Torah: (Bereishit) Genesis 1:1 — 6:8; Haftarah: (Yeshayahu) Isaiah 42:5 — 43:10
Condemned to be Human
This Shabbat we start a new cycle of reading from the Torah. As we begin anew the study of Torah we need not only to intellectually understand but have the firm conviction that the Torah is not a historical book, or a science book, but a book of relationships, or a moral history book, if you will. Torah is the revelation of God, His character, His requirement for man’s conduct in this world, and the history of His relationship with mankind; His desire for man to choose to do good and live according to His will which was perfectly designed for man’s enjoyment.
The first book of the Torah is called Bereishit [In (the) Beginning] taken from its first Hebrew word, or, the English counterpart, Genesis [Origin] taken from the Greek Septuagint translation. The book of Bereishit covers the events from the creation of the universe to the death of Yosef, Joseph.
The Torah’s narrative of Creation is to establish that God is the sole Creator and Sovereign in the universe, that nothing came into existence without His will. The seven days of creation negate evolution by the fact that God finished creating on the seventh day. On the seventh day, physical creation was complete and all was very good, “tov meod,” as created, nothing needed to be changed or added except a spiritual component, the Shabbat, because man was created as a “living soul,” “nefesh chaya,” in the image of God, and the soul needs spiritual relationships. This phrase, “in the image of God” resonates back to the words of Yeshua: “He [Yeshua] asked them, "Whose is this image and inscription [on the coin]?" They said to Him, "Caesar's." Then He said to them, "Give, therefore, to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” He said that because God’s image is on us and the good, the mitzvot that we can do belong to God because they are from Him, they are His imprint on us. We are not just a body but a living soul and this soul craves to do and experience things that can only come from a spiritual realm. Such as: convey love, being sacrificial, being grateful, being content, being remorseful, being happy, experience joy and delight looking at God’s creation, at mountains and at rivers, at sunsets and at sunrises.
The narrative of Creation is also to refute the theories of those who claim that the universe came into being through some massive coincidence or accident. This is implicit in the narrative of the first six days when the major categories of the universe came into existence in a logical sequence, described only in very general terms because its primary purpose is to state that nothing came into being except at God’s command. Interesting to note that more and more scientists make a case for creation as did the scientists of old (please see Patrick Glynn: "God The Evidence" and Brandon Carter: "The Anthropic Principle").
A side note: Many debate the age of the earth. Some believe in billions of years so as not look ignorant in front of an unbeliever scientists. Some say, a day is like a thousand years, some say that the days are not consecutive days therefore millennia can be added in between the days of creation, the gap theory. God sits in the heavens and laughs. If we believe that this God can create the stars with their powerful nuclear forces, just by speaking, which is mind boggling in itself, and then “violate” the laws of physics as we know them and hold still the earth from rotating around its axis as chronicled in the book of Joshua 10:13: “And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. The sun stayed in the midst of heaven and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day,” why can’t we believe that He could have created the world in literal six days? What is time to God who created time and is outside of it? Could He have played with time as Dr. Russell Humphreys claims? Maybe. Did He? We do not know, but the God that can ascent to heaven with a human body in violation of every physical law that we know, does not need to explain to us how He did it because our minds would not have understood it anyway. “Behold, these are the fringes of His ways; and how faint a word we hear of Him! But His mighty thunder, who can understand?” (Job 26:14) I think is more important to understand how wicked is man’s heart than to know how old the earth is. Without believing in God, scientists have nothing else to rely on except their limited understanding of nature and they have to come up with all kinds of theories because: “the mind of the flesh is hostile towards God” (Roman 8:7). With the global flood that fundamentally changed earth’s crust, God certainly threw a wrench in the way scientists try to understand creation. Not only that but, by definition, a theory can only become a fact if it can be proven experimentally. No scientist came even close to replicate creation, therefore, my belief in creation is not shaken by any of their ”discoveries,” on the contrary. The closer we look into nature the more we marvel of its design and we should the more give glory to the Designer. “Who has put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who has given understanding to the mind?” (Job 38:36).
But this first portion of Torah reveals four fundamental principles: 1) man was created with free will and became bound by the passing of time; 2) God is outside of the constrains of time and can see man's doings from beginning to end; 3) man will eventually disobey God's commandments and will need a Redeemer to re-establish the relationship with God; 4) because of the holiness of God only a perfect blood sacrifice will atone for the sin committed.
In this first chapter, the God of creation is called “Elohim,” connoting His attribute of justice. He created man with a moral purpose and He gave him a test to choose: to be a moral automaton by always obeying Him, or to have a free spirit by disobeying Him and then have the choice to be a moral person on his own will. God placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Gan-Eden and told man not to eat from it. Man chose to eat and thus he was condemned to be the human that we know today, to know good and evil, to love and to hate, to live and to die. Man was condemned to struggle between doing what is right and what is wrong but, in the process, experience the greatest feeling: love. Experiencing love would not have been otherwise possible because love cannot be demanded. But God, Elohim, is just and He had to punish the transgressors and teach man that every action has consequences. And this is the dichotomy of creation. Adam was given the choice to worship God with his own free will and in the process disobey God and be punished, or not have free will at all. Adam made the right choice. With this test God was teaching mankind through Adam that free will comes with responsibility and consequences.
In chapter two, Torah introduces another attribute of God, the tetragrammaton YHVH, the LORD, which is His attribute of mercy. Now the Creator is called “the LORD Elohim.”
