The house that God built
Chapter Three
The liturgy of creation in the cosmic temple
The point of creation is not the production of matter out of nothing, but rather the emergence of a stable community in a benevolent and life-sustaining order.
The first table as prologue
The theological consequences of the imago Dei claim in Genesis 1:26 are to be found in the immediate context of Genesis 1, in the larger context of the Pentateuch and also in the context of the biblical canon considered as a whole. Those interpretative horizons suggest that the significance of the ‘image of God’ ought to be found in the context of creation, in connection to the prohibition of making graven images and finally in the new creation in Christ, who is the perfect Image. To see the sweep of this theological construct across the breadth of the canon is to begin to appreciate its fuller significance for contemporary discussions of human identity.
There are two accounts of creation in Genesis. The ‘first table’ runs from Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. The ‘second table’ runs from Genesis 2:4 to the end of chapter 3. The two accounts of creation in Genesis 1 – 3 have been a point of great discussion over the last hundred years. The older historical-critical orthodoxy supposed that Genesis 1:1 – 2:3 had been written by an anonymous writer associated with the Priestly school of the post-exilic period. Supposedly the account was written to protect the sacred rituals surrounding the temple, most especially the ritual calendar grounded in the ‘days’ of Genesis 1. The second account of creation (Gen. 2:4 – 3:24) allegedly came from an amalgam of sources concerned to protect neither the priestly functions nor the ritual calendar, but edited to preserve a democratizing trend as against the authority of the priests.
But if we turn attention to the tables considered first in relation to each other, and to the remainder of the canon, it is apparent that the two accounts do not stand in awkward relation one to the other, each offering a competing account of Israel’s origins for political purposes. Asking the standard historical-critical question in reverse – namely how might these two accounts be connected, as opposed to how they might be in conflict – leaves one with different impressions of the two tables. If those early chapters belong together, a clue to their connection may be the larger role they play in the Pentateuchal material – and in particular with laying foundations constitutive of Israel’s origins and the nation’s unique relationship to God. The older pre-critical intuition that Genesis belongs fundamentally to Israel’s canon as a means to interpret the nation’s place in the wider history of the Gentile nations is ironically an integral part of the newer (post-critical) readings of Genesis as well. These both in turn suppose that the primeval history of Genesis 1 – 11 belongs in Israel’s canon to signify Israel’s place in that primeval history, a history that encompasses all of the created order. It is intended to signify Israel’s purpose in relation to the created order and to the Creator.
Prior to jettisoning the older historical-critical orthodoxy entirely, at least one important insight about the first table ought to be salvaged. This is the intuition that the first table manifests a peculiar liturgical shape, illustrative of a community concerned about temple matters. In what follows I will argue, though briefly, that the first table is a liturgical preamble to the rest of Israel’s story, and in part the liturgy of the first table illuminates one of its central constructs, namely the imago Dei. To use different language, Genesis 1 is a prologue to a story of how and why Israel were to worship their God in contrast to the worship of the gods of the nations surrounding them. The onus on worshipping God is grounded in part by the claim that humanity has been created as the image of God. This argues for seeing the covenantal arrangement between Israel and their God as a covenant of worship, as well as connecting the constructs of imaging God and worshipping idols as mirror images of the same liturgical impulse.
Research in the middle part of the twentieth century illuminated the peculiar literary shape of covenant treaties in the ANE. This in turn shed significant light upon the treaty-like character of much Pentateuchal material, including the preamble to the treaty in the first chapter of Genesis. Taking this treaty concern seriously, the first account (Gen. 1:1 – 2:3) offers a prologue to the story of Israel as a covenant people, and the second account (Gen. 2:4b – 3:24) is the first story (the first of the tôlĕdôts) in that covenant history. Neither table is intended as a secular history of Israel, but their history is told in such a fashion as to make a claim upon Israel’s loyalties to YHWH above all. It is a sacred history that neither floats above history nor is contained fully in that history. It is not simply a story about beginnings, but rather the framework within which all other stories are placed. In this regard the first table serves as an overarching preamble to the rest of the Pentateuch. It is a covenantal preamble that defines the ultimate destiny of Israel.
