Sun, May 31st - 8:53AM
Genesis
2:23b-25 †.
Gen 3:1a . . Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which
the Lord God had made. Probably no
other creature in the Bible provokes so much skepticism as the Serpent. It just
smacks of mythology. But this
particular serpent was no ordinary reptile. It was indeed a remarkable
creature. Not only was it capable of language, and able to communicate on a
very sophisticated level with human beings, but it had an exceptional IQ too.
It grasped the significance of a supreme being, and totally understood the
workings of human nature and the human mind. No mere animal is capable of that
degree of insight, cognition, and communication. The final
book in the New Testament confirms the Serpent's true identity, and it is none
other than the dark spirit being well known to everyone as the Devil and Satan.
(Rev 20:1-3). According to
Christ, Mr. Serpent was in the world from the very beginning; and his stock in
trade was murder and deception right from the get go. (John 8:44) Since Rev
20:1-3 has not yet come to pass, then the Serpent remains at large and very
active in today's modern world. It is highly skilled at mental suggestions:
secretly guiding mankind along a road to self destruction. It is the source of
much of the world's political tensions, and certainly the impetus behind all
large scale anti-Semitic agendas. I have never
seen the Serpent myself; nor would I care to. But I know from Matt 4:1-11 that
Christ saw it, and spoke with it. From that passage it's obvious that the
Serpent is capable of human speech, understands human needs and weaknesses,
believes in the existence of God, understands the concept of worship, a master
of sophistry, understands the Bible, and understands the advantages of
manipulating human minds, and world power. The Serpent
certainly wasn't squeamish about tempting the Son of God to sin; so it should
come as no surprise that it wouldn't hesitate to entice a little nobody like
Eve. But Eve was extremely strategic; she was the high ground in the battle for
men's minds, because Eve was destined to be the mother of all subsequent human
beings. If the Serpent could get to the root of humanity, it would surely gain
control over the entire human race; and it did. (Eph 2:1-3) The Serpent
seems possessed with a strange, criminal mentality: beyond comprehension. But
then, so are pedophiles, serial killers, unabombers, ISIS extremists,
terrorists, and men like Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, Paul Bernardo, Karla Homolka,
Ted Kaczynski, and Jack the Ripper. Those kinds of criminals are prisoners of
dark minds clouded with anti-social inclinations. The Serpent, though surely an
incredible genius; is nonetheless an evil genius; not unlike the nefarious
masterminds in action comics. Psychopaths
are a cunning breed of predators who lack empathy, remorse, and impulse
control; readily violating social rules and exploiting others to get what they
want. Curiously, psychopaths are often so charming and manipulative that they
are well-concealed behind a mask of normalcy sometimes for years and even their
entire lives. But the
origin of the Serpent's twisted mind is really puzzling. How did it get that
way? Was it a birth defect? Did it bump its head? I don't know;
but one thing is for sure though: the Serpent's fondness for deceit is living
proof that angels are not mindless robots created to obey the will of God
without thought or question. No; they too have a mind of their own, and the
freedom of choice between good and evil-- the very same choices that Man is at
liberty to exercise. Satan chose poorly, and his human counterparts oftentimes
do too. The event
recorded in this third chapter is a bit of an enigma. The reason being that not
only can God see the future as if watching a video recording, but He's also
fully capable of manipulating it. In other words; the event in this chapter
wasn't unexpected; and God could have, had He wished, easily prevented it. People get
upset with humanity's creator for not stepping in and preventing the so-called
fall of man. But they need to remember that humanity holds the rank of a king
on this earth and has the God-given authority to conduct its own affairs as a divine sovereign (Gen
1:26, Gen 1:28, and Ps 82:6). Besides; does anybody really want to live in a
micro-managed Big Brother society? I don't think so. But that's the logic
behind just about every product liability lawsuit. Rather than
taking the bull by the horns and doing something to cure humanity's propensity
to destroy itself, product liability lawsuits go after suppliers who provide
the means for humanity to destroy itself. God gave
humanity the liberty to destroy itself;
and actually, that's the way many of us prefer it because we want to make our
own choices rather than have I-know-what's-best-for-you fanatics limit the
choices available to us. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Sat, May 30th - 8:41AM
Genesis
2:23b-25 †.
Gen 2:23b . .This one shall be called Woman, for from Man was she taken. The Hebrew
word for "woman" is from
'ishshah (ish-shaw') which is the feminine form of 'iysh (eesh) which means a human being as an individual or as a
male person. So 'ishshah doesn't indicate another species of human life (e.g.
Lilith) it just simply indicates the opposite side of the same coin. The word
"taken" is accurate enough but in my estimation,
"extracted" would be better because the woman was in Adam all along;
same goes for all the rest of us too. We weren't created the day we were
conceived; rather, we were created the day that Adam was brought into
existence. Pretty amazing when you think about it. †.
Gen 2:24a . . Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, Clinging
implies need. Most people don't care much for needy spouses because they're so
high maintenance; but I don't think Genesis is talking about that kind of
clinging. It seems to me more like reliance and dependence; and if a man can't
rely and/or depend upon his wife; who can he rely and/or depend upon? You know,
people who indulge in starter marriages have got the wrong idea about what it
means to hook up with somebody. There are no
specific Hebrew words for "wife". The word for wife in that verse
comes from the very same word as woman-- 'ishshah. What makes an ishshah
somebody's wife? The possessive pronoun "his" So Eve became Adam's
woman; and Adam of course became Eve's man. You don't own
me I'm not just
one of your many toys You don't own
me Don't say I
can't go with other boys. The lyrics of
that song-- originally recorded by Lesley Gore in 1963 --depict a defiant girl
standing up to a possessive boyfriend. Well; those lyrics may be true for
temporary lovers; but are very contrary to God's thinking when it comes to
marriage. Anyway; there
comes a time in every youth's life when it's time for him to grow up, sever the
apron strings, leave home, become his own man, and take up residence with his
own woman. Sometimes
it's difficult for a young man to accept that his mother is another man's
woman. When my son was around 29 years old and home for Christmas one year, his
mother and I were having a disagreement and he stuck up for her. I had to take
my son aside and school him that it is a serious breach of male etiquette to
come between a man and his wife. I let him get by with it that time; but in
another man's home his meddling just might cost him a broken nose. He never did
it again. †.
Gen 2:24b . . so that they become one flesh. The term
"one" indicates unification. According to Matt 19:6 and Rom 7:1-3,
this particular unification is permanent till death, which, according to 1Cor
6:15-16 isn't limited to marriage; it takes effect even when people sleep
around; ergo: when a man sleeps with a woman, any woman, he becomes bonded to
her for life, and she with him. Whether they agree to it or not makes no
difference because God's decree trumps His creatures' feelings about it. †. Gen 2:25 . .The two of them were naked, the
man and his wife, yet they felt no shame They were
naked at first, but there's really no reason to believe that they would've
remained that way. I mean, after all, human skin is not all that tough. They
would need to protect themselves from dirt and grime, and from sunburn, cuts,
bruises, and abrasions. The thing to note is that at this point of their
existence, they lacked a sense of propriety. Webster's
defines shame as: 1) guilt, or disgrace, 2) a feeling of inferiority or
inadequacy, and 3) inhibition. I think we
could probably add self consciousness to that list; defined as uncomfortably
aware of one's self as an object of the observation of others. In other
words, there was absolutely nothing in early Man's psyche restraining him from
parading around in full frontal exposure; and actually, neither was there
anything in his psyche encouraging him to. Adam was a product of nature; hence
he was comfortable au naturel. They weren't exhibitionists by any stretch of
the imagination because in their innocence, Adam and his wife simply were
neither proud of, nor humiliated by, their appearance in the buff. Adam and his
wife felt neither naughty nor perverted by frontal exposure at first, nor were
they self conscious in the slightest respect because as yet they knew no
cultural boundaries, nor were they infected yet with a guilt complex about sex
and the human body; and concepts like vanity and narcissism had no point of
reference in their thinking whatsoever. They had absolutely no natural sense of
propriety, nor were they even aware of any because their creator hadn't taught
them any proprieties yet at this point. That was an
interesting time in early human development. They had neither intuition nor
conscience as yet to moderate their dress code. Had somebody criticized the
first couple's appearance, they would no doubt have stared at their critic like
a man taken leave of his senses. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Fri, May 29th - 8:55AM
Genesis
2:18-23a †
Gen 2:18 . .The Lord God said: It's not good for Adam to be solitary; I will
make a fitting helper for him. That is a
curious statement considering that God had given His creation an evaluation of
"very good" back in Gen 1:31. Well; that evaluation was stated when
the job was all done. In this section, we're discovering what went on during
the sixth day before the job was all done. Adam's
construction came out exactly as God wished; which means that Adam's creator
deliberately made the man reliant upon a suitable companion right from the very
get-go; i.e. Eve wasn't a "fix" to address an unforeseen problem like
the many that plagued NASA during the Apollo program. "fitting
helper" is from two Hebrew words. "Fitting" is from neged (neh'-ghed) which means: a front,
i.e. part opposite; specifically a counterpart, or mate. The word for
"helper" is from 'ezer
(ay'-zer) which means: aid. Note that aid
isn't spelled with an "e" as in aide; so that Eve wasn't meant to be
the man's Girl Friday, rather; someone to strengthen him. In other words:
woman's true role is a supporting role rather than a leading role; i.e. domineering
women are out of sync with humanity's creator. The same goes for masculine
women-- viz: so-called strong women. I suspect
that Adam didn't really have it all that easy in his world, and that Eve's
companionship made his life a lot more tolerable and worth the living. The
helper that God made for Adam would be both his counterpart, and his crutch. In
other words: wives are really at their best when they strengthen their men to
go out that door and face the big, bad, mean world. In making a
statement like Gen 2:18; God made it very clear right from the beginning that
human beings were not intended to live a celibate life. If male human life was
packaged in a box of software, one of its system requirements would be Female
Companion. Woman's
potential for companionship is the primary reason that God made her-- not for
her sensual appeal nor for her reproductive value; no, for a man's
companionship; which is commonly expressed by cordiality, friendliness,
friendship, goodwill, kindness, civility, concord, harmony, rapport, charity,
generosity, compassion, empathy, sympathy, chumminess, intimacy, affection,
devotion, loyalty, fondness, and love. From all
that, I think we can safely conclude that a woman who tears her man down
instead of building him up is a broken woman; i.e. maladjusted. Now; before
God introduced the man to a woman, He first gave the man an opportunity to seek
appropriate companionship from among the creatures of the animal kingdom. The
results were unsatisfactory; and no surprise there seeing as how critters
aren't equipped to relate with humans on a high enough level. †
Gen 2:19-20a . . And the Lord God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts
and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would
call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its
name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and
to all the wild beasts; Adam's task
would have been overwhelming if as many varieties existed in his day as ours;
which I honestly don't think did because, for one thing, prior to the existence
of humans the earth underwent some mass extinction events. I'm sure Adam
loved animals; I mean look: he gave them all names; which is something that
people who make their living in animal husbandry try to avoid because the
practice can lead to attachments; thus making the situation very difficult when
it's time for sale and/or slaughter. My wife's
kindergarten class visits a working dairy farm every year where all the cows
and the calves have number tags stapled in their ears. On the books, those
numbers are the bovines' names; but in a matter of minutes, my wife's kinders
give the little calves real names because it's just in human nature to do that.
