2 A Short Lexicon of Genesis 1:1-2:4 detailed analysis of some of the vocabulary of the magisterial introduction (Gen 1:1-2:4) will demonstrate that it sums up the entirety of scripture. Let us begin with 7e’#t (beginning), which occurs only three times in Genesis: In the beginning (ve’Sif) God created the heavens and the earth. (1:1) Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man, He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.” The beginning (re’¥d) of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Sbinar. From that land he went into Assyria, and built Nineveh, Rehobothir, Galah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city. (10:8-12) Then Jacob called his sons, and said, “Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in days to come. Assemble and hear, O sons of Jacob, and hearken to Israel your father. Reuben, you are my first-born, my might, and the first fruits (re°Si) of my strength, pre-eminent in pride and pre-eminent in power, Unstable as water, you shall not have pre-eminence because you went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it— you went up to my couch!” (49:1-4) The three re“Wit are not functionally equal, let alone identical, in meaning, Only the first is positively linked to “God created” (bara? *elohim). The latter two cases reflect the abuse of power. This is clear in the case of Reuben, and will become clear for Genesis 10 when one hears the story of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11) where the connection is detectable in that Babel is in the land of Shinar (10:10 and 11:2, 9). Shinar occurs in 14:1, 9 (Amraphel, king of Shinar, is mentioned in conjunction with the five kings of Mesopotamia whom Abram fought}, and later in Joshua 7:21. Thus, re’ is used to intentionally underscore38 DECODING GENESIS 1-11 the abuse of the divine re’tit by humans—Gentiles as well as Israelites. The importance of the positive-negative aspect of a word, which of the two aspects is to be determined from the context, can be gathered from looking at another related noun, 10°f, whose literal meaning is “head.” It is beneficial when it relates to a divine action: the four heads/sources (ra’kim, plural of 10s) of the great rivers that originate from the river in the garden the Lord God planted (2:10), or at the end of the punishing flood: the sight of the tops (ra’im; heads) of the mountains (8:5) and the full drying out of the waters off the earth on the first day of the first (7ion-reminiscent of 7e’fi/) month (8:13). It reflects arrogance and thus is detrimental when itis linked to an earthly being or earthly endeavor (Gen 3:15, the head [ro’] of the serpent, and 11:4, the top/head [ros] of the tower reaching the heavens). Hearing the original, one can notice the interplay between all the words from the same root in the context of Genesis I-11. This cannot be happenstance, especially in the case of the four rivers referred to as four “heads” (ra’tim, plural of 70’) (1:10) coming from the one river. The LXX kept the original connotation by translating heads here as arkhas, the plural of arkhé, used for “beginning” in 1:1 and in 10:10 (the beginning [arkhé] of Nimrod’s kingdom), In 2:10 KJV keeps “heads;” JB has “arms,” branches ofa river. The English word “head” when applied to a river means its source, which is not the case of the four rivers. Alf in all, no translation can keep the link between all the Hebrew words whose root is 7° The corollary is no translation can possibly render the more important aspect of the matter at hand, that is, the possibility of opposite meanings of the same word, depending on its function in the context where it appears. Beginning can be bad and is not readily good, An example is the Arabic for New Year, Ra’s as-sanai, head of the year, corresponding to the Hebrew Rosh Hashshanah (ro’s has$anah). We all know from experience that a _ beginning does not necessarily end up as “good news.” AnotherChapter 2 39 example is the word ge’ut whose meaning is majesty, grandeur, height, arrogance. This is good when it applies to God, but is evil when it applies to man, buildings, mountains, waves, etc. In scripture only God looks good in his arrogance. Everybody and everything else, when arrogant, are setting themselves up for being leveled or brought down by the overbearing scriptural deity. Let us look at bara’ (create, with God as the subject) and tohw wabohu (waste [formless] and void}, I combined these words since they are found one verse apart and in a clear relationship. What makes them special is that bara’ is used profusely (9 times) up to Genesis 6:7 and then disappears until Numbers 16:30 where bara’ introduces a negative action on God’s part. As for the couple tohu wabohu, they are found only twice more in parallel in Isaiah 34:11 but separated, and in Jeremiah 4:23 where they are combined as tohu wabohu just as in Genesis 1:2. The use of boku is restricted to these three instances. On the other hand, fohu occurs many more times, however, its first appearance outside of Genesis is not until Deuteronomy 32:10. A window to understanding this conundrum is offered to us in Isaiah 40-66, There we encounter the highest incidence in scripture of both the verb dara’ (nineteen times plus one time in Isaiah 4:5, compared to twenty eight in the rest of scripture out of which 11 of those times occur