Most recent commentators have taken the final form of Genesis to be structurally built around the oft-repeated Hebrew phrase tôlĕdôt (these are the generations) found at the beginning of major sections of narrative material or genealogies. On this score the first table appears as a distinctive literary unit from that which follows, for it has no tôlĕdôt. The absence of the tôlĕdôt phrase in the first table suggests that Genesis 1 is not simply the first of the ‘stories’ of Israel’s prehistory recorded in Genesis, nor is it intended as a genealogy of the heavens and the earth. The signal of 2:4 introduces the change of focus from the first to the second table in the inversion of ‘heavens and the earth’ at the beginning of verse 4 to the ‘earth and the heavens’ at the end of the verse. This inversion is unique in the canon. Whether 2:4a with its tôlĕdôt formula belongs to the first or second table, it signals a change of focus from above to below in the transition from the first to the second table.
Further, the prose in the first chapter seems at odds with the style of the other material in Genesis, and it does not have anything approaching genealogically structured material. Most especially its rhythmic organization suggests its author or editor intended this material for a unique purpose in the book as a whole. The central characters in the biblical drama are introduced in the first table, but not in customary fashion. We do not come to know Adam or Eve in Genesis 1, but simply humankind as male and female. God is not revealed by name, but rather portrayed simply in stark contrast to everything else. He creates. Everything else is created. He blesses the creation. The created order is blessed. He speaks. The created order is silent. For these reasons the first table ought not to be construed as the first story in the Bible, but rather as an interpretative lens through which the rest of the stories will be viewed.
The two accounts of creation are not at odds with each other, if we understand Genesis 1 to be a prologue or preamble rather than one of the ‘stories’ of Genesis. The two tables of creation do use different names for God and this has long been the central evidence allegedly driving interpreters to the conclusion that these are conflicting and competing accounts of creation. The fact that the simple name for God (Elohim, God as all-powerful) is used in the first table and his compound name (Elohim-YHWH, God who is almighty and is also the Lord of Israel) is used in the second is itself a sign of the canonical relation between the two tables. The first table tells us in liturgical form that God is the absolute one who causes all that is to come into existence. The Word(s) of God fills creation. God is the one in whom all else finds meaning. A most powerful expression of his prerogative to grant significance is found in the echoes of the creation account in YHWH’s deliverance of Israel at Sinai. YHWH brought Israel out of Egypt in order that they would worship him, the purpose for which he had created humankind in the first place. The Ten Words (i.e. the Ten Commandments) form the framework around which Israel’s relationship to YHWH was to be structured, even as the word of God originally gave creation its (liturgical) structure. The Exodus narratives echo many of the themes of the creation prologue of Genesis 1, which has led many commentators to suppose that Sinai is a kind of ‘second act’ in the drama of creation.
God as almighty (Elohim) is the subject of every verb in the first table. This marks him out as the sovereign Creator and serves as the subtext to the first table: God alone creates. In the second table Adam deeply entrenched theological belief in creatio ex nihilo, on the and Eve are granted narrative status as actors and speakers on the stage of history alongside God. ‘History’ begins, so to speak, in the second table. And therefore God as almighty (Elohim) of the first table is manifest as God the almighty, Lord of Israel (Elohim-YHWH) in the second table. God relates specifically to human actions and thereby the author uses the personal name of Israel’s God (YHWH) who is also the uncreated Creator of the universe (Elohim).
The first table draws attention to the actions ‘from above’, while clearly the verbs of the second table focus on those within the primeval garden. The climactic nature of the Sabbath in Genesis 2:1–3 stands in stark juxtaposition to the climactic character of the ‘fall’ in Genesis 3:1–6. After the former, there is satisfaction. After the latter, there is shame. The former portends a completeness, whereas the latter portrays a brokenness. The shalom of the Sabbath is shattered in the conflict of the fall. But it must be remembered that the Sabbath principle endures from the beginning to the end of the canon, and is not thereby obliterated by human rebellion. In this the first table casts a shadow over the rest of the canon, revealing the telos of the canon, namely that the created order, and humankind in particular, finds its meaning in the worship and reflection of God. This is ultimately the principle to which the Sabbath points.
