I think that Genesis 1 and 2 are one of the more read portions of the Bible, perhaps above the 50th percentile (I don't have statistics on this, so it's an anecdotal hunch). It's right there at the beginning, and for curious kids like me in 7th grade, I see my family's "altar bible" on the counter, and think to myself, "this is the book of our faith, so I wonder what's inside." I think I made it to Genesis 4, and closed the book in boredom after seeing the first genealogy of the Bible.

One way or another, the West has familiarized itself with the premise of Genesis 1-2. It's certainly made its rounds in our attention in faith-scientific debates like Ken Ham vs Bill Nye: should Genesis' creation narrative be taken historically-literally; is the universe young or old; etc. And although the science-faith dialogue is important (and fun when everyone gets along!), I don't think that this the main takeaway that the Biblical authors intended for us.

So, I'm actually going to conveniently side-step away from the science-faith conversation surrounding Genesis 1-2, and instead look at it in its theological narrative and significance. I personally think that this is much more useful to meditate on personally or with others, and it helps that it doesn't have to be divisive. So, let's take a look at how Genesis 1-2 shows that:

1. God has full control over reality;
2. God is good, creative, and full of life;
3. Creation is good, beautiful, and abundant - heavenly, even;
4. God created us to partner with Him, so that we can rule the land in the gentle and nurturing sense of a gardener, and not by violence and power projection;

and how we can meditate on these points.

All of these points are obvious and not unorthodox, but it warrants me to bring them up all the more. When a man says, "I love my wife," it's a simple/obvious statement, but it's an entirely different thing to experience that reality in its fullness, both broadly and in the day-to-day moments. My essaying isn't as romantic, but I hope you get the idea: the more we immerse ourselves in this biblical reality, the more fulfilling it is to us, and the more we see it play out throughout the rest of the Bible (because indeed, it plays out a lot).

I might not go through my list in-order, but we'll get through it. So! Let's get started, first with a high-level overview of Genesis 1 and 2.

These two chapters are not linearly sequential, but rather are two parallel narratives. The first narrative is from Genesis 1:1-2:3, and has a cosmic creation narrative about the heavens and the earth. Genesis 2:4 to the end of the chapter has what I'll call an intimate creation narrative about the origin of humans.

They start with different initial states: Genesis 1 with an ocean and Genesis 2 with a desert. But, both of these chapters share the same motif - that reality started out as chaos and devoid of life, and that God stepped in to create something ordered, beautiful, and full of life.

Let's zoom in on Genesis 1. It starts as follows:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was chaos and waste, darkness was on the surface of the deep (תְהוֹם), and the Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God) was hovering upon the surface of the water (הַמָּיִם).

We're introduced with an unpleasant image. I know that getting tossed around at sea is a regular thing for maritime people (big respect to them), but imagine all of reality only being that. There's no land, no rest, no light. To really drive the point home, the word used for the deep / abyss is tehom (תְהוֹם), which is etymologically related to chaos (tohu, תֹהוּ). To borrow language from the BibleProject, it's chaos-waters, and it's everywhere.

But something changes when the Spirit of God replaces the darkness in hovering over the waters. The chaos waters (tehom, תְהוֹם) is replaced by neutral, workable waters (ha-mayim, הַמָּיִם). Whereas the creation narratives of Israel's neighbors involve some sort of battle or struggle to overcome the chaotic waters (see: Marduk vs Tiamat in Babylonian cosmology), the Spirit of God just needed to hover over it to subdue it.

We see the same image in Matthew 8:23 onwards, when Jesus and His disciples were caught sailing in a storm. Instead of wrestling against the waters, all Jesus had to do was speak to it, and it submitted to Him.

God has full control over everything, and that's a good thing. This is one of those obvious observations I mentioned earlier, but take time to contemplate the weightiness in everything. All things in our lives, the good and tragic, are firmly in His hands, and there's no circumstance in which God is powerless to walk it through with us. And, as we read further in Genesis 1, we see that God uses His full control to create something good.

The rest of Genesis 1 is split into two halves, which mirror each other. In the first half (the first three days), God establishes order and structure out of the chaos. On the first day, He turns the darkness into distinct spaces of light and dark. On the second, He takes the recently tamed waters, and separates them to the waters above the skies, and the waters below the skies (the oceans). On the third, He separates the waters below so that there's a distinct space for the oceans/seas and dry land.

What phrase do we see get repeated in all of these days? Behold, it was good.

In the second half, God takes these regions, and starts populating them with life. On the fourth day, he populates the cosmos with the sun, moon, and stars (keep in mind that the ancient worldview has a more animated vision for celestial bodies). On the fifth day, He populates the skies above with birds, and the waters below with sea creatures. On the sixth day, He populates the land with land creatures.

