Breisheet - Genesis 1-6v8

This week we discussed the passage through a series of questions that people emailed in during the week. Here are some of our conversations.

Q - Why didn’t God make Adam and Eve all at once just like the animals, why did He put Adam to sleep and then take woman out of Him?

Maybe firstly It teaches us about the closeness of man and woman as God intended, as close as from his side! 

The Separation motif.

The Hebrew “Lo Tov” means literally “not good”, and previously we've discussed the idea of “tov” describing something that has the function and purpose God designed.

It says in Gen 2v18 that YHVH said its “Lo Tov” for Adam to be alone”. 

Maybe Adam is in a similar state to the earth of Genesis 1v1, without form and void (tohu v bohu in Hebrew) God's work at the start of creation in Gen 1v1 started with separation and here maybe we see a repetition of this idea of separation, in God separating off a part of Adam in order to bring “tov”.

Feeling “lo tov”

All the animals had been brought to Adam, and he named them all, but the conclusion of this process was the realisation of the inability of any of these to be his helper and counterpart. If he felt alone at the start of this process he probably felt even more alone now! Sometimes God can allow circumstances to cause us to really feel, or acutely notice our need, even though they are very good things, like Adam being given the opportunity for exercising his authority, just like Abraham in Genesis 14 with victory in battle, in Genesis 15 he becomes acutely aware of his lack of an heir and speaks frankly to God about it. Maybe it takes process that causes us to deeply feel our lack to enable us to see our need as God sees, and to position ourselves in a posture of surrender and trust with God even to the position of ultimate vulnerability of sleep allowing God to operate on us so he can do a most intimate work on us, creating the answer to our need from within the depths of our own being. In our modern experience in the operating theatre being put to sleep needs a high level of trust, where we get out of the way so that the surgeon can fully do his work. 

Echoes of Messiah

Adams surrendered flesh allowed God to craft the answer from within His own body. Messiah had to surrender his flesh, to sleep, to death, “into your hands I commit my spirit” letting God do his most wonderful work through the body of Yeshua so his bride could be created and brought to him. 

Opposite and opposition.

Gen 2v20. The Hebrew “ezer kanegdo” literally translates as a helper opposite or against him”. 

Man needed someone opposite him, which Implies opposition too. None of us like opposition. It is in community too. But within that, we need to realise that this might just be our pathway to wholeness and “tov”. You can be part of a community, but it takes a process to become one with them, and that process can be messy, like opposition, and it's that process that none of us enjoy. But when we experience opposition with eachother, maybe we can be challenged to work through it and know that it is our path to “tov” and wholeness with eachother.

Q - If God gave us every herb with seeds and every tree with seeds to be food, including herbs for the birds and beasts. Why are we eating meat today?

Was a vegetarian diet Gods perfect intended diet for us, before we became sinners ?

Maybe there's a lot to learn when God sanctions a diet for us. Especially since this appears to be a pattern (a patten in the Bible suggests an important theme that unfolds deep wisdom). Look at the flood of Noah, it's a recreation event, waters were covering the earth like in Genesis 1. A wind or spirit blew over the waters. The similarities with creation are striking. So perhaps it's not surprising that we have a new dietary command here. Just like Genesis 1v29 spoke of plants and trees yielding seed as food, and the specific prohibition regarding the fruit of the trees in 2v16-17, Genesis 9v3 specifies every thing that moves as food but in v4 the prohibition against eating blood. Maybe that's a cue to a different way if seeing dietry commands later on in the the Bible? A significant moment when God seeks to establish the nutrition of a new creation, a new chapter in Gods establishment of His Kingdom on earth. What about the Manna? What about Yeshua when he said eat my flesh?

Maybe dietary commands at new creation moments are a teaching as to the nourishment required. Maybe we can learn a great deal about the function God has for that chapter, that particular new creation moment? Even wilder an idea is that maybe this dietry command is an answer to what went wrong in the previous creation? An answer to the problem that caused the destruction of what went before?

Just think for a moment about the flood of Noach. Lamech, named Noah in the hope that his life would bring "relief" or "rest" to a world marked by hard labor and suffering since the curse on the ground.