The liturgy of creation
The densely structured character of Genesis 1:1 – 2:3 is by now a well-rehearsed theme in the commentary literature. The central activity in the first table is divine speech, and that speaking is portrayed with exquisite literary skill. The record of the divine speaking is highly stylized: more nearly like a hymn than a philosophical, scientific or historical lecture. The testimony to God’s creative acts of speaking creation into existence is filled with repetition and overlap. Though without the ordinary rhythms and parallelisms of Hebrew poetry, the account portrayed is a lyric account of events. It has a ‘liturgical bent’ to it noticeable by its style as well as its substance.
The hymnlike character of the first table of Genesis is most evident in the ‘pairing’ of the days, marking out the different stanzas of creation. Each ‘day’ of creation is matched with a corresponding day, with one noticeable exception – day seven. Days four, five and six each in turn refer back respectively to days one, two and three. Day seven alone has no ‘pair’ and quite evidently serves as the climactic stanza in the hymn. The overtly heptadic structure of the first table is itself testimony to viewing one of the days as climactic. How, then, are the days paired? And in what consists the uniqueness of the day that has no pair? The obvious answers have to do with God’s actions portrayed on days one to six and the lack of any divine action or work on day seven. Further, the specific divine actions on days one to six illuminates their significance in the light of the liturgical concerns of the first table. Consider the following.
Day four refers to the sun and moon, which are said to govern the day and the night. The ‘day and night’ of day four point back to day one, where the hymn of creation began its tribute to God. On day one God as Elohim issues the divine command ‘Let there be light.’ That command is followed by his separating the light from the darkness, calling the light ‘day’ and the darkness ‘night’. On day four God creates the heavenly bodies that rule the day and the night. The language of ‘rule’ is military in background and suggests a kind of conquest or subjugation. However, there appears no resistance or opposition on the part of those realms to be ‘ruled’ by the heavenly bodies. It is more accurate to say that by God’s sovereign word a positive order is placed upon the created realms of day and night. In this regard the account had in view that day four would illuminate the sacred order to which day and night always point. Time itself is filled with divine purpose and structure if the relation of days one and four is treated seriously.
The principle by which day five was paired with day two is different from days one or four but again illustrates the overarching purposes of the first table. The animals mentioned in day five are to ‘fill’ the sea and sky, realms originally mentioned on day two. The governing relationship of day four to day one has been replaced by a filling relationship of day five and day two. Day two is ‘filled’ by day five. The language of filling is a distinctive command of God here by virtue of his ownership of the whole created order. He commands the filling of the seas and skies because they belong to him. This world is a proverbial divine temple in this regard. The created order is sacred space precisely because God owns and fills it. This language is echoed in later canonical contexts when the glory of the Lord is said to fill the temple, as well as in contexts of covenantal declarations when God promises his appointed representative that his descendants will fill the earth.
The governing and filling relationships are combined in the pairing of day six with day three. On day six God speaks the land animals, including humankind, into existence. The animals and humankind are to ‘fill’ the earth. However, an additional imperative falls upon humankind to govern the rest of living creatures who fill the created order. Again the language of ‘governing’ carries military connotations, but without any resistance in view it must point to the greater reality already hinted at, namely that humans rule after the ‘order’ God has established for his creation. The military vitality of the language suggests this is no ordinary command, but one to be carried out with the utmost care. So day six fills day three, while it is also true that humans serve, at the end of the creative activity of God, as his royal representative called to be diligent in protecting the sacred order established. In humankind, then, comes the consummate connection between filling and governing.
It is also evident that creation is narrated from the top down. The realm of the heavens appears first, then the more immediate skies and seas, and finally the land spaces. Each realm is prepared for its filling by God’s act of dividing, first the day from the night, then the waters above from below, and finally the land from the seas. Each realm in turn is filled in descending order, from the sun and moon created as hosts of the heavens, to the birds and fish as hosts of the sky and seas, and then finally to the land animals, including humankind as the hosts of the earth. This twofold descent (separation followed by creation of the hosts), by which creation is outfitted from top to bottom in the first table, is neatly summarized in Genesis 2:1, ‘Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.’