In our modern language, we have the phrase "last, but not least", probably because the enduring thought since ancient times was that the last is the least. So, as we read that humans are created on the sixth day, we may think something like, "yeah it might still be good, but darn, we're dead-last in the order of things". But here's where God does His subverting-expectations thing. Instead of making us the runt, He elevates us to be partners with Him in ruling over all of the skies and the land:

"Be fruitful and multiply, fill the land, and conquer it. Rule over the fish of the sea, the flying creatures of the sky, and over every animal that crawls on the land."

And what comes of this? Behold, it was very good.

I don't want the point to get lost that creation is good. God made the world to be beautiful. He saw that it was good. He made the skies and the stars, and all the things in the cosmos to be beautiful, and He saw that it was good. And just as importantly, when He made you and me, He saw that we are very good. Reality, the structure placed in it, and us participating in it through our lives are supposed to be good and pleasant. There's a deep existential fulfillment.

You're probably thinking of how reality right now isn't this, and that it's harsh, unfair, and hard to have hope in. There is a glaring difference between the ideal set forth in Genesis 1 and what we experience now. I didn't forget about that (and neither did the Bible, or the people involved in writing it) - I'll make a point about it in the end. So for now, just consider how good it must have been, right at the very beginning.

Let's move on to Genesis 2, starting in verse 4:

These are the genealogical records of the heavens and the earth when they were created, at the time when ADONAI Elohim (Yahweh God) made land and sky. Now no shrub of the field was in the land yet, and no green plants of the field had sprouted yet. For ADONAI Elohim had not caused it to rain upon the land, and there was no one to work the ground. But a mist (וְאֵד) came up from the land and watered the whole surface of the ground.

In the beginning, there's no shrub, no plants, no rain, and no development. It's a desert - the opposite image of an ocean, but Genesis 2 carries the same starting point of an environment of non-life. And once again, something is introduced - a mist / stream / moisture (ve-ed, וְאֵד) - and now the ground is watered. From the watered ground, God made the Adam (הָאָדָם), and He breathed into him the breath of life, so that he became a living creature, just like the birds, the fish, and the land animals in Genesis 1. Out of non-life, God creates life.

Just as Genesis 1 showed an ordered structure to the cosmos, so does Genesis 2 show an ordered structure around Eden. We see three concentric tiers mentioned in verses 8 and 9:

1. A region called Eden (עֵדֶן), which means delight in Hebrew, which I think is really cool.
2. Within Eden, a garden, where the plants are both pretty, and delicious, and sustaining!
3. In the middle of the garden, is the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Just as darkness still existed (in a contained way) in Genesis 1, the desert still existed in Genesis 2, but outside of the Eden space. And yet, wherever the rivers flowing out of Eden went, we see that those places are pretty packed with neat things. Havilah has gold, bdellium (a tree resin like incense, which smells nice when you burn it), and precious stones. We know from history that the Tigris and Euphrates had very fertile land around them.

Eden and the land downstream sounds really pleasant! I'll talk about the three tiers later in the end, so have a mental bookmark here.

Genesis 2:15 can be rendered like the following:

Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and tend it. (NASB)

Then ADONAI Elohim took the man and gave him rest in the Garden of Eden in order to cultivate and watch over it. (TLV)

The TLV's rendering caught me by surprise when I read it. Being put in the garden of Eden is a blessing enough, but to be given rest in it is such a new way to describe it. It follows the Hebrew closely - gave him rest (va-yanich-eho וַיַּנִּחֵהוּ) uses a form of the general word for rest, noah (נִּחֵ). And it's from this state of rest that Adam cultivates and tends the garden. The work done was not hard on the body.

And speaking of work and responsibility - let's take a look at how God commissioned humanity in Genesis 1:28:

"Be fruitful and multiply, fill the land, and conquer it. Rule over the fish of the sea, the flying creatures of the sky, and over every animal that crawls on the land."

I mentioned earlier that there's still desert lands outside of Eden. And so, part of the "fill the land and conquer it" is for humans to cultivate the goodness of the Garden of Eden, and start spreading it out so that the dry land becomes flush, and whatever vegetation that was already there becomes tamed and cultivated. Not only is it pleasing, but it also paints the image of human rule having a core sense of stewardship.

We see the servant's heart strongest in Jesus. He restored the broken, healed the sick, and showed compassion to outcasts. Jesus captures the spirit of His mission in Matthew 20:28, when He, the Lord, the rightful ruler of all things, said, "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve."

The last point I want to make, before my final contemplations and musings, takes us to the first instance in the bible where something is not good - starting in Genesis 2:18:

Then ADONAI Elohim said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. Let Me make a well-matched helper for him."

