But “preparation” would seem to require actual, physical events, not just an abstract assignment of purpose. And elsewhere you refer at least obliquely to major physical events happening on particular days. You are still being very confusing. It seems from what you say here that your understanding of Genesis is incompatible with our scientific understanding of earth history. And while I don’t see a problem with that, it seems to me that you do and are trying to minimize the distinction. We can’t set a date for the week of Genesis 1 because there is no point in earth’s history during which any such radical alterations of the environment happened within a short time. And if the week didn’t involve physical changes, your language is at best confusing.
I think you’re missing the actual textual distinction the narrator makes. Genesis 2:3 explicitly summarizes God’s work as both what He created* (bara) and what He made (asah). That alone shows the text does not collapse all divine activity into Genesis 1:1.
If Genesis 1:1 “includes everything,” as you claim, then the narrator should never need the verb asah afterward. Yet Genesis 1 repeatedly uses asah for things that, under your view, would already have been “created” in 1:1. The most obvious example is Day 4: God made (asah) the two great lights” (Gen 1:16).
If they were already created in 1:1, why does the text say God made them on Day 4? Genesis 2:3 is the control text: God rested from all His work which He had created and made.
This summary covers all of Genesis 1:1–31, not just 1:3–31. The narrator himself distinguishes two categories of divine action:
Created (bara)- origination
Made (asah)- forming, assigning, fashioning, preparing
Your interpretation collapses the narrator’s own categories and forces the text to contradict itself. My view preserves the distinctions the text actually makes:
Genesis 1:1 is the initial creation of the cosmos (including the sun, moon, and stars).
The six days begin in 1:3.
Day 1 is God calling forth the morning light (cf. Job 38).
Day 4 is God assigning the lights their functions (asah).
This fits the Hebrew verbs, the structure of the chapter, and the narrator’s summary in 2:3 without forcing everything into 1:1.
I think you’re assuming that “preparation” in Genesis must mean large‑scale physical upheavals within a literal week. That isn’t what the text itself requires. The Hebrew distinguishes between God creating (bara) in Gen 1:1 and God making/assigning (asah) during the six days. The six‑day sequence is primarily about ordering, differentiating, and assigning functions, not about material fabrication from scratch.**
Genesis 1:1 describes the creation of the entire cosmos, which can encompass the full span of earth’s physical history. The six days begin only in 1:3, and they describe God preparing the land for human habitation. That preparation includes both physical processes (e.g., dry land appearing) and functional assignments (e.g., the lights governing seasons). The text itself uses asah for Day 4, which in Hebrew often means “appoint,” “prepare,” or “assign,” not “create ex nihilo.”
So my view isn’t trying to minimize the distinction between Genesis and earth history. It’s simply recognizing that the narrator’s focus in Genesis 1 is not on describing geologic epochs or catastrophic environmental changes, but on structuring the world for human life. The week is theological and literary, not a compression of earth’s entire physical development into six 24‑hour periods.
In short:
Genesis 1:1 can cover the entire physical history of the universe.
Genesis 1:3–31 describes God’s ordering and assigning functions to what already exists.
Genesis 2:3 summarizes both categories of work, what God created and what He made.
That reading is consistent with the Hebrew verbs, the structure of the chapter, and the absence of any requirement for sudden, radical environmental changes within a single week.
I can’t speak for the OP, and I think his position is somewhat confusing as well.
But it might help to distinguish between revelation and cultural reference.
Some would say revelation concerns the theological message of the text, God’s relationship to humanity, humanity’s role in creation, questions of identity, purpose, order, and ontology.
By contrast, the text also uses ancient cultural imagery and cosmological references familiar to its audience. Things like chaotic waters, the firmament restraining waters above, sea monsters like Leviathan, and so on.
The theological claims are not scientific claims in the modern sense. They concern meaning, purpose, divine authority, morality, ontology, and God’s relationship to creation.
The cultural imagery is simply the medium through which those ideas are communicated. It reflects the worldview and symbolic language of the ancient Near East.
Psalm 74 is a good example. God is described as crushing the heads (plural) of Leviathan. Similar imagery appears in Job and Isaiah. Obviously, this is not scientifically descriptive language about a literal multi-headed fire-breathing sea serpent. Rather, Leviathan functions as a symbolic or mythic image representing chaos, evil, danger, disorder, hostile powers, and so forth.