Adam and Eve have chosen through the test to abandon their Edenic status, to die to their created character, and were driven into exile, but in doing so they created humanity; God had to punished them for disobeying His commandment, but He did not destroy them because He gave them the choice to obey Him out of their own free will. And this is the message of the genesis of man: man has free will, man has sinned but he can repent exercising his free will and come back into a relationship with God. Unfortunately, sin made man imperfect and any attempt to come in the presence of a perfect God will fall short. But God, knowing that Adam will make the right choice, prepared from eternity past a Redeemer who would take upon Himself the punishment of every sin committed and, thus, giving man the opportunity to come back into a relationship with Him. This Redeemer, at first, is exemplified through various symbols of animal sacrifice. These animal sacrifices, through their graphic imagery, would teach man the gravity of his sins and that his sins would have consequences. God's holiness cannot be tainted by sin, and no matter how good are men's mitzvoth they can only be called good intentions, thus, they cannot satisfy the perfect justice required for the sin committed. Only an ultimate sacrifice, a perfect blood sacrifice, will be able to atone for and cover the ugliness of sin. God is not only just, but He is also merciful and in His mercy He saw our inability to approach Him, therefore, He provided the perfect sacrifice, His Own beloved Son who came and shed His blood on a Roman execution cross.
In this beginning portion of Torah, God is portrayed as: Father, Law Giver, and Redeemer. As Father, a very personal, lovable, and approachable being; as Law Giver, the one who sets the standards of morality; and as Redeemer, the one who provides meaning in life and a way to come back in a relationship with Him.
Since man broke the relationship with God through sin, God chose a people to be His messengers to the humanity that would follow, thus Genesis is a prelude to the story of Israel. God was patient for ten generations between Adam and Noah and ten generations between Noah and Avraham, but each of these generations failed to display remorse and understand the holiness of God. The essence of Creation is not primarily the story of mountains, valleys, of oceans and deserts, but the spiritual things. Man has a soul created in the image of God and man needs physical and spiritual nourishment. Thus, creation is also the history of the birth of Israel, the nation that inherited the task of Adam and Eve to communicate God's requirement for a holy life. In this first Book of Torah we trace Israel’s story from the life of Avraham and Sarah until their offspring develop into a family and then a nation.
Creation was not a phenomenon that took place in primeval times and then was left to proceed of its own merits. The first verse of the Haftarah from Isaiah speaks of Creation in the present tense. God did not “rest” on the seventh day - the Hebrew word translated as rest is "Shabbat." God finished creating the physical world and on the seventh day He created the spiritual world, the Shabbat, and sanctified it. Shabbat is a day in which we ought to put aside the concerns of the material world and concentrate on the spiritual. But God is still working. He is not only working to keep the universe but also to heal our souls and restore our relationship with Him. Yeshua gave us this insight as recorded by the apostle John: “And for this reason they were persecuting Yeshua because He was doing these things on the Shabbat. But He answered them, 'My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.'” Not for the material but for the spiritual. God’s purpose is for Israel to guide mankind to His service; for Israel to be a light to the nations and bring the people to the covenant; to help remove the impediments that prevent their eyes and ears from seeing and hearing the truth. But Israel failed, just as Adam and Eve, again revealing the need for a savior, who ultimately will turn darkness into light, and will open the eyes to the blind and reveal the truth to mankind. Yeshua, the promised Savior, came to His people and did just that. He opened our eyes to the truth of the Torah.
An interesting passage to note is from Matthew 12:22-23: "Then a demon-possessed man, blind and mute, was brought to Yeshua, and He healed him, so that the mute man spoke and saw. All the crowds were amazed, and were saying, "Is this not the Son of David, Ben David?" The rabbinic teaching at that time was that only Messiah will be able to heal a person who is blind and mute because that person had no way of revealing the name of the demon, only Messiah will know the name of the demon inside that person, thus, people were asking the rabbis, isn't He the Messiah, the Son of David, because He has done this? This was the turning point in Yeshua's rejection by the rabbinic leaders because when confronted with their own teaching they chose to reject the truth.
The connection between this Sidrah and the prophetical lesson from the Haftarah, from the book of Isaiah, is found in the opening words which speak of God as the Creator of Heaven and Earth. The first chapters of Genesis, after describing the Creation, recount the growth of sin and violence among the children of men. The prophet, likewise, proclaims the omnipotence and sovereignty of the Creator of the Universe, and proceeds to declare unto Israel his mission to rescue the world from moral degeneracy. This part of the Book of Isaiah is sometimes called 'The Prophecy of Restoration.' It is addressed to the Jews in Babylon, who had been deported from Judea after the first destruction of Jerusalem in the year 586 B.C.E., and who were longing for the day when they would be free to return to the Holy Land and the Holy City, Jerusalem. During the years of weary waiting, the prophet consoles his suffering brethren by setting before them the sublime mission of Israel: God had called Israel to be His witness before all peoples, to be 'a light unto the nations,' and to point the way of righteousness and salvation to all the children of men.
"Thus said God, the LORD, He who creates the heavens, and stretches them out; He who spreads forth the earth, and that which grows out of it; He who gives breath to the people upon it, and spirit to those who walk in it; I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness, and taken hold of your hand, and kept you, and gave you for a covenant of the people, for a light to the nations; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and those who sit in darkness, out of the prison house. I am the LORD; that is My name; and My glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to carved idols. Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them. Sing to the LORD a new song, and His praise from the end of the earth. the LORD is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake; He will magnify the Torah and make it glorious." Isaiah 42:5-21
Indeed God revealed new things to mankind in the Person of Yeshua who came to interpret the Torah correctly and made it glorious (Matthew 5:17).
Shabbat joy, peace, and blessings! Shabbat Shalom!