The completion of the realms and their hosts awaits, however, a yet greater ‘completion’ on the seventh day, and in particular the cessation of divine labour and the enjoyment of the divine Creator in his work. There are no verbs of divine activity on this day, nor does the day of divine rest have the analogous temporal boundaries of the previous days. Day seven appears without ‘evening and morning’, suggesting that the language of ‘day’ (yôm) is itself not used as a temporal indexical but rather as a teleological signal in the first table. Creation has a purpose and that purpose is signalled by the climactic day seven. God grants meaning to everything – time as well as space.
There are other structural clues to the hymnlike character of Genesis 1. Day four, which stands in the numerical middle of the heptadic structure of seven days, points back to the first day (by virtue of the governing of the day/night) and also points ahead to the seventh day in the command that the sun and moon are to ‘serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years’ – an obvious reference to the ‘Sabbath’ principle associated with Israel’s feast days.
The hymnlike first table has seven stanzas, though only six of them close with the refrain ‘and there was evening and morning’. Justifiably, these refrains have been viewed as the interpretative backbone of the passage. However, there are other ‘groupings of seven’ independent of the seven days. Seven times the author uses the phrase ‘and it was so’. Seven times there is the recognition that ‘God saw it was good’. The first verse consists of seven words; the second, of fourteen. This remarkable calculation of numbers is no accident of a very careful author or hymn writer.
The house that God built
The summary so far. There are remarkable signals in the first table pointing towards an intensive theological liturgy of creation. The account powerfully reminds the reader that creation is ‘built’ for worship. The liturgical shape of the first table points to the conclusion that the created order as portrayed in Genesis 1 is a kind of temple in which the glory of God is reflected and the divine presence rests. In this respect creation is a theatre for the worship of God, though he is not merely a stage presence, but intends to be present throughout the created order. The created order is temple-like because it is filled with the presence of the divine King, the purpose for which God built this temple in the first instance.
This, then, draws attention to the temple imagery as appropriately applied to creation. Some archaeological evidence suggests that temples in the ANE were often constructed in terms of ‘seven’. Temples were considered sacred space, and seven, as the sacred number, was appropriately applied to the architecture of the temple. So it is also true in later Israelite history that temple building and the number seven were connected. Solomon’s dedication of the temple occurs during the seven-day Festival of Tabernacles during the seventh month. After the exile in Babylon, Ezra likewise mentions the Festival of Tabernacles in connection with the reconstruction of the altar of the temple (Ezra 3:1–6). Sacred time and space were interrelated.
If this was so, then it is safe to say that Genesis expounds the creation of the cosmos as an ordered creation after the manner of the sacred rhythm of time. Seven signified a completion or perfection appropriate to the divine work of creation. It also signified that a sacred space had thereby been made. The cosmos is a kind of temple by virtue of being intentionally ordered as sacred space. That sacredness is clear with the use of the number seven. And therein is the connection between the cosmos as intentionally ordered and the cosmos as a temple. In the mind of the composer of the liturgy of creation this must not have been an accidental connection.
The analogy between temple and cosmos is also indicated by the prominence of new creation themes in the building of the new (second) temple after the exile. This rebuilding of the temple is explicitly called an act of new creation in Isaiah 65:17–19. The announcement that God is creating a new heaven and new earth in the building of a new temple underscores the Israelite contention that cosmos and temple are signs of each other. The similarities between this passage and Genesis 1 therefore are in all likelihood no mere coincidence.
A final thread of evidence linking creation and temple is the overlap between Genesis 1 and the Exodus 39 – 40 account of the building of the tabernacle. The pattern of completing, being filled with God’s presence or glory, and blessing as a sign of the holiness of the space are remarkably similar in the creation of the cosmos in Genesis 1 and the creation of the tabernacle in Exodus 39 – 40. Similarly both accounts (building the world, building the tabernacle) recount how God brought about an environment in which he could find ‘rest’. Sabbath and sanctuary were intertwined, representing an exaltation and regal repose, a moment free of anxiety. The Sabbath climax in the liturgy of creation echoes in the continual injunctions to observe the Sabbath in imitation of God while the tabernacle is being constructed. Cosmos and temple were connected at this point in the mind of the canon.
