Genesis (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Pentateuch)

Goldingay, John, Arnold, Bill T.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781493423972
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Comentario bíblico

Highly regarded Old Testament scholar John Goldingay offers a substantive and useful commentary on the book of Genesis that is both critically engaged and sensitive to the theological contributions of the text. This volume, the first in a new series on the Pentateuch, complements the successful Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Wisdom and Psalms series (series volumes have sold over 55, 000 copies). Each series volume will cover one book of the Pentateuch, addressing important issues and problems that flow from the text and exploring the contemporary relevance of the Pentateuch. The series editor is BillT. Arnold, the PaulS. Amos Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary.

Part One
The Lines of Descent of the Heavens and the Earth

(1:1–11:26)

Within Genesis as a whole as the backstory to Yahweh’s involvement with Israel, the immediate backstory to that narrative is the promises Yahweh made to Israel’s ancestors, which include the idea that all earth’s families are to seek the blessing that came to these ancestors (e.g., 12:3). The further backstory to Gen. 11:27–50:26 is God’s dealings with the world as a whole. These dealings are the subject of Gen. 1:1–11:26. It relates how God’s purpose to bless the world goes back to the very beginning, before which there can hardly be a backstory. The question it considers is clear: why did God settle on one particular family as a means of blessing the entire world? The answer is that God had tried blessing the entire world, and it hadn’t worked. Indeed, God had tried it twice, and neither time did it work.

In Gen. 1:1–11:26 the story from creation to Abraham is a story in two acts in which Adam and his sons and then Noah and his sons play key roles. The account of the people’s lines of descent (notably 5:1–32 and 11:10–26) contributes to the shaping of the story. Interwoven with the lines of descent, the stories bring a focus on key moments, especially in the times of Adam and Noah. But lines of descent and stories interweave in a complicated rather than a straightforward way. While there are the regular “lines of descent,” this expression is also used to introduce the Noah story at 6:9; to introduce 10:1–32, which includes the Nimrod story; and most surprisingly at 2:4a to close off 1:1–2:3. Further, 4:17–18 is surely a line of descent, but it is not labeled as such. In substance, then, the chapters can be outlined as follows.

Lines of descent	Story
1:1–2:4a	2:4b–4:16
4:17–18	4:19–26
5:1–32	6:1–9:29
10:1–7	10:8–12
10:13–32	11:1–9
11:10–26

The non-straightforward nature of this sequencing makes it unsurprising that there are various ways of understanding the structure of 1:1–11:26.1

Since Gen. 1:1–11:26 is the backstory to Gen. 11:27–50:26 and Genesis as a whole is the backstory to the great narrative extending from Exodus through 2 Kings, it seems logically necessary that Genesis in some sense relates events that happened. God did create the world as a good place, humanity chose not to do as God said, and the situation became one that could not be rectified. At the same time, the opening chapters of Genesis portray the world in a way that recurs in the closing chapters of Revelation (e.g., with sacramental trees and a snake that talks) and that does not correspond to our experience. I infer that Genesis often tells its historical story symbolically. Further, Genesis shows an acquaintance with other Middle Eastern stories about the world’s origins and about a great deluge, though it sets the message of its story over against them rather than simply following them. I infer that the authors of Genesis took up traditional materials that they knew from their cultural context and truths that they knew about God from God’s dealings with Israel, and they used these imaginatively to compose a historical parable that told the real truth about the way God had dealt with the world from the beginning.

1. See Richelle, “La structure littéraire de l’Histoire Primitive.”

1
How God Created the World

(1:1–2:4a)

Overview

God created the heavens and the earth. But the initial question set up by the opening verses of Gen. 1 concerns how God will get to the creation of the heavens and the earth from a situation in which the earth is an empty void and darkness is over the face of the Deep (1:1–2). The answer to that question comes by means of an eight-stage process: four stages set the scene, and four fill in the scene. God makes this process the agenda for a week’s work—so he fits two stages into days three and six (1:3–31). Some of the holding power of a story comes from its dealing with problems or obstacles or diversions that threaten or delay the move from question to resolution (as happens in stories such as 2:4b–25 or 11:27–13:4). Here, the account of the first three days (which only put in place the framework for creation) sets up the suspense, and the account of the second three days resolves it. The way the story unfolds also makes it possible to repeat and thus emphasize some themes, such as God’s systematic way of working, God’s authority and power, and the goodness of what God brings into being. God is effectively the one character in the story, and by the end we have learned a lot about him. A question it might seem implicitly to raise is how the story fits with what the audience knows about the world and about humanity that does not seem to be “good.” It implicitly then answers that question by saying, “There was nothing bad about it when God made it.”

A surprise feature to keep people watching through the credits is God’s stopping work for day seven and making the seventh day of the week sacred. That closing note opens up the possibility that there was another question the story answered. Why does Israel observe the Sabbath? The answer is that Israel is thereby following the pattern of God’s work in creation. The storyteller’s viewpoint is that of a teacher who wants to encourage people to keep the Sabbath, who through the use of sanctified imagination “knows” all about the process of creation and about God’s thinking and speaking on those days when no human beings were present, and who could thus teach authoritatively about it.

Translation

1:1At the beginning of God’s creating1

the heavens and the earth,

2When the earth2 was3 an empty void,

with darkness over the face of the deep,

And God’s wind4 quivering5

over the face of the water,

3God said,6 “Light!”7

and light came into being.

4God saw that the light was good;8

and God made a distinction between the light and the darkness.

5God called the light “day”;

the darkness he called “night.”

There was evening and there was morning,

day one.

6God said,

“A dome9 in the middle of the water,

so it will be making water distinct from water!”

7God made the dome and made a distinction

between the water that was under the dome

and the water that was above the dome.

So it came to be;

8God called the dome “heavens.”

There was evening and there was morning,

a second day.

9God said:

“The water under the heavens is to gather

into one place,10

So the dry land may appear!”—

so it came to be.

10God called the dry land “earth,”

and the gathering of water he called “seas,”

and God saw that it was good.

11God said:

“The earth is to grow vegetation,

plant generating seed,

Fruit tree11 producing fruit by its species,

with its seed in it, on the earth!”—

so it came to be.

12The earth put out vegetation,

plant generating seed by its species,

And tree producing fruit with its seed in it by its species,

and God saw that it was good.

13There was evening and there was morning,

a third day.

14God said,

“Lights12 in the dome of t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Preface
• Author’s Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One: The Lines of Descent of the Heavens and the Earth
• Part Two: Terah’s Lines of Descent through Abraham
• Part Three: Isaac’s Lines of Descent, Focusing on Jacob
• Part Four: Jacob’s Lines of Descent, Focusing on Joseph
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Writings
• Cover Flaps
• Back Cover