(I named one White Shoulder because it had an epaulette of pale hair on its
right shoulder) But as cute
and cuddly as some critters are, they just don't have what it takes to be the
kind of companion that a man really needs †
Gen 2:20b . . but for Adam no fitting helper was found. That's
telling me that people who prefer a pet's companionship to a human's are out of
kilter because pets, even as soothing as they are in some situations, are
unbefitting-- they're a lower form of conscious life than people; and God
didn't create them to be people's personal companions anyway, no, according to
Gen 1:26-28 He created them to be people's servants. I think that
even to this day, were most normal people given a choice between human companionship
and that of a pet; they would opt for the human because people relate to each
other much better than they relate to critters; either wild or domesticated. †
Gen 2:21a-22a . . So the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the man; and, while he
slept, He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot. And the
Lord God fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; The Hebrew
word for "rib" is tsela'
(tsay-law') and Gen 2:21-22 contains the only two places in the entire Old
Testament where it's translated with an English word representing a skeletal
bone. In the other twenty-nine places, it's translated "side" which
is really how tsela' should be translated because according to Gen 2:23, the
material taken from Adam included some of his flesh; and seeing as how the life
of the flesh is in the blood (Lev 17:11) then I think it's safe to assume that
the flesh God took from Adam's body to construct the woman contained some of
his blood too. The most
important thing to note in that passage is that the woman wasn't created
directly from the soil as the man was, viz: she wasn't a discreet creation,
i.e. the woman wasn't her own unique specie. Being as the
woman was created from the man's flesh, blood, and bones, then the flesh, blood,
and bones of her body were reproductions of the man's flesh, blood, and bones.
Therefore any and all progeny produced by the woman's body, whether virgin
conceived or normally conceived, would consist of the man's body, i.e. they
would be the man's progeny just as much as hers if her own ovum was in any way
at all involved in the conception. This section
makes it appear that the woman was brought into existence after the completion
of the sixth day. But according to Gen 1:27, the male and the female were both
created at the very same time on the very same day. FAQ: So; where was the woman prior to her actual appearance
on the scene? A: She was in Adam's body. That's not a
strange new idea. For example: Heb 7:9-10 says that Levi was in Abraham's body;
and that was literally centuries before Levi was born. † Gen
2:22b . . and He introduced her to the man. Why wasn't
Eve given an opportunity to fit in with the animal kingdom before introducing
her to Adam? Well, I think it's because men can make do with a hound dog and/or
a soccer ball named Wilson if they have to; but normal women, as a rule, can't. Men and Women
share a lot of similarities; but the resolve to go it solo, to be a rugged
individual, is not one of them. There are exceptions, of course; but as a rule,
women do not care to live alone and unloved in the world. It's curious, but
when we think of hermits; our minds typically think of them as male because
female hermits just seem so contrary to nature. Upon seeing
Eve for the very first time, Adam didn't exclaim: Hot diggity dog! Now I can
get lucky! No he didn't say that at all. † Gen
2:23a . .Then the man said: This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of
my flesh. In other
words: finally somebody Adam could really relate to; and the expression became
a colloquialism. (e.g. Gen 29:13-14) Eve's primary
purpose in life was to be her man's best friend; and that is precisely why God
made women: to be their husband's buddy. Therefore wives who aren't their
husband's buddy are seriously maladjusted; and can only be accepted as cheap
goods rather than top-of-the-line quality. Married men shackled to a
maladjusted woman aren't really in a marriage; they're in a cold war. The one who
designed a man said it is not good for a man to live alone. And if it's not
good for a man to live alone, then it goes without saying that it's not good
for a woman either. If men are supposed to be happier with a woman, then women
should be happier with a man. In other words: mankind's designer didn't intend
men and women to function independently of each other. They were created to be
together; as couples. So Adam saw
in Eve his true counterpart-- a blood relative who was just as human as himself;
and one who could truly relate to him, be sensitive to his feelings, and
understand his thoughts; something no other creature ever yet has been able to
do. It's said
that dogs are Man's best friend. No they aren't; dogs are domesticated beasts.
They might bring a man his slippers, guard his property, and lick his face; but
a dog lacks the capacity to be concerned that a man isn't eating right and
getting enough rest and/or sympathize with a man when his job is outsourced to
cheap labor in India. How many dogs shared their master's alarm when the
housing bubble burst in 2008 and Wall Street fell off a cliff resulting in
thousands of people all over the globe to suddenly find themselves unemployed
and losing their homes? Had one done so, that would've been a very unusual dog. No; a man's
true BFF is a loyal woman that looks out for him. Sometimes
it's hard to be a woman Giving all
your love to just one man You'll have
bad times, and he'll have good times Doin' things
that you don't understand But if you
love him, you'll forgive him Even though
he's hard to understand And if you
love him, oh be proud of him 'Cause after
all he's just a man. Stand by your
man, give him two arms to cling to And something
warm to come to When nights
are cold and lonely. Stand by your
man, and show the world you love him Keep giving
all the love you can. Stand By Your
Man Tammy Wynette
and Billy Sherrill Epic Records,
1968 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Thu, May 28th - 7:45AM
Genesis
2:15-17 †
Gen 2:15-17 . .The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden,
to till it and tend it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying: Of every
tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of
good and bad, you must not eat of it; for in the day you eat of it, you shall
die. FAQ: Why on earth would God plant a hazardous tree in an
otherwise perfect environment? Was that really necessary? What real purpose
does a tree serve that has the potential to kill people and alter human
consciousness? Why even create such a tree in the first place? A: Although the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is
unfit for human consumption; it wasn't necessarily a bad tree. When God
finished creating, He looked over His work on the 6th day and pronounced it all
not just good, but "very" good. Take for
example light. God pronounced it good; but in practice light has the potential
to burn your skin and/or cause permanent eye damage. I don't know
what that tree's purpose in the garden might have been but I'm confident it was
no more intrinsically evil than toad stools, poison ivy, lightening,
rattlesnakes, scorpions, avalanches, gravity, tornadoes, typhoons, hurricanes,
cactus needles, tsunamis, the solar wind, earthquakes, electricity, fire, lava,
lead, cadmium, and arsenic and hemlock are evil in and of themselves. Those
things are hazardous, yes, but they all fit into the natural scheme of things. Gen 2:15-17
is a favorite among critics because Adam didn't drop dead the instant he tasted
the forbidden fruit. In point of fact, he continued to live outside the garden
of Eden for another 800 years after the birth of his son Seth (Gen 5:4). So; is
there a reasonable explanation for this apparent discrepancy? The first
thing to point out is that in order for the warning to resonate in Adam's thinking;
it had to be related to death as he understood death in his own day rather than
death as modern Sunday school classes construe it in their day. In other words:
Adam's concept of death was primitive, i.e. normal and natural rather
spiritual. As far as can
be known from scripture, Man is the only specie that God created with
immortality. The animal kingdom was given nothing like it. That being the case,
then I think it's safe to assume that death was common all around Adam by means
of plants, birds, bugs, and beasts so that it wasn't a strange new word in his
vocabulary; i.e. God didn't have to take a moment and define death for Adam
seeing as how it was doubtless a common occurrence in his everyday life. Adam saw
things born, he saw things grow to maturity, he saw things gradually wither, he
saw their life ebb away, and he saw them decay and dissolve into nothing. So I
think we can be reasonably confident that Adam was up to speed on at least the
natural aspects of death; viz: he was familiar with mortality and he was
familiar with immortality. Death
includes not only mortality but also disintegration. "For
this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on
immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this
mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying
that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." (1Cor 15:53-54) In other
words; had Adam not eaten of the forbidden tree, he would've stayed forever 21,
but the very day that he tasted its fruit, his body became infected with
mortality-- he lost perpetual youth and began to age. Mortality is
a walking death, and it's slow, but very relentless. It's like Arnold
Swarzenegger's movie character; the Terminator-- it feels neither pain nor
pity, nor remorse nor fear; it cannot be reasoned with nor can it be bargained
with, and it absolutely will not stop-- ever --until you are gone. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Wed, May 27th - 8:35AM
Genesis
2:10-14 † Gen 2:10a . . A river issues from
Eden to water the garden, The verb
"issues" is in grammatically present tense; indicating whoever wrote
Gen 2:10, did so while the land of Eden yet existed. The authorship of Genesis
has yet to be positively established. A verse like 2:10 strongly suggests that
the data used to compile Genesis, was progressively accumulated in hand-me-down
journals or in oral rote, generated by people who lived prior to the final
compiler's input. The Hebrew
word for "river" is nahar
(naw-hawr') which is another of those ambiguous Bible words. It can indicate a
stream or a sea and/or metaphorically: prosperity. It was stated previously in
Gen 2:6 that the face of the whole ground was watered by fog; which suggests
that the Eden river was either an aquifer or something similar to the
slow-moving water of the Florida everglades. † Gen 2:10b-11 . . and it then divides
and becomes four branches. The name of the first is Pishon, the one that winds
through the whole land of Havilah where there is gold, The Pishon
river has yet to be positively identified. The Hebrew
word for "Havilah" is Chaviylah
(khav-ee-law'); which means circular. It's not only a place-name but also a
person-name (e.g. Gen 10:7, Gen 10:29) which may indicate that the land of
Havilah was named after an antediluvian individual who settled in that area. † Gen 2:12 . . (The gold of that land
is good; bdellium is there, and lapis lazuli.) Again, the
author used a present tense verb. The gold "is" good, not was good--
strongly suggesting the author actually lived in the period he wrote about. As a money;
gold has intrinsic value, whereas fiat currency as a money is worth little more
