Mapping the Genesis 1 Poem
The Bible is 90% literature and 10% didactic teaching.
This is shocking, because we’re used to a church tradition that involves waaaaaay more literal teaching and not much literary perspective. And to be fair–it’s easy for us to miss because translations into new language and culture can lose original literary intent!
Like…did you know Genesis 1 is a poem? It’s not a chronological timeline of creation. It’s a Jewish poem with a particular structure!
I was delighted when I learned this from the BEMA podcast. And I was delighted to learn how to read it as a poem–because it wasn’t obvious to my American eyes.
Genesis 1 is a chiasm, which is opposing parallel structures that point towards a center, like ABC-CBA or ABC-ABC. When you read Genesis closely, you begin to see that Day 1-3 corresponds to Day 4-6.
Day 1: God separates light from darkness
Day 4: God creates “lights” for day and night
Day 2: God separates water from sky
Day 5: God fills water and sky with creatures
Day 3: God creates dry land and plants
Day 6: God fills land with animals and man
Isn’t that crazy? But there’s more to it; Jewish writing also loves numerology. So since there are 7 days of creation (God rests on the seventh day), there are also patterns of 7 throughout the poem.
The first verse has 7 words (7x1). The second verse has 14 words (7x2). And so on and so forth. By the seventh verse of the poem, there are 35 words (7x5). The word for God is mentioned 35 times. I could go on and on about numerology, but I’m no expert, and I just want to reinforce this–
Genesis is a chiasm: a poem with a center.
If you’re like me and very unfamiliar with Jewish poetry, you might wonder what the point of this particular structure is! Well, Marty Solomon, BEMA podcast teacher, suggests that it’s because of a different cultural value.
In the west, we think of teaching as a transference of information (hence the emphasis on didactic teaching in Sunday services). But Jewish teachers believe that learning only happens through a process of discovery. So the poem is carefully crafted like a treasure hunt: a map we follow until we find the “treasure” of the center.
When we take numerology and poetic structure into consideration, we discover that the center of the creation story is the Hebrew word “moad” in Genesis 1:14 on Day 4…
“And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years.”
Again, because of translation, this initially might be a confusing center for a creation story. But “moad” or “sacred times” is one of four words that translates into “Sabbath” and the ideas of Sabbath–festivals, parties, resting.
Raised in Western Protestantism, I’ve heard at least several times that Sabbath is important because God rests at the end of creation.
But there was something especially profound to me that Genesis 1 wasn’t just a list of historical events that ends with rest because God is “tired” or “done” something…but a poem inspired by the Spirit and deliberately crafted to center rest.
It was even more profound to process that it was a deliberately crafted poem for a deliberate reason. It would’ve been written by Moses to teach the Israelites about the God that called them out of Egypt. Fresh out of generations of slavery with identities wrapped up in usefulness, it would’ve been earth-shattering to hear they were chosen by a God of rest.
This full picture of Sabbath has been challenging to me. I am definitely someone who finds worth in productivity and achievement. I subject my body to auditions even when I feel limited, or force myself to churn out pages even when I have nothing inside me.
Left to my own godship, I would just work myself to death.
But God is a different kind of artist. He doesn’t operate in hustle. He operates in Sabbath–in rest and celebration.
We seem to think that creativity necessarily includes “hustle”. Now, it does involve really really hard work and sometimes really long hours. But does it need to be active overwork through an overpacked schedule?
What if our artistic impulse wasn’t driven by fearful insecurity of achievement? What if we weren’t slaves to production?
What if we were free artists? What if we made from a center of rest and celebration?
I think our art would be a lot better. It would be more fun, more grounded, and better quality.
Slow, deliberate art seems to reflect God’s creative impulse.
May we create in the same way.