It is not incidental that temple themes were noticed in early Jewish interpretations of Genesis, exemplified by the early Jewish commentator Philo of Alexandria:
The highest and in the truest sense, the holy, temple of God is, as we must believe, the whole universe, having for its sanctuary the most sacred part of all existence, even heaven, for its votive ornaments the stars, for its priests, the angels who are servitors to His powers.
Genesis 1 celebrates the reality that God has built a temple in which he will reside, though he will never be contained by that temple. The governing language of days four and six strongly suggests a sacred and royal temple is in view. The filling language of days five and six points towards the ever-increasing glory of God throughout the royal temple. God’s presence inextricably grows and fills everything, and is to be reflected by all living creatures.
God enters the temple to rest (Ps. 132), not because he is tired from building this temple, but quite clearly because he is uniquely satisfied with the building. The Sabbath declaration in the Decalogue (Exod. 20) looks to God’s ‘rest’ as the justification not for relaxation but for worship. Worship is a temple activity because God’s works are the evidence of the worthiness of honouring or worshipping him. After Exodus 20 in the context of the Sinai wilderness, Israel understand that the presence of God is uniquely located in the tabernacle as a sign of the divine presence throughout the whole tabernacle of the created order.
The building of the tabernacle (Exod. 39) typologically mirrors the building of the created order (Gen. 1). Both describe the completion of the task commanded by God. In Exodus 39 Moses is the agent through whom those commands come. In Genesis 1 obviously God issues the commands directly. In both accounts, of the tabernacle and of the created order, there is an inspection and final approval or blessing as well as a setting apart of both for sacred purposes. The Sabbath rest is the appropriate conclusion to both building projects. The tabernacle is a symbol of the whole universe with one critical difference – the presence of evil. The divine presence is available not immediately but mediately because of sin. In Genesis 1 the Sabbath rest is undisturbed by evil. In the building of the tabernacle Israel are warned to keep their distance because of the evil in their midst. The presence of God, still ubiquitous throughout the created order, nonetheless takes on a redemptive and judgmental aspect in the building of the tabernacle. Herein is the tension between the universal and particular presence of God. His universal presence throughout creation has been and continues to be affirmed from Genesis 1 forward. His particular presence, as revealed to Israel through Moses, neither undermines nor is to be equated with that universal presence. The manner in which Israel as God’s chosen people are nonetheless to be a ‘blessing to the whole world’ still remains to be explained, as at the time of Israel’s wilderness experience narrated in the book of Exodus.
Returning now to Genesis 1, the analogy of God’s creating acts and the project of building a temple help illuminate the place of the imago Dei on the sixth day. Genesis 1 is a hymn of royal temple construction. The proverbial pictures on the temple walls are crafted on day six. The pictures serve as images of the builder who is also the governor or sovereign of the created order. The intertwining of the royal imagery with the priestly imagery throughout the Pentateuch is especially evident in the first table of Genesis. Humans are to be mediators or priests of the divine presence and also vice-regents in protecting that sacral presence. Humans created in the image of God are to rule all other living creatures in the diverse realms of the created order, after the manner of the divine rule. The vice-regents are still clearly subservient to Elohim, as the seventh day makes clear.
The temple-building activity of Genesis 1 serves the purpose of providing a throne room for the divine sovereign. The seventh day of the first table provides a picture of this implicit enthronement. Elohim as the sovereign builder of the temple ‘rested’ in the inner sanctum, the most holy place, as it would later be pictured in the tabernacle and then the temple. This day of divine rest is a consummation of all that has gone before because it inaugurates God’s presence within the cosmic and created temple.
Important exegetical issues remain in this complex account of creation. The point of the preceding reflections on Genesis 1 was to situate the immediate context of the imago Dei in order to connect it to the wider context of the Old Testament. The theologically rich role of the imago Dei ought first to be understood in its immediate context, and then to be related across the canon. The immediate textual horizon of the imago Dei on the ‘sixth day’ of the first table places an onus on any theological interpreter to understand the hymn of creation in which the sixth day occurs, before explaining the imago Dei in its own right.