than the good faith and dependability of the country that issues it. In other
words: the US Government could, if it wished, simply outlaw the currency you
have on hand and in an instant your paper money would be totally worthless. But
gold has never been totally worthless. Gold is
valuable no matter where it comes from but some gold is easier to mine than
others and some is a whole lot more plentiful. Placer gold for example is
usually in the form of dust and requires dredging, sluicing, and washing. Hard
rock gold is better; but requires boring tunnels, rock crushing, and refinement
in smelters. I'd say the really good gold is that in the form of nuggets. However,
rather than the quality of Havilah's gold, the author's use of the word
"good" might just be saying that its gold is bountiful; as opposed to
scarce. Gold can be found just about everywhere, but concentrations of it exist
in only a relatively few places. Bdellium is a
gum resin similar to myrrh; obtained from various trees. The author could have
been referring to amber; a hard yellowish to brownish translucent fossil resin
that takes a fine polish and is used chiefly in making ornamental objects like
beads and such. Bdellium was the comparison Moses used to describe the color of
manna in Num 11:7. In ancient
Egypt lapis lazuli was a favorite stone for amulets and ornaments such as
scarabs; it was also used in ancient Mesopotamia by the Sumerians, Akkadians,
Assyrians, and Babylonians for seals and jewelry. Lapis jewelry has been found
at excavations of the Predynastic Egyptian site Naqada (3300–3100 BC), and
powdered lapis was used as eye shadow by Cleopatra. In ancient Mesopotamia,
lapis artifacts can be found in great abundance, with many notable examples
having been excavated at the Royal Cemetery of Ur (2600-2500 BC). † Gen 2:13 . .The name of the second
river is Gihon, the one that winds through the whole land of Cush. Cush of the
post-Flood world is associated in Scripture with both a region of Arabia and
the present-day land of Ethiopia. But the exact geographic site of the Cush of
antediluvian days is impossible to know. If it's the same, then we can be
pretty sure that the Earth underwent some dramatic geological events in the
distant past because it is now impossible for any river in Ethiopia to connect
in any way at all with the Tigris and Euphrates rivers of today's world. † Gen 2:14a . .The name of the third
river is Tigris, the one that flows east of Asshur. According to
Assyrian monuments, the Tigris was known to the post Flood ancients as the
Chiddekel, or the Hiddekel. Asshur was located in modern-day Iraq south of Mosul
on the western bank of the Tigris river in between the Great Zab and the Little
Zab rivers. † Gen 2:14b . . And the fourth river is
the Euphrates. The Tigris
and Euphrates rivers of today headwater not too far from Elazig Turkey; flowing
roughly (very roughly) parallel to each other from out of Turkey, past Syria
and Mesopotamia, and down into modern-day Iraq before joining together and
emptying into the Persian Gulf. The general
picture in Genesis 2 is that of a major watercourse (the Eden River) feeding an
immense aqua system supplying water to a very large geographic area comprising
parts of Turkey, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nubia, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman,
Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iraq. It would
appear that the Eden River itself head-watered possibly in what the world today
knows as Russia; but it is impossible to tell exactly where it came from
because that region no longer generates a south flowing monster river system
such as the one from Eden described in Genesis 2. The third and
fourth rivers no longer connect to a larger river that elsewhere branches off
and flows to Ethiopia. It's pretty obvious from the author's geographical
descriptions that the world's current topography didn't exist prior to the
Flood. The antediluvian world was shaped quite different than the one we live
in now. The Tigris and Euphrates of today are but remnants of an ancient
irrigation system that at one time made the entire Middle East a very beautiful
and fertile region; but to look at it today; you'd never guess it. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Tue, May 26th - 8:24AM
Genesis 2:8-9 †
Gen 2:8a . .The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, The Hebrew
word for "garden" is from gan
(gan) which means a garden as fenced; in other words; walled-- I assume to
protect it from foraging animals; which makes sense seeing as how the garden
would be Adam's primary food source. I'm guessing it was very likely a
full-blown farm complete with grains, vegetables, and orchards; and meant for
husbandry. †
Gen 2:8b . . in the east "east"
in that verse was an east that the author(s) of Genesis understood. Out west
here in Oregon, we consider east to be New York and Chicago; while the world
considers the Orient to be east. For the purposes of modern navigation,
everything towards sunrise from the meridian of Greenwich England around the
world to Samoa is East longitude, and everything towards sunset around the world
to Samoa is West longitude. So if you
were standing in Mexico, then Greenwich would be to the east; but if you were
standing in Iran, then Greenwich would be to the west. It's all a matter of
perspective. Just exactly
where "the east" was in Adam's day is hard to tell. But the garden
itself is not to be confused with Eden. The garden was located "in"
Eden; an ancient pre-Flood unspecified geographic region. Some people think
Eden was somewhere in Africa but that's just a shot in the dark. The word
"Eden" is from 'eden
(ay'-den) and/or 'ednah (ed-naw') and means: pleasure, and delight. So Adam's
farm was in a very nice location and we could, if we had a mind to, name his
spread Happy Valley or Pleasant Acres. †
Gen 2:8c-9a . . and placed there the man whom He had formed. And from the
ground Yhvh God caused to grow every tree that was pleasing to the sight and
good for food, The exact
site where God did the work of creating Man is unknown but there's no reason to
doubt he wasn't created right there in his intended home. And I think we can
safely assume the garden was already viable and productive when Man arrived.
God didn't just throw him in the water to sink or swim. He gave the man a
suitable habitat right from the get go. Adam wasn't a hunter-gatherer like some
sort of rootless nomad; no, he had a place to settle down and call home. Man came into
being by the designs of a Superior Intelligence who looked out for the unique
little creature made in His own image right from the first, and got him off to
a good start; which was fortunate because at that point in time, humans were an
endangered species seeing as how there was only one breeding pair in existence. †
Gen 2:9b . . with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, The tree of
life doesn't give life; but rather, according to Gen 3:22 has something in it
that sustains immortality. It's also a good source for natural remedies (Rev
22:2). Exactly how the chemistry of any plant could be so rich in nourishment
as to stop the human body from getting old and falling apart is currently
unknown. A very active
field of modern scientific research in our own time is gerontology-- the study
of the phenomena of the aging process. As yet, gerontologists have no
significant understanding of the aging process, and therefore no clue as to
what treatments, or nutrients might be employed to stop it. †
Gen 2:9c . . and the tree of knowledge of good and bad. The Hebrew
word for "good" in 2:9 is from towb
(tobe). It's an ambiguous word and isn't restricted to morals, ethics, or
scruples. Even a tasty meal or an entertaining movie can be towb. The word for
"bad" is from ra' (rah)
It's another ambiguous word; and includes anything that's bad for us like
poison ivy, playing with matches, E.coli
0157-H7, toxic chemicals, salmonella, eating without washing your hands, bungi
jumping, investing in penny stocks, walking on train tracks, pimples, a sore
throat, and going to bed without brushing your teeth. From the gist
of upcoming verses, it's readily apparent that the knowledge of good and bad
implies an intuitive sense of right and wrong. Though Man was created
intelligent; he was basically uneducated. A sense of right and wrong wasn't
programmed into his intuition. He was supposed to learn right and wrong via
Divine tutelage; not by trial and error nor by self initiative-- and certainly
not by doing something patently foolish like eating from a tree known to be
unsuitable for human consumption. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Mon, May 25th - 8:45AM
Genesis 2:6-7 †
Gen 2:6 . . a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the
ground. The Hebrew
word for "mist" is 'ed
(ade). It's a very rare word and appears only one more time in the whole Bible
at at Job 36:27 where it's apparently speaking of the process of evaporation;
which typically produces water in the form of fog, dew, and humidity; which are
very gentle ways to irrigate young plants and/or bare ground. Had God
brought rain prior to flourishing ground cover, the land would have eroded
something awful and millions of cubic yards of perfectly good dirt would have
washed into creeks, and streams, and rivers to be carried out to sea where it
would be lost in perpetuity. Water in the form of dew, fog, and/or humidity is
a whole lot more gentle on bare ground than falling water. (California's
coastal redwoods obtain a large percentage of their moisture from fog.) † Gen
2:7a . . And the Lord God formed a man's body Mankind's
creator didn't give birth to man like women give birth to children or like baby
chicks hatch from eggs; no, humans aren't God's biological progeny-- humans are
God's handiwork like the glass products manufactured by craftsmen in Murano;
where they make things from scratch using mostly sand for their base material. †
Gen 2:7b . . from the dust of the ground The Hebrew
word for "dust" is a bit ambiguous. It essentially refers to powder,
but can also be translated clay, earth, mud, mortar, ashes, and/or rubbish;
viz: the human body wasn't spoken into existence ex nihilo; God constructed it
from already-existing physical matter. NOTE: Sooner or later most people eventually
run afoul of the passage below so I think it best if we include in our
discussion of the creation story. "I am
fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul
knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in
secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did
see my substance, yet being incomplete; and in thy book all my members were
written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of
them." (Ps 139:14-16) The Hebrew
word for "substance" is `otsem
(o'-tsem). It appears in only three places in the entire Old Testament: Ps
139:15, Deut 8:17, and Job 30:21. There lacks a
consensus on the word's precise meaning. Based upon what I found in the Strong's
Concordance, `otsem apparently refers to the constitution of something. The Hebrew
word for "curiously wrought" is raqam
(raw-kam') which has to do with skilled needlework, i.e. embroidering,
knitting, etc, which produce multicolored handmade articles rather than made by
machines; suggesting that the human body-- all of its intricacies --was crafted
by the hand of God. The Hebrew
words for "lowest parts of the earth" always, and without exception,
refer to the netherworld; viz: underground. (e.g. Ps 63:9, Isa 44:23, Ezek
26:20, Ezek 31:14, Ezek 31:16, Ezek 31:18, Ezek 32:18, and Ezek 32:24) Some folk
prefer to apply Ps 139:15 to a woman's womb; but I think it best, and far more
