19. The Return Home
Apocalyptic writings in the Old Testament
Story 21. Rebuilding the Walls
Story 22. The Birth of the King
Story 23. Jesus’ Ministry Begins
Story 24. No Ordinary Man
Story 25. Jesus, the Son of God
Story 26. The Hour of Darkness
Story 27. The Resurrection
Story 28. New Beginnings
James, Brother of the Lord
John and Jude
Story 31. The End of Time

Copyright 2009, 2011, 2012 by Regina L. Hunter. All rights reserved. This page has been prepared for the web site by RPB.

Opinions expressed on this page are solely those of the author, Regina Hunter, and may or may not be shared by the sponsors or the Bible-study participants.  Thanks to the Holy Spirit for any useful ideas presented here, and thanks to all the readers for their support and enthusiasm.  All errors are, of course, the sole responsibility of the author.

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