by Charles H. Welch
It is impossible to speak of the present creation without referring to time. It is often spoken of as “The six days’ creation” to distinguish it from the primal creation of
Gen. i. 1 and the new creation of Rev. xxi.
In this connection of time we must first consider theword “day”. It is conceded at the outset that yom, “day”, may mean an indefinite period of time, and that it is so used in Gen. ii. 4, “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens”, where “day” covers the whole of the six days’ creation. Gen. i. 3 to ii. 3 however is a unit in which the “day” occurs fourteen times, and an examination of its usage will leave little room for doubt but that a literal day of twenty-four hours is intended.
At the creation of light the Lord divided the light from the darkness, calling the light “day” and the darkness “night”. This division of time has remained ever since and, just as we find Noah receiving parallel commands to “replenish the earth” and with reference also to the subduing of the animal creation and the honouring of the image of God in man (Gen. ix. 1, 2, 6), so, as in Gen. i., this is preceded by a covenant which promised that “while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, the day and night shall not cease” (viii. 22). Again, Gen. i. 5 adds, “And the evening and the morning were the firstday”.
If, as some have said, these are geological days, involving an “evening”, that might have lasted millions ofyears, can anyone explain what kept alive the grass, the herb, and the fruit tree during its icy and inkydarkness, or how the fowl of the air or creeping things managed to exist? for every day’s work is summed up with the formula: “The evening and the morning were the . . . . . day.” Yet if we interpret Gen. i. 1, 2 as the creation of the heaven and the earth which was created during the six days of the subsequent revelation, we shall be compelled to teach that these “days” are geological ages. The rocks evidence their age-long growth, the very fuel we burn witnesses that long ages must have passed in the process of turning forests into coal. But if we interpret i. 1, 2 as we have done, that is, seeing a primal creation in the beginning followed by an overthrow, we can place our geological ages in between verses 1 and 2 and look upon the present creation as occupying literally just six days, for it was largely a reconstruction, the word “create” only occurring in the record for two acts, (1) the creation of the inhabitants of the sea (verse 21), for in the primal creation, as in the new earth, there was, and there will, “no sea”, and (2) the creation of man (verse 27).
The summary of the six days’ work is given in Gen. ii. 3: “All His work which God created and made.”
Because, to express the facts, we should have had to use a clumsy circumlocution, we have said in the earlier part of this article, “and the creation of light”. But the word “create” is not used of light; the statement is “Light be, and light was.” Similarly, “Let there be a firmament”, “Let the waters be gathered”, Let the dry land appear”, “Let the earth bring forth”, and so on.
The present creation was constructed to form a platform upon which the drama of the ages should be enacted, after which it is destined to pass away so that the goal of the ages might be enjoyed in a new heaven and earth, which are to be the glorious complement of the heaven and earth created as a “beginning”.
A legitimate question to raise in connection with the six days’ creation is, Why should the Lord have taken six days and not five or ten or any other number? Further, Why should the Lord have “rested” on theseventh? We are assured that “The Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary” (Isa. xl. 28). We are certain that the six days of creation and the seventh day rest are not mentioned without purpose and, seeing that the very “beginning” of Genesis anticipated its glorious “end”, we return once more to the consideration of “time” in relation to the doctrine of Scripture, with the assurance that if we “seek” we shall “find”.
“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which Hehad made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God had created and made” (Gen. ii. 1-3).
In other studies we have drawn attention to the way in which Noah stands as a sort of “second man and last Adam”, and in connection with this use of the number seven, we find that shebu “seventh”, occurs nowhere else in Genesis except in chapter viii. 4, where we read that “the ark rested in the seventh month”. Not only Noah but his father Lamech emphasize this, for Lamech, the father of Noah, was 777 years old when he
died.
In Gen. xxvi. 33 we read: “And he called it shebah (that is an oath)”, and it is a feature not to be lightlypassed over that the same Hebrew root that supplies us with the number seven gives us the word for “oath” and “to swear”. The words shaba and shebuah, “to swear”, occur in Genesis twenty-one times, or three times seven.
We have seen that the opening sentence of the Bible (Gen. i. 1) anticipates, as a kind of firstfruits, the end,and it may be well to remind the reader that the Hebrew of that verse contains 7 words, 14 syllables and 21 letters. We now see that in the choice of this number “seven” God has, in type, sworn that His purpose shall be accomplished. In the epistle to the Hebrews the Apostle quotes Gen. ii. 2, and from an examination of other scriptures, concludes that “There remaineth therefore a rest (sabbatismos) to the people of God” (Heb. iv. 9).
To keep this hope alive in the hearts of His people, the Lord placed the observance of the Sabbath day prominently in the tables of the covenant. To impress us still further with the extreme importance of this symbolic number, the Lord has multiplied these sabbatic observances. The word that is translated “rest” in Gen. ii. 2 and 3 is shabath. The law of Moses contains a series of feasts, or holy days, that carry on a progression of sevens. We have the seventh DAY (Lev. xxiii. 3); seven DAYS (Lev. xxiii. 6); seven
WEEKS (Lev. xxiii. 15); the seventh MONTH (Lev. xxiii. 24); the seventh YEAR (Lev. xxv. 4); seven times seven YEARS (Lev. xxv. 8) and seventy times seven YEARS (Dan. ix. 24).
Here we have design and purpose. The glorious Jubilee, when every debt was cancelled, every man set free, every inheritance entered and enjoyed; the annual Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month when every man sat, as it were, under his own vine and fig tree and none made him afraid; the prophetic period of Dan. ix. after which Israel’s restoration should be complete, all speak of the same thing, and pledge the attainment of the same goal.
From our three studies in the time factor of Gen. i. 1 - ii. 3 it is abundantly evident
that a knowledge of this feature is by no means of mere academic interest, but that it
enters into the very fabric of revealed truth, and is no mean factor in its interpretation.
--------------
----------------
No comments:
Post a Comment