sensible, to interpret it as relating to the author's creation rather than his
conception. If so, then we probably should review Adam's beginning in the book
of Genesis because everyone, from first to last, is his biological progeny; Eve
too because she was made from human material taken from Adam's body. "And the
Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground" (Gen 2:7) The Hebrew
word for "ground" is 'adamah
(ad-aw-maw') which refers to soil. Well then,
from whence came soil? Some of
soil's minerals are derived from the disintegration of meteors that burn up in
the atmosphere-- commonly referred to as star dust. But that only accounts for
a small percentage. The bulk of soil's parent materials come from the
disintegration of the Earth's own rocks. So: from
whence came the Earth's rocks? All the
Earth's rocks are formed underground and end up on or near the surface via
natural processes like volcanism, continental plate subduction, mighty
earthquakes, and erosion, etc. In a nutshell:
The author of Ps 139:14-16 believed that God saw his bodily constituents while
they were not yet even soil but were still underground, deep in the Earth where
they were being formed into rock which would later be broken down to make soil. So then, from
whence came the physical matter to make rock? Well; that information is located
in the very first two verses of the Bible; which says to me that in the very
beginning God saw every human being that was ever to exist before even one
began to walk the Earth. God could've--
had He wanted --created h.sapiens
from nothing more than rock dust (cf. Luke 19:37-40 and Matt 3:9) but instead
waited till the Earth's rock dust was amended with organic material. After rock,
and after vegetation, God then created all forms of life that lives ashore
which would of course include not just birds, bugs, and beasts, but also all
forms of life living underground, e.g. night crawlers, grubs, microbes, and
nematodes, etc. When life ashore passes away, its remains are not lost to
oblivion, no, they're valuable for further amending rock dust with even more
organic material. † Gen
2:7c . . and breathed into it the breath of life, The
transition from soil to soul is made possible by the mysterious force called
the breath of life. If that spoke of atmospheric gases, then it would be
possible to revive a corpse with artificial respiration; so we have to conclude
that the breath of life is an energy vastly more powerful than anything found
in nature. The word
"life" is commonly employed to speak of living things. But what is it
that makes living things alive, alert, and sentient? How is it that all humans
are constructed basically the very same way yet each has a sense of
individuality? There is no
real individuality in products manufactured on an assembly line. They're all
cookie-cutter duplicates and they can all be operated and maintained by the
very same set of instructions. But people
are not like that. We're not cookie-cutter duplicates manufactured on an
assembly line. We're all custom-made specimens with a mind of our own and a
will of our own. In other words: human life isn't mechanical, rather, it's
intelligent, thoughtful, and introspective. And each one is best reckoned with
on an individual basis rather than the oneness of a Borg hive collective. All
this, and more, from the breath of life. The breath of
life isn't unique to humans. Every creature aboard the ark with Noah was alive
due to the breath of life, and every creature that drowned in the Flood was
alive due to the breath of life. (Gen 7:12-23) †
Gen 2:7d . . and man became a living soul. The Hebrew
word for "soul" is nephesh
(neh'-fesh) which isn't unique to human beings. Its first appearance is at Gen
1:20-21 in reference to aqua creatures and winged creatures; again at Gen 1:24
as terra creatures; viz: cattle, creepy crawlies, and wild beasts; and again in
Gen 2:7 as the human creature; and yet again at Gen 9:10 to classify every
living thing aboard Noah's ark. Soul is
somewhat ambiguous. It can be said that creatures are souls and also that they
have souls. But here in the beginning, nephesh simply refers to consciousness,
individuality, and self awareness. NOTE: According to Matt 10:28, the body and
the soul are perishable. However; though the body is perishable by any means,
the soul is perishable only by divine means; i.e. the deaths of body and soul
aren't necessarily simultaneous, viz: the soul lives on until such a time as
God decides to give it either a thumb up or a thumb down. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Sun, May 24th - 9:28AM
Genesis 2:1-5 †
Gen 2:1-2 . .The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. On
the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing, and He ceased on
the seventh day from all the work that He had done. The seventh
day is unique. The other six days were bounded by an evening and a morning. The
seventh day is not bounded; which means it has not yet ended; viz: God has been
on a creation sabbatical ever since, and has created nothing new for the
current cosmos since the end of day six; i.e. the Earth that I live on today is
the very same planet that God created in the beginning. Granted the
Earth's topography has been altered quite a bit since Noah's day, for example
there is no longer any river systems connecting the Tigris and Euphrates with
Ethiopia. However, I consider those alterations as little more than remodeling;
so to speak. In other words; though a home undergoes remodeling; it's the same
home though it may have a different look. Though it's
stated in that passage that the creator finished His work and ceased creating
things for the current cosmos; yet people are still under the impression that
He creates new souls every time a baby is conceived in its mommy's womb. But
the seventh day isn't bounded by an evening and a morning; ergo: it has not yet
ended; which means God hasn't gone back to creating things for the current
cosmos. Adam's
progeny-- you and I and all the others --are not direct creations; no; we're
reproductions; viz: there's no need for mankind's creator to take a hand in
producing baby souls, or any other kinds of souls for that matter because He
created all life on earth as sustainable, transferable kinds of life. The
blessing of fertility is a remarkable blessing because it enables living things
to reproduce themselves sans divine micro management. In the
future; after the current cosmos is utterly obliterated, God will once again
roll up His sleeves, and go back to work creating things. "For,
behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be
remembered, nor come into mind." (Isa 65:17) "But the
day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens
shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent
heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up . . .
we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness." (2Pet 3:10-13) "And I
saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were
passed away; and there was no more sea." (Rev 21:1) †
Gen 2:3 . . And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it
God ceased from all the work of creation that He had done. The phrase
"declared it holy" is from the word qadash (kaw-dash') which means:
to be clean, or to make, pronounce, or observe as clean; viz: sanitize.
Pronouncing something clean, or observing something as clean and/or conferring
upon something the status of clean and sanitized, doesn't mean it's
intrinsically clean. It's just regarded as fully dedicated to God's purposes;
which is exactly what the word "sanctified" implies. The Hebrew word
for "sanctify" is also qadash: the very same word as for
"declared it holy". † Gen
2:4 . .These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were
created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven. The Hebrew
word for "day" in that verse is yowm (yome) which is the very same
word for each of the six days of God's creation labors. Since yowm here refers
to a period of time obviously much longer than a 24-hour calendar day; it
justifies categorizing each of the six days of creation as epochs of
indeterminate length. Gen 2:4 is
the very first time in Scripture where the name Yhvh appears. The correct
pronunciation is currently unknown. Sometimes it's pronounced Yehovah,
sometimes Jehovah, and sometimes Yahweh. The
appellation is so sacred among pious Jews that they make every effort to avoid
speaking it except under very special circumstances. In some of their writings,
in order to avoid using the four sacred letters comprising the tetragrammaton,
they write instead "The Name" and/or sometimes "Hashem". So
Ex 20:3 could be written: "I, The Name, am your god" or "I,
Hashem, am your god." BTW: According to Phil 2:9-11, God bestowed upon Jesus Christ
the name that is above every other name that can be named; viz: Jesus Christ
has the God-given right to be known as Yhvh. God also promoted His son to the
highest of all positions; viz: Jesus Christ now shares the very throne of God
where he's known as God, rules as God, and speaks as God; which has been pretty
much his ultimate destiny all along (Ps 2:1-12, Ps 45:1-7, Ps 110:1). That's
all I dare say about that for now lest I derail our journey thru Genesis. NOTE: Yhvh is commonly referred to with
masculine pronouns because He's a king; and kings are always males rather than
females; e.g. Isa 44:6. †
Gen 2:5 . . and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every
herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain
upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. Bible
students have to exercise caution when reading that section in order to avoid
making the mistake of concluding that human life was created prior to
vegetation; when we know for a fact from the day-by-day account in the first
chapter that humans were the very last to be put on earth. Gen 2:4-7 is only
saying that when God created vegetation on day three, it wasn't permitted to
flourish right away. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Sat, May 23rd - 8:47AM
Genesis
1:29-31 †
Gen 1:29-30 . . God said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon
all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours
for food. And to all the animals on land, to all the winged creatures of the
sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is the breath of
life, I give all the green plants for food. And it was so. Prior to the
Flood; humans, beasts, creepy crawlies, and winged creatures too-- even the
lions and tigers and hawks and eagles and pythons, vultures and crocodiles --subsisted
on vegetation. Precisely what kind of diet God intended for aqua life isn't
stated. That raises
an interesting question: why do carnivores have teeth so uniquely suited for
killing other creatures and ripping their flesh? Well, I think it's clear they
didn't use their teeth like that at first. For example;
buck-toothed beavers have incisors that could take your hand off but they don't
use them for that purpose. Male musk deer have saber-like upper canine teeth
and their diet is moss and grass and sometimes twigs and lichen. And everybody
knows about Wally the walrus' big ol' tusks; which he doesn't use to kill his
food, but rather, to plow up the sea bottom in search of his favorite mollusks. Though the
fossilized remains of a therapsid, named Tiarajudens eccentricus, exhibits
saber tusks, it is believed to have efficiently chewed leaves and stems with
interlocking incisors and cow-like molars. In the future
kingdom of God, carnivores won't be carnivorous any more, and nothing in the
animal kingdom will any longer pose a danger to either Man or to each other.
