The Creation Theme in Genesis 1, Psalm 104 and Job 38-42
2016; Volume: 44; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0792-3910
Autores Tópico(s)Biblical Studies and Interpretation
ResumoWhile the entire Bible is replete with references to Creation, three sources are especially noteworthy for their more detailed description: Genesis 1, Psalm 104, and Job 38-42. Each account serves a different purpose and uses a different style and language. However, they share in a depiction of God as the Creator and Sustainer of all life. In addition, each text maintains a universal character in that there is no mention of the Jewish people, their Torah, or their covenant with God. PURPOSE OF THE TEXT The account in Genesis 1 is the basis of the Creation story, declaring God to be the Creator and source of all life. The Creation, as recounted by the poet in Psalm 104, is a joyous paean to nature and its Creator. In the Book of Job, however, the Lord's display of the wonders of Creation is presented in order to enable Job to come to terms with his intense suffering by realizing that the ways of God are beyond human understanding. DIFFERENCES IN LANGUAGE AND STYLE Each of the three texts we will describe has its own special style and language in keeping with its purpose. The story in Genesis is told in sublime prose, lofty and majestic, the name of God appearing more than thirty times in Chapter 1 alone. Its presentation is schematic and methodical, and the centrality of the Creator in the creation process is manifest throughout. Psalm 104 and Job, on the other hand, are written in a poetic style. Biblical poetry, in contrast to the later Hebrew poetry of Selihot and Kinot, is not composed in rhyme. Its hallmark is parallelism, marked by pairs, sometimes triplets, of phrases, in which the second phrase repeats or modifies the first phrase in different words. (1) One of many examples is Psalm 104:3, Who makes the clouds His chariots, Who walks upon the wings of the wind. By its very nature, this type of poetry requires the use of many synonyms. An additional feature of the poetry encountered in both Psalm 104 and Job is graphic imagery, examples of which will appear below. While no account of Creation can begin to convey a complete understanding of how God's world was created, both Job and Psalms provide imagery and metaphors to which the human mind can relate. Additionally, whereas the Genesis narrative is written in the past tense, describing what once occurred, much of Psalm 104 and Job is set in the present tense, emphasizing the ongoing nature of the creative process. DESCRIBING CREATION GENESIS 1 The first chapter of Genesis constitutes the most basic source of the Creation story, answering the fundamental question as to how the world and all living things originated. The narrative takes the form of an orderly, chronological description of each day's creation, told almost exclusively in the past tense and suggesting that Creation was a once only occurrence at the beginning of time. In contrast to the Creation texts in Psalms and Job, Genesis only offers a limited description of how life will continue to be maintained on a daily basis and how the earth will bring forth food for all living things (Gen. 1:29-30). It ends with the statement that God finished the work that He had been doing (Gen. 2: 2). Genesis presents us with a multiplicity of verbs describing the creation process. The first of these, bara (Gen. 1:1), was characterized by the thirteenth-century Bible commentator Nahmanides as denoting yesh me-ayin--creation ex nihilo. This initial process brought forth an amorphous mass from which all subsequent creation evolved. A second verb, asah (made), as in God made [va-ya'as] the firmament (Gen. 1:7), implies the formation of something from material already in existence. A third, yatzar (form), has a similar connotation. In the case of man, all three verbs are employed: Let us make [na'aseh] man in our image (Gen. 1:26); And God created [va-yivra] man in His image (Gen. 1:27); and the Lord God formed [va-yitzer] man from the dust of the earth (Gen. …
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