Back to the future
The second main creation story, starting at Gen 2:4, starts in an unusual way. It begins “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were created on the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.” Now that’s probably not quite what your NIV text says, but it’s what the Hebrew says. The verse begins “Elle toldot”, “these are the generations”, and it’s the same phrase that we find in Genesis 5 and 10 where it reads “These are the generations of Adam”, or “These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth”. So what we have here is a different sort of account to Genesis 1. This is a story about relationships, about genealogies. It tells us why things came to be what they are today and traces the roots of people and places Now we’ll come back to this later, but first we want to note another difference in this story. In the first creation account, God is referred to as Elohim, the mighty creator. But in this second account, God is referred to as Yahweh Elohim. God is not only the might creator, but he has a name, […]