(Isa 11:6-9) †
Gen 1:31 . . And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And
there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Some feel that
the cosmos-- all of its forms of life, matter, and energy --was created
incomplete, not quite up to snuff: that it was to Man that God entrusted the
task of putting on the finishing touches. But that is very doubtful. Why ever
would God, after an overall inspection, conclude His work by pronouncing it all
good-- and not just good, but "very" good. Why would He say the
creation was very good if in truth it was incomplete? In reality,
humans haven't improved the planet at all. They've actually ravaged Earth and
left it with terrible damage-- leveled mountains, dried up rivers, emptied
lakes, drained marshes, indiscriminately obliterated habitat, wiped out animals
to extinction, scraped away perfectly good cropland and replaced it with
warehouses and factories and malls and residential communities. A prime
example of this kind of destruction is INTEL's massive Ronler Acres Campus
located on what was once agricultural land in Hillsboro Oregon. Thousands of
cubic yards of perfectly good topsoil was scraped away during construction of
the facility. What did they do with it? Was it transferred elsewhere in order
to use it for farming? No, instead INTEL used it to build a massive privacy
berm all around the facility where the soil will never again grow food. NIKE
did the very same thing with the topsoil scraped away during construction of
its facility in Beaverton. Denuded
watersheds have caused unnecessary erosion and stream sedimentation. Man dams
rivers, thus disrupting ancient fish migrations. He's over-exploited natural
resources, filled the atmosphere with toxins and greenhouse gas emissions,
poisoned aquifers, contaminated soil and waterways with chemical fertilizers,
pesticides, and herbicides; littered the oceans with billions of pounds of
plastic, made possible super germs, and seriously upset the balance of nature. It seems that
most everything 'adam touches, he ruins; and as if the Earth isn't enough, he's
moved out into space where in the years since Russia launched its first Sputnik
into low Earth orbit on Oct 04, 1957, humans have littered the sky around their
planet with 13,000 catalogued pieces of space junk, which is only a fraction of
the more than 600,000 objects circling the globe larger than one centimeter (a
centimeter is a little over 3/8ths of an inch). Humans have even discarded
374,782 pounds of litter on the Moon, including the golf balls that astronaut
Alan Shepherd left behind. So; when God
looked over His work and "found" that it was very good, does that
mean He was surprised it came out like it did? (chuckle) No. It would be a
strange craftsman indeed who couldn't look over their work with satisfaction in
a job well done. I believe the
universe's architect knew precisely what He was doing, and where He was going
with His work; and was highly pleased that it came out exactly as planned. I
seriously doubt that God was feeling His way along like experimenters in
medicine and chemistry. Nobody could build a fully functioning cosmos and all
of its forms of life, matter, and energy unless they knew what they were doing
from beginning to end. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Fri, May 22nd - 11:12AM
Genesis
1:27-28 †
Gen 1:27a . . So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He
created him; If humans
were paternal sons of the Most High-- viz: if people were His biological
offspring --they'd be eternal beings like Himself because God is an eternal
being; i.e. like begets like. But humans for now are not even immortal let
alone eternal. So then we
are safe to conclude that humanity's image and likeness of God wasn't the same
as Seth's image and likeness of Adam, viz: humanity's divine sonship isn't
biological. God didn't reproduce in order to bring humans into existence,
rather, He created them into existence from dust rather than from Himself. †
Gen 1:27b . . male and female He created them. It's okay to
pity people who refuse to be identified by their gender and prefer to be known
as non binary, i.e. as neither male nor female. But there is no just no way on
God's green earth that Bible believing Christians should ever be supportive of
the non binary movement because the image and likeness of God finds its
completeness in distinct male and female gender identities. There's a
term for people who believe themselves to be someone and/or something other
than what and/or who they really are. I think it might be called Dissociative
Disorder. There was a time when society confined people with those kinds of
conditions to psychiatric facilities for observation and therapy, but nowadays
political correctness requires that they be "included". But
God-honoring Christian churches dare not accept into their membership someone
known to identify themselves as non binary. "See to
it that no one misses the grace of God, and that no bitter root grows up to
cause trouble and defile many." (Heb 12:15) A bitter root
is one belonging to a species unfit for human consumption. When you find
noxious vegetation sprouting in your garden, you've got to get out there with a
hoe and dig that stuff up before it spreads out of control. NOTE: The pronoun "them" in Gen
1:27 is a bit ambiguous. It can refer to the first couple; but it can just as
easily refer to the human specie in total. In other words: Gen 1:26-27 speaks
of all of us; and by extension, so does Gen 2:16-17 because according to Acts
17:26, that's how it worked out. Some women
would be offended by association with a male pronoun but it's a biblical
designation nonetheless. Regardless of one's natural gender, all human beings
are of the 'adam species and can be legitimately referred to as a him or as a
he because all of us, regardless of gender, are extensions of a solo specimen;
including Eve because she was made from a human tissue sample taken from a man's
body. Bible students really have to watch for that because when they run across
the word "man" and/or "men" in the Bible, it doesn't always
indicate males. †
Gen 1:28a . . God blessed them and God said to them: Be fruitful and increase, Some
interpret that verse to be an edict requiring married people to have children;
and that they have no business getting married for any other reason. But the
wording is so obviously a blessing rather than a law. It's always
best to regard blessings as benefits,
approvals, and/or empowerments unless clearly indicated otherwise. Some
blessings have to be merited (e.g. Deut 28:1-13) but not this one. It was
neither requested nor was it earned-- it was freely given without any strings
attached and nothing asked in return. NOTE: According to Gen 2:18-24, marriage is primarily for the purpose of
companionship rather than procreation. Without the
empowerment of fertility, Man would be just as sterile as a soup spoon. So it
was a very essential blessing. And a very interesting blessing it is because
the blessing of fertility empowers living things to pass their own kind of life
on to a next generation. God quit creating after six days. So unless creatures
were enabled to reproduce, all would soon die out and become quite extinct in a
very short time. Libido
therefore, is an essential element of the blessing of fertility. God intended
for His creatures to reproduce; and to ensure that they did, He wired them all
with libido rather than instilling within them a sense of duty. It isn't
necessary to cajole creatures to mate; no, they will do so on their own,
propelled by built-in sensual proclivities and predilections. †
Gen 1:28b . . fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the
birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth. The Hebrew
word for "master" is from kabash
(kaw-bash') which emphasizes coercion and force; and means: to disregard; to
conquer, and to violate. The word for
"rule" is from radah
(raw-daw') and means: to tread down; to subjugate. kabash and
radah are very strong language. Those two words combined leave no room for
doubt regarding Man's supremacy in the sphere of things. God blessed humanity
with the authority to dominate and to violate planet Earth at will, and exploit
it to his own advantage. Man answers to no plant nor animal on this entire
globe. The whole Earth is within the scope of humanity's purview. If aliens
ever come here unannounced, they can be arrested for trespassing, and/or
charged for parking because this earth is 'adam's domain. But the
interesting thing is; the 'adam specie is also the monarch of the whole cosmos;
not just the dinky little third rock from the Sun where he hangs his hat. "For in
that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under
him." (Heb 2:6-8) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Thu, May 21st - 7:52AM
Genesis
1:26 †. Gen 1:26a . . And God said: Let us make Man
in our image, after our likeness. The
introduction of the plural personal pronouns "us" and "our"
into the narrative at this point has given rise to some interesting speculation
regarding the identities of the antecedents. The
Hebrew word translated "Man" is 'adam (aw-dawm') which, in this case,
simply refers to human life; i.e. humanity. It's actually a specie name rather
than a proper name. Because
of the terms "image and likeness" there are some who insist that
humanity's creator is some sort of hominid; or at least resembles one. But the
terms "image and likeness" aren't synonyms for facsimile, i.e.
doppelgänger; so let's let's not make that mistake because according to Christ,
humanity's creator isn't physical. "God
is spirit" (John 4:24) Spirits
don't have solid bodies. (Luke 24:36-39) God
instructed Moses' people to avoid making any kind of mannequin, figurine, totem
pole, or statue representing God since no one has any true concept of what
creation's God actually looks like in person. (Ex 4:10-19, John 1:18, John
5:37) There
exists absolutely nothing in nature physically resembling its creator; except
maybe the air in front of our face-- neither Man, nor beast, nor plant, nor
bird, nor bug, nor reptile nor anything out in the void (Rom 1:21-23). Pagan
concepts that portray creation's God as a human being are purely fantasy. (Rom
1:25) The
apostle Paul once said to the men of Athens, relative to the creator: "We
are His offspring." (Acts 17:28-29) The
Greek word translated "offspring" means kin; which Webster's defines
as a group of persons of common ancestry. In other words: humans were created
to be their creator's relatives; not biologically of course, but legally, i.e.
adoption. As
God's kin, humans have a status far and away above the status of every other
form of life on Earth. †.
Gen 1:26b . . let them rule over the
fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the
earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. Humanity's
sovereignty, power, and control over nature is primarily where we find the
exercise of its image and likeness of God; in other words: Man does not answer
to nature-- just the opposite --nature answers to Man. (Ps 8:4-8) The
word for "rule" is from radah (raw-daw') and means: to tread down,
i.e. subjugate; specifically: to crumble off. I
saw a pretty interesting bumper sticker some time ago that went like this: We
Are Not Above The Earth; We
Are of the Earth. Well
. . I respect Native America's cultural sentiment underlying that statement;
and must admit that I agree with it to a certain extent. But the creator
decreed that though Man is of the earth; he is very definitely above it too,
and has the God-given authority to subjugate every living thing on the planet
including its forests, its grasses, its rivers, its seas, its soil, its rocks,
its air, its minerals, its mountains, its valleys, and even its tectonic plates
and the earth's very atmosphere itself. According to Heb 2:8, humanity is on
track to take control of even more. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Wed, May 20th - 8:05AM
Genesis 1:24-25 †
Gen 1:24-25 . .Then God said: Let the earth bring forth living creatures after
their kind-- cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their
kind, And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and
the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its
kind; and God saw that it was good. We've come
now to the sixth day when all terra life was created; including humans. This grouping
of creatures (except for Man) isn't specifically given the blessing of
fertility; but if God would bless aqua creatures and those with wings, why ever
would He not bless the terra species too who are just as important? But since
they've been reproducing all this time, then I'd have to say there is
sufficient circumstantial evidence to support the assumption that they too were
empowered to reproduce. The Hebrew
word for "living" is chay
(khah'-ee) which basically indicates existing as life as opposed to existing as
non life. For example, the structural elements of Noah's ark existed as non
life; while it's passengers existed as life. (Some people
insist that all things are alive. I recommend leaving that belief at the door
when crossing the Bible's threshold because scripture doesn't accommodate it;
and that kind of thinking only fosters confusion in the minds of those who
entertain it.) Chay makes it
first appearance at Gen 1:20 in reference to aqua creatures and winged
creatures; and many times in the Old Testament thereafter; including fifteen
times in reference to the Creator; e.g. Jer 10:10, indicating that the creator
is a living being as opposed to a totem pole or a mythical fantasy. There is a
very large number of instances recorded in the Old Testament where the Creator
speaks of Himself as "I am". Terra
critters weren't created ex nihilo; rather, from the very land upon which they
live; i.e. God used earthly materials and ingredients already at hand to
construct them. Neat-O. Not only are the various plants and animals indigenous
to planet Earth; but they are part of it too and blend right back in when they
die and decompose. Beasts of the
earth, in this instance, simply refers to wild life as opposed to domesticated
life. Dinosaurs would've been in the wild classification. Cattle refers
to mute beasts (a.k.a. dumb animals) --the herd species from which came those
that can be domesticated for Man's uses. They can pull plows and wagons,
provide tallow for candles and soap, and hide and wool for clothes, meat and
dairy for table, carry loads, and transport people from place to place on their
backs. (Probably one of the better things that Spain did for Native Americans
was make it possible for them to have horses.) NOTE: Looking a steed on the cheap? Well;
according to the May 2017 issue of Smithsonian magazine; there are something
like 70,000 wild horses and burros running free on Federal lands causing an
unacceptable amount of environmental damage. No doubt the BLM would appreciate
your help in reducing those numbers. Not all herd
animals can be tamed. Zebras, for instance, and male elephants are not
particularly suited to domestication. It's no
accident that some of the animals are so useful to Man. God made them for the
express purpose of serving people. Although they're nephesh, same as Man, that
doesn't make them equals with Man. However, although beasts are below the rank
of the image and likeness of God, people have no right to be cruel to animals.