Now we are given animals to eat. 

Animals convert plant nutrients into more bioavailable forms, making meat a rich source of essential nutrients easily absorbed by humans.

Before the fall, we eat from plants that are rooted in the soil, and if the process of growing food from the soil is a challenge, famine is a very real possibility, but now, after the recreation event of Genesis 7-9 we can eat animals, a secondary food source, they have processed the raw material into their bodies, and those bodies are given for food.

This is surely an answer to one of the problems highlighted in the pre flood world, a result of the cursed ground. 

Can we also see echoes of Messiah in this concept? Yeshua who has “done” or “processed” something that was cursedin His body so we can eat of Him and have life?

Maybe Yeshua, commanding us to eat from himself, is giving us an answer in John 9v53 to why those eating the manna died never entering into the promise? Maybe this is a bit if a wild idea but what if the command around eating in the garden is an answer to what was before Genesis 1v1? 

Q - What about clean and unclean? Noah knew what that was.

There was clean and unclean before the flood, because Noah could obey Gods command in 7v2 to take 7 of every clean animal. So what was the purpose of clean and unclean animals before the flood if it wasn't for eating? Abel brought the fat of his offerings of animals but that was before the new dietry command post flood, so logically this means he didn't eat the animals he was offering. But, there are hints as to what is to come in the recreation after the flood of noah. Clean animals that were currently used for only offerings would be used for food in the recreation, in the next chapter of God's plan to establish his kingdom on earth. But the blood could not be consumed. 

Abel sacrificed animals, so we have blood, but the killing that resulted in spilling blood was purely for offering to God. Did Cain violate the killing for offering motif (resulting in the spilling of blood/life) causing the “Adamah” to cry out. Does the blood of Yeshua answer that cry? And that's why it is part of our dietry command to drink it  (John 9v53? A new creation, where the voice of vengeance is replaced by the voice of forgiveness. Even though we put Yeshua to death, that death brought us life rather than a state of exile (like Cains life after he murdered his brother). The blood of yeshua speaks better things than the blood of Abel, not crying out in vengeance but forgiveness, as Hebrrws 12 v 24 speaks about. This is our new diet. Maybe there's something deep in taking these concepts and chewing on them? 

Q - (Gen 3:21) The garments of skin for Adam and Chava.. I'm sure you've discussed this in the Community before. I have heard it said that these were more much more than coverings for nakedness/shame/sinfulness.. but that they were actually priestly garments?

Genesis 3. This isn’t to say animals weren’t killed, but focusing on assumptions and  may cause us to miss an important message in the passage.

Genesis 3:21 emphasizes that God made garments of skin to cover Adam and Eve. Just an aside here. It does not explicitly state that this skin came from animals or mention any animal's death. While this is often inferred, and is possible, and understandably comes from our desire to connect this text to the doctrinal discussions were so familiar with but we can end up distracted, and missing the deep concepts to be found here.

The emphasis of this text is the covering God made for them. So what is this covering? The word is “Or” in Hebrew. The Hebrew word for light is a homophone of the Hebrew word for skin. A Hebrew speaker would notice that! 

Some rabbinical sources imply that before they were covered by light. Interesting idea, but again its not the main focus of the text. God made skin to become a garment. It uses a Hebrew word that isn't the common word for clothing. It uses the word “ketenet”. This word is used only twice elsewhere in the Bible. It's the same word used for Josephs coat of many colours and also the priestly robes. 

This starts to make sense If you step right back and see that the garden of Eden appears to be the first “temple”. (We studied that in detail way back in 2020). If we take that into account then this starts to make a lot of sense. Maybe this covering was about re-establishing the priestly role of Adam? And, looking at the idea of the coat given to Joseph that was a symbol of the responsibility of the inheritance of the first born. So here, it seems to be speaking of a responsibility for perpetuating the inheritance God wants for Adam and a reinstating Adam into His calling and task as a priest. 