The theological revelation, then, concerns God’s supremacy over chaos, evil, destruction, and opposing powers, not zoology or paleontology.
That said, I do think the OP sometimes moves back and forth between trying to make Genesis scientifically accurate and when pressed, denying that position. Many people instead would simply argue that Genesis is describing real events in a theological or ontological sense, while not attempting to provide scientifically testable descriptions of cosmology or natural history.
You said there was no creation by God on day 3, only physical activity.
Now you are saying that plants were created fully mature, so no seeds were required.
I don’t read Genesis as a scientific thesis but as a polemic addressed to ancient Israel as they emerged from a pagan cultural environment. Its purpose is to tell them who their God is and how the world responds to His authority.
It helps to distinguish revelation from cultural reference.
Revelation concerns the theological message of the text, God’s relationship to humanity, humanity’s role in creation, questions of identity, purpose, order, and ontology.
Alongside that, the text uses ancient Near Eastern imagery** familiar to its original audience: chaotic waters, the firmament restraining waters above, sea monsters like Leviathan, and so on. These are not scientific descriptions but symbolic language drawn from the cultural world the Israelites inhabited.
Psalm 74 is a good example: God “crushes the heads of Leviathan.” Similar imagery appears in Job and Isaiah. No one imagines this is zoological reporting about a literal multi‑headed sea creature. Leviathan functions as a mythic symbol of chaos, evil, and hostile powers. The revelation is about God’s supremacy over chaos—not about marine biology.
This is why many readers hold that Genesis describes real theological events, God creating, ordering, blessing, without attempting to provide a scientific account of cosmology or natural history. While this OP may seem to oscillate between treating Genesis as scientifically precise and then retreating from that claim when challenged; but the more consistent approach is to see Genesis as communicating theological truth through the symbolic and cosmological language of its time.
Roy, I’m not claiming there were no seeds. I’m saying Genesis doesn’t specify the mechanism. Seeds are reasonable, but the text doesn’t require them.
The key point is the Hebrew verbs.
Day 3 does not use bara (“create”). Instead it uses dasha and totsē — “let the earth sprout/bring forth.”
That means the vegetation is described as coming from the earth at God’s command, not as a bara-creation event like 1:1, 1:21, or 1:27.
So I’m distinguishing between the verb used and the origin of the vegetation.
God is the ultimate source of the plants, but the text frames it as the earth producing them, not as God performing a bara act on Day 3.
Whether God used seeds, or whether the plants appeared fully mature, the text doesn’t say. Both fit the language. My point is simply that Day 3 is not labeled with bara, so I’m not calling it “creation” in that technical Genesis 1 sense.
first: “this is what happened,”
later: “the text doesn’t actually specify.”
Many of your posts have tensions like this. It has been difficult throughout the course of the discussion to follow your ideas.
But I do appreciate your input and contributions to the conversation.
I’m not missing it because it isn’t there. It’s just you jumping to a conclusion the text does not justify.
At let us note that this implicitly concedes your claim of grammatical support.
Since you claim that those lights were created in Genesis 1:1 -
- doesn’t that just confirm my point? Doesn’t your objection apply equally to your own view?
Simply untrue. Your idea of the distinctions is your invention - just like all your claims of grammatical support. That your reading agrees with an idea you made up to support that reading is not a virtue.
You are just repeating in nearly the same words what you have said before. This fails to clarify. What happens when God orders and assigns functions? How does the world before this week differ from the world after this week, and in what way does the world after the week, structured for human life, differ from the one before that week, presumably not so structured? What happened to humans on the 6th day?
It might indeed. I don’t think @reichmaj does, and this is one point I’ve been trying to make. He’s treating the story as actual history of some kind, either in the minds of the writers and early readers, in the past of the world, or both. And this creates inevitable conflict with science, while a strictly theological meaning does not.
@Paul_King @John_Harshman @AdrianB @reichmaj
I haven’t been able to follow this discussion lately, but it doesn’t seems to be getting anywhere. @reichmaj is giving a different sort of interpretation to Genesis, which is OK, and I think he has been very careful to avoid scientific points. If the rest of you disagree, that’s OK too, but we already know there are many interpretations of Genesis. At some point we should recognize that other interpretation are not going to go away, and maybe move on to some more constructive discussion.
From what I can see here (and FB), Jeffrey is basically a Hoopy Frood. Maybe you can cut him a little slack?