But Man does have the right, by the creator's fiat, to take advantage of them;
and to induct them into slavery for Man's benefit. No doubt some
of us would be happy if a few of the creeping species had not been created,
e.g. scorpions, centipedes, cockroaches, tarantulas, fleas, ticks, ants; et al. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Tue, May 19th - 10:13AM
Genesis 1:20-23 †
Gen 1:20-21a . . And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving
creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open
firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature
that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and
every winged fowl after his kind. How can water
alone be used to create living things? Well, it can't be any more difficult
than creating the entire cosmos ex nihilo; i.e. from and/or out of nothing. However, one
of the essential elements for the construction of organic life is carbon. Well;
seawater contains that element, along with several others too; and there's
plenty enough seawater that's for sure. The word for
"creature" is from nephesh
(neh'-fesh) which refers to consciousness, individuality, and self awareness.
It never applies to vegetation. For example: though saguaro cacti are alive,
they aren't nephesh because vegetation lacks a sense of individuality and is
neither conscious nor self aware, i.e. nephesh refers to all critter life great
and small; but never to non critter life. Nephesh shows
up first in Gen 1:20-21 as sea creatures and winged creatures. Next it shows
up in Gen 1:24 as terra creatures; viz: cattle, creepy crawlies, and wild
beasts. It shows up
again in Gen 2:7 as the human creature. It shows up
again in Gen 2:19-20 as the creatures to whom Adam gave names. It shows up
again in Gen 9:8-16 as all conscious life aboard the ark, including Noah and
his family. Some say that
animals are people too. Well . . they're certainly not human, but according to
the Bible, they are very definitely just as much a nephesh as a human being. So
I guess we could consent, at least to some degree, that critters are people
too; in their own way. The Hebrew
word for "fowl" is 'owph
(ofe) which just simply means covered with wings as opposed to covered with
feathers. It's a rather unusual word because it includes not only creatures
with feathers, but according to Lev 11:13-23, 'owph also pertains to bats and
flying insects. The English word "fowl" was obviously an arbitrary
translation since owph is ambiguous. What did
those early flyers look like? Well; I suggest that at least some of them had to
be Pterosaurs because on no other day but the fifth did God bring about
critters with wings. Precisely when and/or how God phased out those early
skin-winged creatures is one of science's thorniest mysteries. It's reasonable
to assume that whatever exterminated the Pterosaurs should have exterminated
everything else with wings too; but somehow birds, bats, and flying bugs are
still with us. It's
important to note that winged creatures were just as distinct a creation as
aqua creatures. So winged creatures didn't evolve from creatures who once lived
in the sea. Winged creatures are a separate genre of life in their own right,
and absolutely did not evolve from some other order of life. "great
whales" is from tanniyn
(tan-neen') and/or tanniym
(tan-neem') which mean: a marine or land monster. Tanniyn is sometimes
translated "dragon" as in Isa 27:1 It wasn't a
tanniyn, however, that swallowed Jonah. That creature was either a dagah (daw-gaw') a dag (dawg) or a da'g
(dawg). All three words mean a fish. NOTE: The reason I quoted the three Hebrew
words for "fish" is because the fact is: translators are not always
confident how best to represent a Hebrew word with the English alphabet. In
point of fact, there are ancient Hebrew words that nobody really knows what
they mean so translators are forced to take educated guesses here and there in
order to fill in the text. "every
living creature that moveth" would include not only critters that swim but
also critters that creep, e.g. starfish, lobsters, crayfish, newts, clams, and
crabs et al. But what
about aquatic dinosaurs? Well; according to Discovery's web site "Walking
With Dinosaurs" paleontologists believe there were some amphibious
reptiles such as plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, but those creatures didn't have
the gills necessary to be truly aquatic like Nemo and his dad Marlin. † Gen
1:21b . . And God saw that this was good. In other
words: He was satisfied. The Hebrew
word for "good" in this instance is towb (tobe) which is horribly ambiguous. It's meanings range from
morally good, to good looking, to a job well done, to something that's good to
the taste; and to a whole lot of other things in between; e.g. a good show,
good food, as good as it gets, satisfactory, pleasing; etc, etc. † Gen
1:22a . . God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and increase, This is the
very first place in the Bible where the Hebrew word for "bless" shows
up. It's somewhat ambiguous, but in this case I think it's pretty safe to
assume that it means to furnish freely or naturally with some power, quality,
or attribute; i.e. provide, endow, and/or empower. In other words: the blessing
of fertility was a providential act; and no doubt included microscopic
creatures as well as those visible to the naked eye. Providence is
common in the Bible; especially in Genesis. †
Gen 1:22b . . fill the waters in the seas, and let the winged creatures
increase on the earth. Winged
creatures have the advantage of flight; which, in my estimation, makes them
more fortunate than creatures confined to water. The wingers get a much better
world view from above than those below. Flying broadens one's horizons, so to
speak, and gives us a bigger picture. Amphibious flyers, e.g. cormorants and
grebes, have the best of both environs; they see things from above as well as
from below. Aqua
creatures exist in the most unlikely places. When the crew of the bathyscaphe
Trieste descended into the 35,761 feet Challenger Deep located in the deepest
part of the Mariana Trench in 1960, they didn't really expect to find anything
living down there; but to their surprise, they saw a flat fish similar to sole
and flounder. The video
camera on board the Kaiko probe spotted a sea cucumber, a scale worm and a
shrimp at the bottom. The Nereus
probe spotted a polychaete worm (a multi-legged predator) about an inch long. †
Gen 1:23 . . And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Mon, May 18th - 3:44PM
Genesis 1:14c-19 †
Gen 1:14c . . they shall serve as signs for the set times-- the days and the
years; The word for
"signs" is from 'owth (oth)
and means a signal; viz: indicators. For example: the mark that God put on Cain
was an 'owth. (Gen 4:15) The Sun's
movement across the sky is very useful for keeping time. It probably didn't
take long for early men to realize they could divide a day into convenient
elements by utilizing shadow. "seasons"
is translated from either mowed'
(mo-ade') or moed` (mo-ade'). Those
words are translated "congregation" numerous times in the Old
Testament relative to special dates on the calendar. While the Sun
is useful for keeping track of solar increments, the Moon is useful for marking
off lunar increments. For example: were you to tell somebody your intention to
visit them in five Moons, they would have a pretty good idea when to get ready
for your arrival; so long as you both used a common definition of
"moon". To some, a moon is New Moon, while for others a moon
indicates Full Moon. If the Sun
and the Moon were the hands of a clock; the Sun would be the minute hand and
the Moon would be the hour hand; so to speak. Years in the
Old Testament are sometimes based upon a 30-day month; and they're not always
marked by the Sun's position in space relative to the stars. More about this
later when we get to Noah. †
Gen 1:15-18a . . and they shall serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to
shine upon the Earth. And it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater
light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night, and the
stars. And God set them in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the Earth, to
dominate the day and the night, and to distinguish light from darkness. Gen 1:3-5
defines day as a condition of light, and defines night as a condition of
darkness. Gen 1:14-18 defines day on Earth as when the Sun is up and night on
Earth is defined as when the Sun is down; and that's how it was when Christ was
here. "Are
there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not
stumble, because he sees the light of this world." (John 11:9) The
"light of this world" is the Sun. At this point
in biblical history, "stars" no doubt indicates all luminous objects
in the heavens seeing as how it would be a very long time before humanity began
categorizing some of the stars as planets. I think it's
important to emphasize that in the beginning God "set" the stars in
the sky just as he set the Sun and the Moon in the sky, i.e. celestial objects
didn't arrange themselves all by themselves sans any intelligent supervision
whatsoever; no, they were placed; and not only were they set in place, but also
set in motion-- nothing in the entire cosmos is standing still, though many
things appear to be. According to
Gen 1:15, stars illuminated the Earth on the "day" that God made
them. Well; the
only stars whose shine is of any practical use as illumination are those of the
Milky Way; which is estimated 100,000 to 180,000 light years in diameter. Obviously
then; if left entirely up to nature, light from stars nearest our location in
the galaxy would begin dousing the earth with illumination long before those at
the far side. For example,
light from Alpha Centauri takes only about 4½ years to reach Earth while light
from Alpha Orionis (a.k.a. Betelgeuse) takes about 640. There are quite a few
stars whose illumination reaches Earth in less than 50 years. But whether 4½
years, 50 years, 640 years, or 180,000 years; the time involved is
insignificant if we but allow that the days of creation were epochs rather than
24-hour events. But what's
the point of putting all those objects out there in space? Well, for one thing,
they're not only brain teasers; but they're actually quite pretty. Celestial
objects decorate the night sky like the ornamentation people put up during
holidays. The night sky would sure be a bore if it was totally black. Decorated
with stars; the night sky is like a beautiful tapestry, or a celestial Sistine
Chapel. "The
heavens declare the glory of God, the sky proclaims His handiwork." (Ps
19:2) Stars makes
better sense that way than to try and find some other meaning for them. The
universe is simply a magnificent work of art-- just as intriguing, if not more
so, than the works of Picasso, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Monet, Vermeer, and da
Vinci --testifying to the genius of an engineer-artist without peer. Sadly, a
number of very intelligent people like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson look
to the sky for the wrong reasons. Why not just look to the sky for inspiration
instead of only exploration and discovery? What's so bad about visiting the sky
as a Guggenheim or a Louvre displaying your maker's many-faceted talents? "For
what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to
them. Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes of eternal
power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what He has
made." (Rom 1:19-20) †
Gen 1:18b-19 . . And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and
there was morning, a fourth day.
