Genesis
The Book of Beginnings
Chapter 1, Verse 2
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was
upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the
face of the waters.
Do you have to see the Creator to recognize the fact that His
creation exists? This is just a question to get us started for
today’s lesson. The answer to this will help us defend God’s
act of creation to those who would doubt it. It will also help
remind us of the significance of the verses we study. Each
time we see God act in creation, we should be reminded of
the wisdom of respecting God.
Today we will study verses 2 through 5. We will discuss several
different theories relative to the age of the earth and to God’s
creative “day” shown in Genesis.
Notice how we have not reached the end of the first day of
creation, even though verse 1 tells us that God created the
heaven and the earth. As is common in the Bible, God tells us a
general statement first, and then proceeds to give us more details
and answers about what He has just said. You will see this
pattern repeated in Genesis and throughout the Bible.
In this verse, God begins to bring order to His creation. This
verse is significant in that it tells us that God reversed natural
order, bringing order, and later life, to his creation. The Law of
Entropy, also known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics,
says that, when left alone, any system will decline and decay.
Can you think of some examples of this law? In verse 2, God’s
spirit moves “upon the face of the waters” reversing natural
order by His supernatural intervention to create man’s perfect
environment.
The first theory concerning creation we will discuss concerns
what happened between verses 1 and 2. This theory is called the
“gap” theory, and is held by many conservative bible scholars.
This theory holds that God’s creation in verse 1 was perfect. It
holds that it was ruined afterward, and before verse 2, by Satan.
Please refer to Isaiah 14:12-15, for details about Satan’s origin
and his fall. This theory proposes that Satan, after he was cast
from heaven, caused the chaos on earth that is revealed in verse
- According to the “gap” theory, the account of God’s creation,
beginning in verse 3, is God’s act of reconstructing and restoring
His creation. Proponents of this theory believe that the gap
between verses 1 and 2 is ages long, probably billions of years.
Those who support the “gap” theory will point to the reference
of “darkness was upon the face of the deep” and say that the
darkness referred to here indicates the absence of God. The
Hebrew word for the phrase “without form” is the word Tohu
meaning “ruin or vacancy.” The Hebrew word for the term
“void” is Bohu meaning “emptiness.” Please refer to Isaiah
45:18. In this verse God says He did not create the earth “in
vain.” The Hebrew word used here is the same as in Genesis
1:2: Tohu. Proponents of the “gap” theory maintain that God
did not create the earth tohu va bohu, in ruin or emptiness, or in
vain. God created the earth for man to inhabit it. The “gap”
theorists maintain that, after the chaos caused by Satan, God
reconstructed the earth into a perfect place for man to live.
Chapter 1, Verses 3-5
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God
saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from
the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he
called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first
day.
In his first step of creating an earth suitable and perfect for man,
God creates light and divides the light from the darkness. In and
of itself, these verses suggest that light did not exist prior to this
account. This complements verse 2. God created light in the
world because it was necessary to create a world inhabitable and
perfect for man. At the end of verse 5, God gives us a unique
clue to the amount of time God needed or used to create the
world and universe as we now see it. “And the evening and the
morning were the first day” indicates a specific period of time. I
believe it to be a literal 24 hour day as we now know it. I see
know other way it can be interpreted. I don’t believe God would
have revealed it to Moses in a way he couldn’t understand.
There are others, however, that propose alternatives. These are
discussed below.
The Geological Ages Theory
In this theory, each creative day is considered to be a geological
age. These ages occurred before man was found on earth, and
they spanned millions of years. You likely have heard of these
ages as Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Jurassic, etc.
The 24-hour Period Theory
According to this theory, each day indicated in the creation
account is a twenty four hour day in Moses’ life as God revealed
the story to him. Therefore, the “days” of creation were
symbolic of a much longer period of elapsed time.
The Literary Framework Theory
This theory maintains that while the facts of creation are
accurate, the “day” is used only as a literary device to frame the
acts of creation. This theory would hold that the “days”
represented much longer periods of time as well.
The Myth Theory
This theory regards the account of creation as being only
symbolic. It accepts that God created, but does not accept the
account as being historically accurate.
Things to consider as you continue to study…..
If you consider a creative day to be symbolic of an age, how did
the flowers, created on the third day, survive for ages without
insects and birds, created on the fifth day, to pollinate them?
If you consider a creative day to be a literal 24 hour day, how do
you account for the obvious passage of time before the creation
of woman as described in Chapter 2?