in Genesis 1-6), and the noun iohu (cight times in Isaiah 40-59 plus three times in Isaiah 1-39 compared to only cight times in the rest of scripture outside Genesis 1:2). It is then advisable to look for help in the matters of bara’ and tohu in Isaiah 40-66. Let us begin with éohu wabohu as it appears in Isaiah and in Jeremiah. For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into brimstone; her land shall become burning pitch, Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up for ever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none .40 DECODING GENESIS 1-11 shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the hawk and the porcupine shall possess it, the owl and the raven shall dwell in it. He shall stretch the line of confusion (éoku) over it, and the plummet of chaos (bohu) over its nobles. They shall name it No Kingdom There, and all its princes shall be nothing. Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses. It shall be the haunt of jackals, an abode for ostriches. And wild beasts shall meet with hyenas, the satyr shall cry to his fellow; yea, there shall the night hag alight, and find for herself a resting place. There shall the ow! nest and lay and hatch and gather her young in her shadow; yea, there shall the kites be gathered, each one with her mate. (Is 34:8-15) Disaster follows hard on disaster, the whole land is laid waste. Suddenly my tents are destroyed, my curtains in a moment. How long must I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet? “For my people are foolish, they know me not; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but how to do good they know not.” I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void (dohu wabohu); and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger. For thus says the Lord, “The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. For this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above be black; for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.” At the noise of horseman and archer every city takes to flight; they enter thickets; they climb among rocks; all the cities are forsaken, and no man dwells in them. (Jer 4:20- 29) The conclusion is unmistakable: tohu wabohu describes a desolation, a ruin and more precisely its outcome, the rubble. In other words, the rubble contains stones, but they are not functional. Dilapidated stones do not equal a house or a city. Thus was the earth (and not the heavens) in Genesis 1:2. Consequently, the verb bara’ cannot logically mean “create” the way it has come to be understood in philosophy and theology, that is, create out of nothing, ex nihilo. For how can one possiblyChapter 2 41 speak of nothing, let alone posit nothing? ‘That is why the Ancient Greeks—before philosophy—spoke of a chaos out of which the gods made a kosmos, that is, they cosmeticized it and made it functional.! The LXX got it right when it introduced the termi Aosmos in Genesis 2:1 to render “their hosts”: Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them (seba‘am, their host). (2:1) xal cuvetehécbycay 6 odpavds xal y yi} xal més 6 xdopos (cosmos) adrév (2:1 LXX) Kosmos does not occur again until Exodus 33:5-6 to speak of the ornaments (cosmetics) for which Israel was criticized. Otherwise LXX translates the singular seba’ three times into dnamis (power) according to its original meaning of “army” (Gen 21:22, 32; 26:26). Theology, which is essentially religious philosophy, disliked that the so-called chaos was there next to God, so it asserted that God created the chaos and then he cosmeticized it. The most logical way—according to the inner logics of scripture—is to render bara’ as “functionalize.” The Arabic counterpart of the root bara’ has the connotation of healing or empowering functionally, as in the healing of the withered hand ofa man in Matthew 12:“Then he said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And the man stretched it out, and it was restored (apokatestathé)3, whole like the other.” (v. 13) It then makes sense that bara’ pervades Isaiah 40-66, the so-called Second Isaiah, that is dedicated to the restoration of the scriptural Israel at the end of the Babylonian exile. By the same token, one can understand why the same book profusely uses tohu to reflect the 1 Whence our term “cosmetics” that is functionally used to render someone or something presentable. 2 Thank God the scriptural authors were already dead when theology was conceived in Alexandria, the philosophical Rome of the times. My guess is that they did rollover in their graves, but I cannot prove it. 3 Whence the theological term “apokatastasis” that refers to the ultimate restoration of everything to its original state.42 DECODING GENESIS 1-11 rubble of the destroyed Jerusalem and Judah, and also uses the same tohu to make fun of God’s enemies as well as their gods by referring to them as vain, empty, and non-functional, thus rendering them powerless against God and the people he is about to wrench out of their claws: All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as tohu. (Is 40:17) Tt is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nought, and makes the rulers of the earth tohu. (Is 40:22-23) Behold, they are all a delusion; their works are nothing; their molten images are éohu. (Is 41:29) All who make idols are éohu, and the things they