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Sun, May 17th - 9:47AM
Genesis 1:8-14b †
Gen 1:11a . . Then God said: Let the land produce vegetation The Hebrew
word for "produce" appears in only two places in the entire Old
Testament; here and Joel 2:22. It basically means to sprout. Here and in Joel,
it refers to species of plants where none of their kind previously existed. The variety of
Earth's vegetation is boggling. It's estimated between 250,000 to 315,000
species-- that's the plants we know of but doesn't include the ones that may
have existed in the past prior to catastrophic weather conditions and
extinction events. †
Gen 1:11b-12 . . seed-bearing plants, fruit trees of every kind on earth that
bear fruit with the seed in it. And it was so. The earth brought forth
vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing
fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that this was good. According to
Gen 2:4-5, the land's vegetation was dormant in the beginning; it didn't
actually flourish until the atmosphere began producing moisture. NOTE: It's believed by science that there
was an era in Earth's youth called the Carboniferous period when it was
blanketed by dense jungles and forests. As those plants and trees died, and
were buried beneath layers of sediment; their unique chemical structure caused
them to be "cooked" into solid coal; and there is really a lot of it. Why isn't the
Earth currently blanketed by dense jungles and forests? Well; the earth's
conditions today cannot produce enough humidity, nor enough rain, nor enough
global warming to sustain the kinds of heavy vegetation that once existed in
the Carboniferous era. In other words: the Earth, over time, has managed to
give itself a remarkable make-over; and at least one element of its make-over
are the mountains. The ranges
now in existence; e.g. the Andes, the Himalayas, the Rockies, the Urals, the
Appalachians, the Cascades, the Brooks Range, the Alps, etc; and the various
minor inland and coastal ranges weren't always in place where they are now.
Those were shoved up over time by the forces of tectonic subduction, volcanism,
and magma pressure. Even Yosemite's massive granite monoliths haven't always
been there. They were formed deep underground and then somehow shoved up to
where they are now. Anyway, point
being; those ranges have a very great deal to do with the Earth's current
weather systems. †
Gen 1:13 . . And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. †
Gen 1:14a . . God said: Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky On the fourth
day, God spent time up in celestial regions. It might seem odd that He began
work on the surface of the Earth, and then before finishing, stopped short and
moved off into space. Why not finish building down here on the planet first? Well; at this
point in the process of creation, planet Earth was very dark and freezing cold.
For example: the dark side of the Moon gets down to minus 279º F (-172.8° C) so it was time to turn man's
home into a greenhouse if anything meaningful was to live down here. A major
player in the Earth's water cycle is evaporation, which is driven by the Sun.
By means of evaporation, the earth's atmosphere gets enough water vapor to form
the clouds that produce precipitation. The Sun also
plays a role in temperature variations that make conditions like humidity and
fog possible. Temperature variations also play a role in the process of
erosion; which assists in soil formation. Many
varieties of vegetation depend upon the annual cycle of the four seasons of
Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter; seasons which would not be possible without
the Sun. Oxygen is a
must gas for sustaining life on Earth and a very large percentage of it is
produced by photosynthesis which is a chemical process that works best in
sunlight. No doubt the original atmosphere contained oxygen enough, but would
eventually be absorbed by oxidation and other kinds of chemical activity. Plant
life plays a major role in both filtration and replenishment; hence the need to
get a Sun shining as soon as possible. The
atmosphere contains on average 19.5
to 23.5 percent oxygen; even with
all the fossil fuel burned around the world, along with the destruction of
savannas, prairies, woodlands, wetlands, and rain forests, coupled with
volcanic activity; the percentage remain fairly stable. Today's
science is aware that the Moon doesn't generate its own light; but prior to
that discovery, people no doubt regarded the Moon as a second Sun; especially
seeing as how from the perspective of Earth, the Sun and the Moon appear to be
the same size in diameter, and both appear to circle the Earth. †
Gen 1:14b . . to distinguish Day from Night; On the first
day of the creative process; God defined Day as a condition of light; and
defined Night as a condition of darkness. Here, it's further defined that Day,
as pertains to life on Earth, is distinctly separate from Night rather than a
24-hour amalgam of light and dark. The
properties of Day and Night come out so early in the Bible that they easily
escape the memories of Bible students as they slip into the reflexive habit of
always thinking of Days as periods of one Earth rotation of 24 hours. That's
okay for calendars but can lead to gross misunderstandings when interpreting
biblical schedules, predictions, and/or chronologies, e.g. Matt 12:40.
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Sat, May 16th - 8:53AM
Genesis 1:6-10 †
Gen 1:6-8a . . And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the
firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the
waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the
firmament Heaven. In this case
the word for "heaven" is singular probably because we're only looking
at the Earth's atmosphere. We can easily
guess what is meant by water that's below the sky. But is there really water
that's above it? Yes, and it's a lot! According to an article in the Sept 2013
issue of National Geographic magazine, Earth's atmosphere holds roughly 3,095
cubic miles of water in the form of vapor. That may seem like a preposterous
number of cubic miles of water; but not really when it's considered that Lake
Superior's volume alone is estimated at nearly 3,000. Our home
planet is really big; a whole lot bigger than sometimes realized. It's surface
area, in square miles, is 196,940,000. To give an idea of just how many square
miles that is: if somebody were to wrap a belt around the equator made of
one-mile squares; it would only take 24,902 squares to complete the distance;
which is a mere .012644% of the
surface area. Some of the
more familiar global warming gases are carbon dioxide, fluorocarbons, methane,
and ozone. But as popular as those gases are with the media, they're bit
players in comparison to the role that ordinary water vapor plays in global
warming. By some estimates; atmospheric water vapor accounts for more than 90%
of global warming; which is not a bad thing because without atmospheric water
vapor, the earth would be so cold that the only life that could exist here
would be extremophiles. How much
water is below the firmament? Well; according to the same National Geographic
article; the amount contained in swamp water, lakes and rivers, ground water,
and oceans, seas, and bays adds up to something like 326.6 million cubic miles; and that's not counting the 5.85 million cubic miles tied up in
living organisms, soil moisture, ground ice and permafrost, ice sheets,
glaciers, and permanent snow. To put that
in perspective: a tower 326.6
million miles high would exceed the Sun's distance better than 3½ times. It
would've exceeded the distance between Mars and Earth on July 27, 2018 by 5
times. †
Gen 1:8b . . And the evening and the morning were the second day. At this
point, there was no sun to cause physical evenings and mornings; so we can
safely assume that the terms are merely place-cards indicating the completion
of one of creation's six-step processes and the beginning of another. †
Gen 1:9 . . And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together
unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. At this
point, dry land as yet had no soil because at first it would've been bare rock. "He set
the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. You covered it
with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your
rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The
mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them.
You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover
the earth." (Ps 104:5-9) Psalm 104 is
stunning; and clearly way ahead of its time. Mountains rising, and valleys
sinking speaks of magma pressure and tectonic plate subduction-- on-going
titanic forces that keep the Earth's surface in a perpetual state of
alteration. Now, it's
right about here that young-earth theorists have a problem because it's obvious
from physical evidence that much of the Earth's higher elevations were
inundated for a very, very long time before they were pushed up to where they
are now. Take for
example Mount Everest. Today its tippy top is something like 29,029 feet above
sea level. The discovery of fossilized sea lilies near its summit proves that
the Himalayan land mass has not always been mountainous; but at one time was
the floor of an ancient sea bed. This is confirmed by the "yellow
band" below Everest's summit consisting of limestone: a type of rock made
from calcite sediments containing the skeletal remains of countless trillions
of organisms who lived, not on dry land, but in an ocean. Anyway; soil
formation is a very slow process, sometimes taking as long as a millennium to
make just one inch; which at first would consist of little more than powdered
rock. In order for soil to become really productive, it needs organic material
mixed with it. So it's my guess that the very first vegetation that God created
were species that thrive on stone, and little by little their remains would
amend the powder to increase its fertility. Some of the
lyrics of one of AC/DC's songs says: "It's a long way to the top if you wanna
rock 'n roll". Well, it was an even longer ways to the soil from which human
life was eventually brought into viable existence. † Gen
1:10 . . And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the
waters He called Seas: and God saw that it was good. "good"
meaning not that the dry ground and seas are morally acceptable, but rather,
perfectly suitable for the purposes that God had in mind for them. NOTE: There are Hebrew words in the Bible
for marshes, rivers, and streams; but I've yet to encounter one for lakes and
ponds. In other words "seas" suffices not only for oceans; but also
for smaller accumulations. (A rather curious sea is located at 1Kings 7:23-26)
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Fri, May 15th - 7:47AM
Genesis 1:4b-5 †
Gen 1:4b-5a . . and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the
light Day, and the darkness He called Night. Defining the
properties of day and night may seem like a superfluous detail, but comes in
very handy for organizing the three days and nights related to Christ's
crucifixion and resurrection per Matt 12:40. † Gen
1:5b . . And there was evening and there was morning, a first Day. When you
think about it; a strict chronology of evening and morning doesn't define day,
it defines overnight; viz: darkness. In order to obtain a full 24-hour day,
you'd have to define creation's first Day as a day and a night rather than an
evening and a morning. Well; thus
far Genesis defines Day as a time of light rather than a 24-hour amalgam of
light and dark; plus there was no Sun to cause physical evenings and mornings
till creation's fourth Day so we have to come at this issue from another angle
apart from physical properties. According to
Gen 1:24-31, God created humans and all terra critters on the sixth Day; which
has to include dinosaurs because on no other Day did God create beasts but the
sixth. However; the
sciences of geology and paleontology, in combination with radiometric dating,
strongly suggest that dinosaurs preceded humans by several million years. So
then, in my estimation, the Days of creation should be taken to represent
epochs rather than 24-hour events. That's not an unreasonable estimation; for
example: "These
are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in
the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven." (Gen 2:4) The Hebrew
word for "day" in that verse is yowm
(yome) which is the very same word for each of the six Days of God's creation
labors. Since yowm in Gen 2:4 refers to a period of time obviously much longer
than a 24-hour calendar day; it justifies suggesting that each of the six Days
of creation were longer than 24 hours apiece too. In other words: yowm is
ambiguous and not all that easy to interpret sometimes. Anyway; this
"day" thing has been a stone in the shoe for just about everybody who
takes Genesis seriously. It's typically assumed that the Days of creation
consisted of twenty-four hours apiece; so Bible students end up stumped when
trying to figure out how to cope with the 4.5
billion-year age of the earth, and factor in the various eras, e.g. Triassic,
Jurassic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, Cretaceous, etc, plus the ice ages and the mass
extinction events. BTW: The epoch theory is only a second opinion, so to speak.
