The Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo
Genesis 1: 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
Genesis1:1 kept repeating itself over and over in my mind. I resisted. I thought I was called to write an Advent series and none starts at the very beginning! But God led me here to this verse about the beginning of the world.
In the beginning... To a space that was described as formless and empty and filled with dark. To an uninhabited space void of everything but GOD.
Here was the original long quiet of history, the days before heaven and earth, stars, sun and moon ever came into being. The days before God created man.
2... And the spirit of God was hovering...
I studied the Hebrew word for 'hovering': Rachaph (raw-khaf) meaning 'to brood'. It also translates into 'fertile'.
Fertile brooding. Pondering. Contemplating. Thinking. Planning.
Genesis 1:3a Then God said...
God spoke. I wonder what it was like to have sound in such a vast nothingness, to suddenly have words spoken into it.
John 1: 1 In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God and the Word was God. 2 He existed in the beginning with God. 3 God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. 4 The Word gave life to everything that was created and his life brought light to everyone.
He (Jesus) existed in the beginning with God. He was there at the start of it all.
Genesis 1:3b"Let there be light... His word created light. He spoke and creation began.
Genesis 1:4 And God saw the light was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. 5a God called the light "day" and the darkness "night..."
John 1:4b ...and his life brought light to everyone. 5 The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never extinguish it.
John 8:12 Jesus spoke and said, "I am the Light of the world...."
1 John 1:5 God is light. In him, there is no darkness at all.
The beginning of it all began with light. The very essence of God and Jesus, the first thing he imparted to the world to come.
We were given a gift that we didn't even recognize or understand.
Genesis 1: 5b...And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.
This was the beginning of time.
Time rules us, doesn't it? We wake up feeling behind. We end each day looking back at how we spent our time and rue what we wasted. "I should have done..." and we list off myriad tasks. How many of them are vital? How many are truly important? How many were just fillers of time? How many of them are just distractions that keep us from focusing on God? We are prone to whine that there isn't enough time..."If only I had time..." we say far too often.
All of time, belongs to God.
We forget that time, like light, is a gift from God.
2 comments:
The word מְרַחֶפֶת might best be translated here as 'vibrated'. Certainly, the root רחף can be translated as 'to hover' or 'to flutter' like a bird. It is a metathesis of פרח meaning 'to fly'. I have never heard of the translation of 'to brood'. That would seem to come from Syriac not Hebrew.
I should probably point out that Torah is the Word of God (e.g. Isaiah 2:3) and Torah is Light (e.g. Proverbs 6:23). Most Christians do not realize that John is making a connection between God, the Word of God, Torah, and Yeshua (or Jesus, if you prefer the modern English version of His name). Torah usually gets translated as 'law', but it is better translated as 'instruction' or 'teaching'. Thus, Torah is the perfect instruction manual and Yeshua is the perfect role model. And the Torah (as in the first five books of the Bible) does read like the instructions of a father to his children.
Anyhow, I am glad to see that you are learning some Hebrew. I wish more Christians would learn to read the Word of God in His own language. Alas, the English translations are all such distortions!
Thank you for your comment. I appreciate you sharing your greater knowledge.
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