delight in do not profit; their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. (Is 44:9). For thus says the Lord, who created (bara’) the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made (‘asah) it—he established it; he did not create (6ara’ it a fohu, he formed it to be inhabited! — : “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I did not speak in secret, ina land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek me fohw’. T the Lord speak the truth, I declare what is right.” (Is 45:18-19) That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form (yasar) the ight, and create (bara’) darkness: T make (‘asah) peace, and create (bara) evil: | the Lord do (‘asah) all these things. (Is 45:6-7) In scripture, bara’ occurs only with God as subject; which makes the case of Isaiah 45:7 more compelling. Three verbs of Genesis 1-2—,yasar, bara’, ‘agah’—occur in Isaiah 45:7 in conjunction with nouns also found in Genesis 1-2. The verb (form as out of clay) is used in Genesis 2. TheChapter 2 43 What is definitely striking, however, is that the verb bara’, eminently positive in theological circles that link it to the creativity of God, is repeated twice, and in both cases it introduces a negative outcome: “darkness” and “evil.” This confirms that the best understanding of dara’ is to “make functional,” “render something real,” “bring something into reality” in the original sense of the Latin realis, which is the adjective corresponding to the Latin noun res whose meaning is “the matter at hand, the matter under discussion.” ‘The original Latin that gave our nondescript “republic” is res publica referring to the public “reality” (issue, matter, concern) that had to be discussed and debated, and not so much an established reality that, once there, remains there as our “republic” is viewed. From all this, we can conclude that the phraseology of Genesis 1:1-2 cannot be fully grasped by the hearers until they have listened to the entire scripture. Most often, theologians and lay people alike do not hear scripture, let alone listen to it, by submitting to the entire story, to the entire treks of its vocabulary, until all the parts are brought together. Rather, they seek to find a philosophical solution to every passage within its parameters. They imagine that they can understand Genesis upon having finished it, forgetting that it is part of a whole. Genesis, after all, is a prelude to Exodus in the same way as Deuteronomy is a prelude to Joshua and Judges, which are a prelude to Samuel that, in its turn, is a prelude to Kings. In the Hebrew canon Joshua, Judges, (1 and 2) Samuel and (1 and 2) Kings are part of a larger whole referred to as “the Prophets,” the second part of scripture. They are not “historical” books. From the beginning, this scriptural literature was conceived as an integrated whole, just as the human body is.¢ The uniqueness 4 In medical school acing the course of anatomy is of no practical value unless the student has mastered the course of physiology, which in turn prepares for the study of the symptoms of malfunction of the physiological fimetions of the organs in interrelation with one another, In order to realize not only the importance but also the necessity of this process, one has to read the endless labels on the drugs that cover contraindications and side effects. .44 DECODING GENESIS 1-11 of this scriptural literature is that it is the first of its kind to cover the entire story of life on earth from its start in Genesis 1 to its conclusion in Daniel 12, or conversely in Revelation 22, Any literary product that gives the impression it is doing the same is afier scripture and draws on it, Another reason~if not the main reason—for this scripture’s encompassing view of a beginning and an end is the result of'an essential premise5 within its purview. The premise in scripture, conceived by the scriptural writers, is that the primary and ultimate function of the “elohin of scripture is the judgment of all people in all nations covering the inhabited scriptural world, that is, the Syro-Arabian wilderness of Genesis 2-3 and, by extension, the entire world subsumed in the phrase “the heavens and the earth” of Genesis 1:1-2:4, Thus the end judgment informs the entire scripture. That is why the rubble (tohu wabohu) of divine judgment in scripture is placed at the beginning (bere’fid, in the face—or rather in the ear—of the hearers, and functions as the framework for “elohim’s intervention to make this rubble functional, In order to fully comprehend the matter, one has to wait until the Book of Ezekiel when the restoration of Israel is presented in chapter 37 in a terminology reminiscent of Genesis 2: then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed (naphap) into his nostrils the breath (nesamah) of life (hayyim); and man became a living (Raypah) being (nephes) ... So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh (basar); and the mb which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into 4 wornan and brought her to the man. Then, the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Gen 2:7, 21-23) The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones ... Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Sener 5 Tuse the word “premise” because it cannot be proven from the outside as classical theology has tried to do in vain,