When they fell they felt shame at their nakedness and hid. That hiding was the outer working of a much more significant thing, they felt shame, maybe they had lost their self confidence! The word used to describe the garments they made can mean armour, which might even imply a hostility towards God. And we can imply they lost their capacity to fulfil their roles as priests of this Edenic temple system, and the responsibility God gave them to be fruitful and multiply and carry out the subjugation of the earth and carry their inheritance responsibility. 

God needed to clothe them again in a “robe of righteousness”. There's a lot about putting on the clothes that God has given us when we come to the apostles teachings about the Gospel of Messiah Yeshua. 

Garments of skin rather than light. Maybe it helped them to shine again. Not literally with light, but metaphorically to be able to walk again in their identity and calling as a “light to the nations”?

Naked and not ashamed is God's design for them, a fundamental state of mind and self confidence that is unfortunately lost in their fallen state of mind where they were naked and ashamed. Putting garments on them maybe heals the “ashamed” part of their mindset. A “temporary” fix that covers a broken state of mind, allowing them to regain some confidence to return to their role. In this do we see a covering similar to yom kippur? That once a year event that would reset, and cleanse, the innermost parts of the temple for effective service again. (Lev 16v33). 

When we have dreams of turning up to work naked it is often suggested that we lack self confidence. Maybe the secret to regaining confidence is found in the concept of restoring a sense of no shame? You can go back to doing what you were doing before someone told you that you were naked, but now you have been clothed, forgiven and validated. Like the story of the king with “new” clothes where he was actually naked, Adam and Eve needed the security to think they were clothed in order to function in confidence as kings again? 

Genesis 4. Why is Cain protected with a mark even though he was a murderer. But in our society we protect the public from murderers. 

What is this protection of cain all about? Some equate this idea with the cities of refuge, but that was for manslaughter not murder. It seems cain was a murderer!

But what does it mean when Cain said my burden is too great to bear? Is this an expression of guilt? This is the first murder, maybe the implications of what he has done are hitting harder than we knew? Is something inside of him feeling a heaviness of guilt? He went and dwell east of Eden. Is he going back to the angels at the gate? Is he seeking to return to Eden? The land of Nod, the land of wondering, vagabond, shaking. 

Was God, in his verdict, protecting Cain from retribution, working with cain to restore him? And we see the boast of Lamech later on in Cains genealogy. Its almost like he makes fun, or makes light, of the protection God gave Cain and boasts that he killed 2 people so he can be protected not 7 times but 77 times! But he is boasting and obviously totally wrong here! How often does that happen when God has mercy it causes others to think this is a pattern that God has mercy so I can do even worse, by no means! (Quoting those words from Romans 6v15).  

Cain vanishing from Gods presence happens after God put that (possible) mark of mercy on him. Does this mean that he didn't repent and use the grace God had given him. God has been in conversation with Cain even from the beginning, before he murdered his brother. He ends up in “Nod”. The meaning of this word has similar ideas in the Hebrew to exile (wondering, exile). Is this the first biblical pattern picture of exile? 

Exile happens to Israel when God continued to deal with them covenantally. After he had given them an opportunity they repeatedly rejected it, not once, but multiple times. God had to employ a different way to cause them to turn. The mark of safety on Cain, does that look like the mark put on God's people to save them within the destruction? Within exile they are not to be touched but protected, because one day God will restore them. And isn't that a mark of exile? A kind of covenantal hope that God isn't out to completely destroy? He seeks to destroy only that within them that doesn't yield to him and allow them to be in the promised land. Can we find hope in this covenental characteristic?

What does Genesis 4v26 mean? Then men began to call upon God. The Hebrew can mean men began to "profane" the name of God.

Maybe It may be that the realization of mortality (Enosh) is altering the human response - either calling out to God or profaning the relationship. The same beginning/​​profaning is also described before the Flood (Gen 6:1); afterward, when Noah plants a vineyard (Gen 9:20); and at the tower of Babel (Gen 11:6). Perhaps indicating the stumbling attempts at beginning profane life outside the Garden.

Is the moment of the realisation of our mortality, our frailty or weakness also a moment where e could either run to God and begin to call upon God's name, or maybe its a moment where we could end up profaning Gods name.