the story again underscoring by its very structure the concepts of order and abundance:
“And God said, ‘Let [X happen],’ and it was so”: creation by command, indicating obedience to God as sovereign Creator, usually along with some further description as well.
“God called [X Y] . . . ”: naming the created elements, indicating ownership and control over them.
“God saw that it was good”: a divine aesthetic assessment, or an assessment about the “fittingness” of creation.
“And there was evening, and there was morning—the Xth day”: reflecting back on the human work day from dawn to dusk.
Thus, in this first creation story God conquers the primeval chaos and crafts a highly ordered and abundant creation, forming it and filling it so that it is a suitable . . . something. What exactly is it that God builds?
A temple. In creating the heavens and the earth God builds a perfect sacred space for himself, the holy and almighty Elohim. In other ancient cosmogonies various aspects of religious worship are prominent. In the Enuma Elish, for example, the culmination of the order brought out of chaos is the proper worship in Babylon of Marduk, the god who brought about that order in the world. A variation of this creation story was used for the dedication of sacred buildings in ancient Babylonia. In stark contrast to these other ancient stories, however, in Genesis 1 there is no particular geographical location or humanly constructed building that functions as God’s temple. All creation is God’s sacred space; the entire cosmos is God’s dwelling place. Nothing else could be “very good” or perfectly fitting for the holy and almighty Creator God.
All this helps to make sense of why it is that this creation account is structured around six days (1:3–31), with a seventh day of rest set apart as sacred (2:1–3). Within the story, these are actual days, not “epochs” or long periods of time. They are undoubtedly intended to parallel the weekly pattern of the ancient Israelites: six days of work primarily in the natural world of fields and vineyards, followed by a seventh day of rest or “Sabbath” as a sacred act of worship, including temple worship. But the point of this weekly pattern was to emphasize the Sabbath: the six days of work move forward to the seventh day of rest, culminating in this holy day set apart for rest and worship. In a similar fashion the creation account of Genesis 1 emphasizes that all God’s acts of creation move forward to the sacred seventh day in which God the Creator is worshiped in his holy temple, the cosmos which God himself has created. Thus, the ancient Israelite life of work in the world and rest in worship reflects the cosmic order of creation; these rhythms of life for ancient Israel were patterned after God’s own creative rhythms of earthly work and holy rest in the sacred temple of his created order (e.g., Exodus 20:8–11).
So then, who are human beings? Why do human beings exist? What is our purpose related to God and the world and one another? The answer that this first biblical creation story gives to these questions is found in the culmination of the story of earth’s forming and filling: the creation of human beings “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:26–27).
There are some close parallels to this language of “image” or “likeness” in ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts. In this ancient context, to say that someone (a vassal king, perhaps) or something (say a statue of the king) was in the king’s “image” was to say that this person or thing represented the king—reflecting his presence in that place, ensuring his will, protecting his interests. They were the king’s “royal representatives” within a particular territory under their control. Even more significantly, this idea was extended back to the king himself: he was in the “image” of the gods, a very child of the gods even, representing them in the world as their priest-king. (Think of the famous child-pharaoh known popularly as “King Tut”: “Tutankhamun” means “living image of Amun,” a prominent Egyptian god.)
This context suggests that to say human beings are created in God’s “image” or “likeness” is to say that they are God’s “priest-kings” representing God as King, that they are children resembling God as Father. And indeed, this is what we find: the ideas of royal representation and paternal resemblance are clearly reflected in the Genesis language of “image” or “likeness.” So in Genesis 1 the statement that human beings—both male and female equally—are created “in God’s image” is immediately followed up with the statement that they are to “rule” over the creatures of the earth, to “fill the earth and subdue it”—to extend God’s sovereign rule throughout the earth (1:26–28). And later in Genesis 5 we have a family genealogy in which Adam produces a son, Seth, “in his own likeness, in his own image,” a family “image” or “likeness” that has just been noted as reaching back through Adam to God himself (5:1–3).
Thus, human beings—all human beings, not just kings and pharaohs—have been created “in God’s image”: created to be God’s royal representatives within the sacred space of God’s creation, extending God’s transcendent rule throughout the earthly temple; and created to be God’s children, resembling God—and relating to God—as human children do their parents, reflecting God’s character, his glory, to the world. All human beings bear this “image of God,” and thus each human person bears both the dignity and the responsibility of being God’s “image-bearer” in the world: living in relationship with God as children with their father, living out God’s character in relationship with one another and all creation, bringing God’s sovereign, loving rule to bear on all things throughout the earth.
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This first biblical creation story tells us nothing about exactly when God created all things or how he did so, beyond his transcendent will as ultimate cause of creation. But, as we have seen, it tells us much about who God is, what creation is, who human beings are, and what our divine purpose in the world is. What is the significance of these ideas for Christian thought and life today? Though many implications of these thoughts could be noted, let me provide three areas for further consideration.
First, this first creation story should deeply influence the way we view God. God is the one holy and transcendent God, completely distinct from all else that exists; God is the almighty and omnipotent God, all-powerful, able to do anything he wills to do. These truths call us away from any form of idolatry: not just bowing down to idols of wood or stone, but—much more deeply—thinking or acting in any way that displaces God from his rightful place. God is the ultimate source of our life and all that we have. God alone provides purpose to our existence, and all of humanity’s deepest desires are only fulfilled in God. God is the only one outside of our most dire situations, the only one powerful enough to meet our most difficult challenges, and thus the only one who can deliver us from our most desperate predicaments. No humanly crafted ideology or entity or resource can fill these roles—neither capitalism nor communism, neither democracy nor dictatorship, neither nation-state nor natural strength, neither wealth nor wisdom—only God the Creator.
To bring this close to home, we should ask ourselves some hard questions. What do we look to as the source of our life and the good things we enjoy? Where do we turn when we lack those good things? What is it that defines our purpose for being, for us as individuals or for our faith communities? What is it that gives meaning to our life, to our work, to our rest and recreation? When we face our most difficult problems and most dire situations, where do we go for help? Is it some human resource such as money, or knowledge, or physical strength? Is it some human system or institution like capitalism or democracy, or any government? Or is it a human being, perhaps a close friend or parent or spouse? Certainly the holy and almighty God can work through things and people to meet us in each of these ways, but as Christians our first and final answer to these questions should be God our Creator.
Second, this first creation story should profoundly shape the way we think about the natural world. Nature is not merely “nature,” a rather neutral term; it is in fact “creation.” It is not a phenomenon brought about by random, impersonal forces and therefore without any ultimate significance. It is not a resource to be used up or exploited to fulfill humanity’s never-ending desires. It is not a hostile force that must be aggressively tamed in order to build a comfortable dwelling place for humanity. It is not