There are other theories out there to choose from; people aren't stuck with
this one as if it's the only possible explanation. NOTE: Galileo believed that science and
religion are allies rather than enemies-- two different languages telling the
same story. He believed that science and religion complement each other--
science answers questions that religion doesn't bother to answer, and religion
answers questions that science cannot answer. For example:
theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking understood pretty well how the universe
works; but could never scientifically explain why it should exist at all. Well;
in my estimation, the only possible answer to the "why" is found in
intelligent design; which is a religious explanation rather than scientific.
Religion's "why" is satisfactory for most folks. No doubt scientists
would prefer something a bit more empirical. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Thu, May 14th - 9:30AM
Genesis 1:2-4a †
Gen 1:2a . . the earth being unformed and void That
statement reveals the earth's condition prior to the creation of an energy that
would make it possible for its matter to coalesce into something coherent. †
Gen 1:2b . . and darkness was over the surface of the deep This deep is
a curiosity because 2Pet 3:5 says the earth was formed out of water and by
water. So I think it's safe to conclude that every atomic element that God
needed to construct the Earth was in suspension in this deep; viz: it was more
than just H2O; it was a colossal chemical soup, and apparently God created enough
of it to put together everything else in the cosmos too. †
Gen 1:2c . . and Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. The Hebrew
word here for "waters" is another plural noun like 'elohiym; which
means it can be translated either water or waters. Plural nouns are pretty much
at the discretion of translators whether to make them one or more than one in a
particular context. The Hebrew
word for "moving" is located in only three places in the entire
Bible. One is here, and the others are at Deut 32:11 and Jer 23:9. The meaning
is ambiguous. It can refer to brooding; i.e. a mother hen using her wings to
keep her chicks together, and it can refer to incubation and/or quaking,
shaking, and fluttering. Take your pick. I'd guess that the Spirit's movement
was sort of like the hen keeping the colossal chemical soup from running
rampant and spreading itself all over the place before God began putting it to
use because up to this point, gravity didn't exist yet. †
Gen 1:3 . . Then God said "Let there be light" and there was light. The creation
of light was a very, very intricate process. First God had to create
particulate matter, and along with those particles their specific properties,
including mass; if any. Then He had to invent the laws of nature to govern how
matter behaves in combination with and/or in the presence of, other kinds of
matter in order to generate electromagnetic radiation. Light's
properties are curious. It propagates as waves in a variety of lengths and
frequencies, and also as quantum bits called photons. And though light has no
mass; it's influenced by gravity. Light is also quite invisible to the naked
eye. For example: you can see the Sun when you look at it, and you can see the
Moon when sunlight reflects from its surface. But none of the Sun's light is
visible to you in the void between them and that's because light isn't matter;
it's energy; and there is really a lot of it. Space was at
one time thought to contain absolutely nothing until radio astronomers
discovered something called cosmic microwave background. In a nutshell: CMB
fills the universe with light that apparently radiates from no detectable
source. The popular notion is that CMB is energy left over from the Big Bang. The same laws
that make it possible for matter to generate electromagnetic radiation also
make other conditions possible too; e.g. fire, wind, water, ice, soil, rain,
life, centrifugal force, thermodynamics, fusion, dark energy, gravity, atoms,
organic molecules, magnetism, color, radiation, refraction, reflection, high
energy X-rays and gamma rays, temperature, pressure, force, inertia, sound,
friction, and electricity; et al. So the creation of light was a pretty big
deal; yet Genesis scarcely gives it passing mention. That's no doubt because
Genesis is mostly about origins rather than mechanics. 2Cor 4:6
verifies that light wasn't introduced into the cosmos from outside in order to
dispel the darkness and brighten things up a bit; but rather, it radiated out
of the cosmos from inside-- from itself --indicating that the cosmos was
created to be self-illuminating by means of the various interactions of the
matter that God made for it; including, but not limited to, the Higgs Boson. †
Gen 1:4a . . And God saw the light, that it was good God didn't
see the light until He said let there be light; meaning of course that natural
light didn't exist until God made it. God declared
that light is good; but He didn't declare that darkness is good. In point of
fact, darkness typically represents bad things in the Bible; while light
typically represents good things. It's been a rule of thumb from the very
beginning. NOTE: It's curious to me that most Bible
students have no trouble readily conceding that everything else in the first
chapter of Genesis is natural, e.g. the cosmos, the earth, the atmosphere,
water, dry land, the Sun, the Moon, the stars, aqua life, winged life, terra
life, flora life, and human life. But when it
comes to light they choke; finding it impossible within themselves to believe
that Genesis just might be consistent in its description of the creative
process. I mean, if all those other things are natural, why wouldn't the light
be natural too? In point of fact, without natural light, planet Earth would
become a cold dead world right quick. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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Wed, May 13th - 2:14PM
Genesis 1:1 The author of
Genesis is currently unknown; but commonly attributed to Moses. Seeing as he
penned Exodus (Mark 12:26) it's conceivable that Moses also penned Genesis; but
in reality, nobody really knows for sure. Scholars have
estimated the date of its writing at around 1450-1410 BC; a mere 3,400± years
ago, which is pretty recent in the grand scheme of Earth's geological history. Genesis may
in fact be the result of several contributors beginning as far back as Adam
himself; who would certainly know more about the creation than anybody, and who
entertained no doubts whatsoever about the existence of an intelligent designer
since he knew the creator Himself like a next door neighbor. As time went
by, others like Seth and Noah would add their own experiences to the record,
and then Abraham his, Isaac his, Jacob his, and finally Judah or one of his
descendants completing the record with Joseph's burial. Genesis is
quoted more than sixty times in the New Testament; and Christ authenticated its
Divine inspiration by referring to it in his own teachings. (e.g. Matt 19:4-6,
Matt 24:37-39, Mk 10:4-9, Luke 11:49-51, Luke 17:26-29 & 32, John 7:21-23,
John 8:44 and John 8:56) †
Gen 1:1a . . In the beginning God The first
chapter of the first book of the Bible doesn't waste words with an argument to
convince scientific minds that a supreme being exists; rather, it starts off by
candidly alleging that the existence of the cosmos is due to intelligent
design. I mean: if the complexity of the cosmos-- its extent, its objects, and
all of its forms of life, matter, and energy --isn't enough to convince the
skeptics; then they're pretty much beyond reach. The creation
story wasn't written for the scientific community anyway, nor was it written
for people who indulge in debating and perpetual bull sessions that never get
to the bottom of anything, nor for people who regard this book as just another
chapter of Pride And Prejudice to dissect in a Jane Austen book club; rather,
the creation story was written for the religious community. "By
faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what
is seen was not made out of what was visible." (Heb 11:3) There's quite
a bit of disagreement related to origins; viz: the origin of species, the
origin of the universe, and the origin of life; but not much debate about the
origin of matter; defined by Webster's as 1) the substance of which a physical
object is composed and 2) material substance that occupies space, has mass, and
is composed predominantly of atoms consisting of protons, neutrons, and
electrons, that constitutes the observable universe, and that is
interconvertible with energy. Without
matter there could be no Big Bang, there could be no universe, there could be
no life, and there could be no evolution. The origin of matter then is where we
have to begin. The Hebrew
word for "God" is 'elohiym
(el-o-heem') which isn't the creator's personal moniker, rather, a nondescript
label that pertains to all sorts of deities both the true and the false and/or
the real and the imagined. The noun is grammatically plural but doesn't
necessarily indicate more than one. Sheep, fish, and deer are plural too but
don't always indicate more than one of each. There are other gods in the Bible,
such as Baal and Dagon, to whom the word 'elohiym is applied and those gods
aren't composite entities; e.g. 1Kgs 18:25-29 and Jgs 16:23. † Gen
1:1b . . created the heaven and earth-- The word for
"heavens" is from the Hebrew word shamayim
(shaw-mah'-yim) and means: to be lofty; i.e. the sky; perhaps alluding to the
visible arch in which the clouds move, as well as to the higher void where the
celestial bodies reside, i.e. interstellar space. Even in English, the sky is
commonly referred to in the plural; i.e. heavens instead of heaven; which is
biblically correct since according to 2Cor 12:2 there's at least three. The Hebrew
word for "earth" is 'erets
(eh'-rets) which is yet another of the Bible's many ambiguous words. It can
indicate dry land, a country, and/or even the whole planet. =====================================
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Wed, May 13th - 1:40PM
Introduction
Back around
2000 or 2001; I got the daring idea to begin composing a daily, bite-size
commentary on the book of Genesis. It was a clumsy effort at first but I stuck
with it and as time went by, it got pretty good. On some forums where I've
survived opposition long enough to complete the whole fifty chapters, Genesis
has attracted several thousand views. As of today's
date, I'm almost 76 years old; and an on-going student of the Bible since 1968
via sermons, seminars, lectures, Sunday school classes, radio Bible programs,
and various authors of a number of Bible-related books. Fifty-two years of
Bible under my belt hasn't made me an authority; but they've at least made me
competent enough to tackle Genesis. Barring
emergencies, accidents, vacations, unforeseen circumstances, and/or
insurmountable distractions, database errors, computer crashes, black outs,
brown outs, deaths in the family, Wall Street Armageddon, thread hijackers,
tangents, excessive quarrelling and debating, the dog ate my homework, visiting
relatives, ISIS, car repairs, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, student walk-outs,
Carrington events, gasoline prices, medical issues, and/or hard luck and the
forces of nature; I'm making an effort to post something every day including
Sundays and holidays. Some really
good stuff is in Genesis: the origin of the cosmos, Adam and Eve, Cain and
Abel, the Flood, tower of Babel, and the origin of the Jews. Big-name
celebrities like Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Ishmael, Rebecca, Jacob and
Esau, and Joseph are here. Not here are
Moses vs. Pharaoh and the parting of the Red Sea. That story is in Exodus;
Samson and Delilah are in Judges, David and Goliath are in 1Samuel; and Ruth
and Esther are in books of the Bible named after them. Buen Camino _
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