Tim Mackie: The 7-Day Creation Narrative Opening and Closing

[00:00:00]I'm just going to read to you, um, the opening sentence of the 7-day creation narrative and then the the closing bit about the 7th day. It goes like this.

[00:00:09]First lines.

[00:00:10]In the beginning Elohim, that's, uh, the Hebrew word for that gets translated as God, um, but it means spiritual being. In the beginning, Elohim created the skies and the land.

[00:00:24]Now, the land was wild and waste and darkness was over the face of the deep abyss, but the spirit of Elohim was fluttering over the waters.

[00:00:37]It's the It's the prologue set up.

[00:00:40]And then you get into the days 1 through 6 and we'll look in-depth at those in just a moment here.

[00:00:46]And then you get to the 7th day.

[00:00:48]And so they were finished, the skies and the land.

[00:00:53]And God finished on the 7th day his work which he had made. And he rested on the 7th day from all the work which he has made. And God blessed the 7th day and made it holy.

[00:01:07]Because on it he rested from all of his work which Elohim created to make.

[00:01:14]So, this is my awkward English translation, um, but I'm trying to recreate in English what happening on the literal level in Hebrew. Let me just ask you, um, do you feel any synergy between the opening little paragraph and that final little paragraph?

[00:01:33]>> [laughter] >> Um, what's the relationship between the beginning and the finish?

[00:01:39]Um, notice the repetition of the skies and the land. The beginning of the creation of the skies and the land, the finishing of the skies and the land.

[00:01:49]Notice how the keywords here, beginning and create and skies and land, have been that little sentence has been cracked open and beginning gets flipped over into the finish.

[00:02:02]Skies and land are repeated verbatim and then the word created gets taken out of that sentence and repeated here in the very last sentence of the paragraph. You guys with me?

[00:02:15]So in other words, somebody has really this is not like random.

[00:02:19]Uh somebody really sat down um and carefully crafted the opening sentence and the final sentences.