Abstract

Table of Contents

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

     

Part VI: A Translation of Genesis 1:1 - 2:4

Authorized Version:

     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 He had made.
     And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.
     These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

An interpretative rendering:

     THUS THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH WERE FINISHED WITH ALL THINGS NECESSARY TO THEM.
     ON THE SEVENTH DAY GOD COMPLETED THE WORK WHICH HE HAD BEEN ENGAGED IN, SO HE RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY FROM SETTING EVERYTHING IN ORDER.
     AND GOD BLESSED THE SEVENTH DAY AND SET IT APART: BECAUSE THAT ON THIS DAY HE HAD RESTED FROM THE WORK INVOLVED IN CREATING AND APPOINTING EVERYTHING.
     SUCH IS THE HISTORY OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EEARTH WHEN THEY WERE CREATED, WHEN THE LORD GOD PREPARED THEM BOTH.

     In summary, then, what I believe these verses in Genesis are telling us is that God deliberately planned a world peculiarly suited for man, over which he was to be given dominion. For reasons which are only intimated

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elsewhere in Scripture, when the earth was just about ready for man's introduction, it came under judgment and was desolated.
     The six days of Genesis were, I believe, days of re-creation and re-appointment, at what was clearly an enormously accelerated rate. For all we know, only the area comprising the Garden of Eden need have been completely furnished when man was created and placed in it. The rest of the world outside the Garden may still have been partially disorganized.
     The command that man should multiply and fill the earth in order to have dominion over it may be the reason why the earth was designedly left unsubdued. Man's duty was, perhaps, to extend the boundaries of the Garden until the earth became a paradise. This was to be the means whereby he would grow to maturity and turn innocence into virtue. But man failed in the first great test, and with his failure the whole world of nature suffered by default. In this sense what disruption still remains is due to the fall of man and his consequent failure to be lord of the earth. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Last Adam, will yet complete the purposes of God in this respect.

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