Season 7 Stories of the Bible, Podcast 4, “The Creation Pt 3.”

Stories of the Bible, Podcast 4, “The Creation Pt 3.”

On the First Day of Creation God divided the light from the darkness. On the Second Day of Creation, God created the firmament. On the Third Day of creation, God created dry land that brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind. On the Fourth Day of Creation God made the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. It appears that on the fourth day of creation the earth was placed in its present solar system. We must ask the obvious question—how did the third day bring forth grass before the earth was placed in its solar system? We shall have to wait until Chapter Two to get the answer. In this podcast we begin with the Fifth Day of Creation.

Genesis 1:20

“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.”

Having the fowl come out of the ocean is in keeping with the modern timeline of creation which claims that animal life first began in the sea.

Genesis 1:21

“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: and God saw that it was good.”

Clearly plants had to come before birds and animals. Also note that just as the plants are able to reproduce after their own kind so are the birds and animals. That completes the Fifth Day.

Genesis 1:22

“And the evening and the morning were the fifth day?

The crowning achievement of creation is mankind. The scientific timeline places man much later in the creation story. Because of the theory of evolution, science insists that man is merely a higher form of animal. There are some significant differences between man and animals. God places man in charge of all other earth life.

Genesis 1:26

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

The first difference is that men and women were made in the image of God. The significance of that cannot be overstated. Every student of the Bible, I suppose, has noticed the frequency of parallel elements such as “in our image, after our likeness.” First, I don’t think we can overstate the importance of word choice. Second, I don’t think we should ever ignore parallelism. The words, though similar in meaning, always carry a significant difference. It is imperative that we both examine each word as well as emphasize the differences. Information is always found in the differences. 

For those who accept the Bible as the direct word of God, as does the author of this podcast, I especially encourage you to slow your reading down until you are comfortable with your interpretation and understanding. Assume the writer—in the above that would be Moses—knew exactly what he was saying.  Of course, we must take into account the necessary difficulties of translation. Translators are faced with the incompatibility of languages. In addition, they may interject their own religious biases intentionally or unintentionally. I am not a translator. I am a podcaster; therefore, I intentionally interject my point of view. I invite you to think for yourself and examine the images as objectively as possible. Walt Whitman, American Poet, made an interesting statement in his Preface to “Leaves of Grass,” Whitman said,   

“Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency, not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”