I want to spend one more blog post reviewing the Genesis Creation account found in Genesis 1 – 2:3. I’ve already addressed it a little in the two previous posts, Part 1 and Part 2. First, as mentioned in Part 1, the very first verse covers the creation of all the universe.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.“

It does not mention the stars, galaxies, planets, nebulae, etc. because

1. They are all implied in the phrase “the heavens”.
2. They were not known phenomenon to the Israelites anyway.
3. That’s not the point of the text. It’s there to make the point that God is the Creator of all things.

The next verse, though continues the story. It identifies that the earth is now in existence and God’s attention and creative activity is focused there.

“The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.“

When I was young, I had the misinterpretation, as do many Christians, that on Day 1 (which we’ll look at in a moment), when God said “Let there be light”, this is when the universe was created. But that’s not what the text says. It had already been created, and the earth with it, and now we’re observing what happened on the earth to prepare it for the rest of the story of Scripture.

As a preview, I’ve put together this chart to illustrate how the creative activities of God are presented. You’ll note that the first three days of creation are the creation of the “containers” which will hold the objects of creation from the last three days.

Day	Creation Events	Day	Creation Events
1	Light (establishing Day and Night)	4	Sun, moon, stars to rule the day and night
2	Separation of Waters (oceans below, sky/clouds above)	5	Sea creatures and sky creatures
3	Dry land / vegetative life	6	Land creatures and humans

One last thing I’ll point out by way of introduction is that I don’t take issue with the account being framed as a “literal” six-day account. If you are going to argue that this requires all of creation to have been done in 6 literal 24-hour days, I would just say that God doesn’t need the six days to do it any more than he needs 14 billion years to do it. The point of the story is not to establish a time span for creation, but to establish the model for a work week and more importantly, for a seventh day Sabbath, which we’ll discuss at another time.

With all that being said, let’s jump in and see what the text does say.

Day 1

“And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.“

The days of creation are all written as they unfold from the perspective of an observer standing on the earth. Remember, we’ve already been told that “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Since the earth was dark, it stands to reason that the first significant need to be fulfilled was the provision of light, so God made the distinction between night and day apparent.

This is entirely logical from the perspective of the surface of the earth. In its earliest history, the earth was covered with a thick atmosphere (somewhat like Venus today). The atmosphere thinned considerably when a planet-sized object struck the earth and blew off a portion of the earth and its atmosphere (which coalesced into the moon). This collision would have had the effect of thinning the atmosphere sufficiently that from the “surface of the deep” the light of the sun would penetrate sufficiently to cause a visible distinction between day and night as the earth rotated.

Now the text does not imply any of this, and it does not need to. God’s point to the Israelites is that He is the Creator and day and night belong to Him!

Day 2

“And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.“

The second “container” to be created (after day & night) was the sky and the sea. As earth’s atmosphere thinned, the clouds would have begun to lift from the surface of the water covering the planet and a gap between them would have formed. This separation of sky waters and sea waters is the logical and scientific next phase in the preparation of the earth for life.

Day 3

“And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.“

The third “container” to be created was land. Earth is a naturally volcanic planet (as is Venus and Mars) and this vulcanism is how solid material is exuded and produced for the surface. Just as today, as volcanoes underwater continue to erupt, they build up mountains that eventually rise above the surface of the sea. These initially form islands. More volcanism would produce more islands, etc. until the continents formed. Plate tectonics is a highly creative process!

As the surface of the earth continued to develop, God created the first cells, which are recognized in 3.49 billion-year-old stromatolites.

Day 4

“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.“

Now that the “containers” are ready, God began to fill them. The first container (day & night) were filled with the sun, moon, and stars. It is not at this point that these entities were created. They were there already, having been created prior to the earth (except the moon, as mentioned above). However, the atmosphere continued its thinning until breaks in the clouds became apparent. Now the source of the day and night could be seen as the discs of the sun and moon became visible from the surface of the earth, along with the stars.

Day 5

“And God said, ‘Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.’ So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.“

The next containers (sky and sea) were now filled with an abundance of life. Virtually every major type of organism (life’s kingdoms and phyla) all appeared rather rapidly (10 million years or less) at the beginning of the Cambrian era (530 million years ago) in an event known as the Cambrian Explosion. Land creatures had not yet appeared, but their precursors – along with bird precursors (the vertebrates) – were created.

Now, at this point I’ll make a point about what I believe. I personally believe that Scripture teaches that God created all living things. I believe that the principles of evolutionary change help explain variability and adaptation at the species level, but I do NOT believe that evolutionary forces have produced changes in life beyond that. I firmly believe that the great variety of living things on earth are a direct result of the handiwork and creativity of the Creator. He did not just set the process in motion and leave it alone. Rather, I believe that He directly created life (and controlled the development of the earth as well) throughout earth history.

Day 6

“And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.’ And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then 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 birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.“

The final “container” to be filled is land. Notice the focus of the story is on the relation of all the previously created plants and animals to God’s pinnacle of creation – humanity. This is the major focal point of the story – that God’s creation was directed toward its culmination in humanity. We’ll look more specifically at this in the next post.

I want to reiterate that the interpretation of the Creation account that I’ve given here is NOT the interpretation that the original readers would have understood. The point of the story is focused on God as Creator – that’s it. The nice thing about the scriptures that God has provided to us, though, is that even if it had a particular message to the original hearers, it has the same message to us today and still fits perfectly with the revelation He has provided in his book of nature – that principle of dual revelation. That One Author has beautifully managed to fit His books together seamlessly for all cultures and all time.

Day 7

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.“

God rested. He didn’t need to, but he set this final day aside (e.g. that’s what it means to be made holy – to be set apart) as a model for us to follow. Later in Genesis, at the giving of the ten commandments in Exodus 20:8-11, God said,

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.“

This is the point of the creation account. When we look at what God has made, it is to serve as a reminder of Him and to remind us that we owe it to our Creator to set aside time to honor Him and praise Him for what he has done.

Next time, we’ll start looking at the details provided about the first family and the garden of Eden.