As I said
last week, the creation takes place over several days. The breakdown of the
creation into individual steps shows off the great organization involved. No
other creation story I’ve come across (and I’ve read a lot of them) is as
organized as that as the Genesis story. Each day is broken down with separate
creative steps that move everything forward.
More
importantly, there is a refinement process at work. God takes what he worked on
the day before to create something new, to make it new and improved. From the
initial chaotic waters of comes sky and land. Then there is land and sea. Then
come plants. Then the sun and the moon rule over day and night. Then come the
fish and fowl. Then we get creatures on the land.
All of
these individual steps are necessary, and they must happen in this precise
order. The work of each previous day must be done to support the creation of
the current day, just as the creation of the current day will support that of
the following. Plants cannot exist without day and night, nor can they exist
without water, land, and sky. Likewise the fish and fowl need the sky and
water. The animals upon the land need land and vegetation. Each day’s work is
used to further create, and used to create something more complex and refined
than what came before.
Many
creation myths have an aspect of this idea, taking the raw material of chaos
and organizing it into creation. They even will refine elements of creation
into something better. The Norse, Chinese, and Greek creation myths have
variations on this process, but never has it been done so eloquently, and with
such deliberate organization, as is done in Genesis.
This
reveals important ideas about the nature of the cosmos, God, and people, who
try to create order (and explanations) out of the chaos around. This is
especially telling in the Biblical story when we finally come to the creation
of mankind.
But that
will come next week.