A lot of things are going good, but there's still something fundamental that's missing for Adam. And as a testament to God's caring character, God Himself points it out, and then responds by creating the woman as a "well-matched helper" for Adam.

Now, gender dynamics is always the fun keg of dynamite of a conversation, so let me iron out the bad takes by saying: being a well-matched helper is not a demeaning or degrading position for a woman to be in. In John 14:6, Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as the Helper that the Father will send to us. Jesus Himself was always submitting to the Father. If God Himself takes on the support role, then there's dignity and respect that comes with it. We also see at the end of Proverbs that an ideal wife can be incredibly accomplished. There's nothing in the helper role that advocates the woman being abused, stepped on, denied work, and taken advantage of.

With that addressed - let's talk about Genesis 2:18-onwards. It shows that as humans, we're meant to be relational. There's fulfillment in being with other people, both in the larger communal sense, and in the intimate sense with a significant other. When both of these are done right, they become beautiful microcosms of what our relationship with God can be like. And in the other direction, cultivating our relationship with God informs us of how to cultivate these human relationships to be healthy and fulfilling.

So after walking through Genesis 1 and 2, what are we supposed to see? We're supposed to see how God is beautiful and full of life, and how He turns a barren earth into something that's also beautiful and full of life. Beauty and good purpose become embedded into existence itself. And as for us, we get to be partakers in this, not only in receiving the beauty of the garden and a deep and loving relationship with God and each other, but also in spreading that out to the rest of the world.

It's almost as if I'm describing heaven, but manifested on Earth - and that's the image that Eden is supposed to give!

And meditating on this will make it all the more painful when we read on to Genesis 3, 4, 5, and onward. Sometimes we lose sight of the tragedy of sin, so to bring some of those points to bear:

We go from paradise and right relationships, to Adam and Eve, man and wife, distrusting each other even with their bodies; and from Cain murdering his brother and being distraught about it, to Lamech boasting about killing other men.

We go from humans living in a peaceful garden, to sheltering in ancient cities - settlements that had walls, because the outside world had become a dangerous and untrusting place.

And it's now where I bring up where we are, today. Yes, we've made societal and technological leaps and bounds, but we're still the same people who hurt each other in one way or another. Wars still happen, and it can hit close - especially with how international Wattpad's audience can be. Cities would still rather make the homeless invisible, instead of doing something to really address the issues that brought them there, and raise them up. We know people who abuse substances, or we ourselves do it. We are hurt by others, and we hurt others in return.

But it doesn't have to be this way. We saw that the reality on earth can be good, because it was once. We're supposed to yearn to have our realities be restored to the Eden-state. The people in the bible certainly did yearn - the Tabernacle and the Temple, and even the way that the Israel camped in the wilderness in Numbers, bore the three-tiered Eden structure, so that they could have a slice of Eden in their midst, and be a part of it as well.

The Scriptures inform us that God had a plan to redeem us, was true to it, and still is true to it. We know that Jesus gave up His life as a ransom for us, so that through Him we regain access to the full and near presence of God - what Adam and Eve had at the beginning.

Reading Genesis 1 and 2 in this way has made the following clearer to me: the beauty of God's plan is that it doesn't stop with "get saved and go to heaven." Heaven is a part of it, but salvation doesn't end in this disembodied paradise. No, but rather, God will go beyond that, and redeem all of creation, so that it will be made new.

The Revelation has scary portions, and those parts are important. But, don't let that take away the message of hope that it also carries. As Revelation 21:1-4 goes:

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city - the New Jerusalem - coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. I also heard a loud voice from the throne, saying,

'Behold, the dwelling of God is among men,
and He shall tabernacle among them.
They shall be His people,
and God Himself shall be among them
and be their God.
He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes,
and death shall be no more.
Nor shall there be mourning or crying or pain any longer,
for the former things have passed away."

This is the hope that I have in Christ: the damage and hurt that I received, and the damage and hurt that I caused, will all be cleared away. The Eden-reality will be restored, and we will receive New Earth, fully healed, fully redeemed.

I want all of us to have that hope. And having this understanding of Genesis 1 and 2 can go a long way in nursing and sustaining that hope.

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Footnotes:

I took a lot of these points from The Bible Project's podcast series on Genesis (both in their 2022 Torah series and prior episodes). In one of them, they mentioned Robin A. Parry's book, The Biblical Cosmos: A Pilgrim's Guide to the Weird and Wonderful World of the Bible, which I read and drew a lot of points from, too. Good listens, and good reads!

I'm using the Tree of Life Version (TLV) for scriptural quotes, with my inserts on what some words are.

I'm using the Hebrew Interlinear Bible from scripture4all.org for the Hebrew words. They use the Westminster Leningrad Codex for their text.