A close reading of the opening chapters of Genesis reveals not one creation account but two. Over the last four weeks, we have spent a considerable amount of time looking closely at the first of those two accounts, Genesis 1:1–2:4a, in which we find depicted an ordered, carefully structured world.

Beginning this week, we are turning our attention to the second account, in Genesis 2:4b-25.  This story begins much as the first account did, only in inverted order: instead of “When God began to create the heavens and the earth”   (Gen 1:1), the second account opens, “On the day the LORD God made earth and sky” (Gen 2:4b).

This story assumes that earth and the sky have already been made by the LORD–off-stage, as it were–so their creation is not explicitly described. They are the setting for our drama, already in place when our story begins.  

This first moment is described in terms of its potential: what has not yet happened, but soon will.  Our story begins

before any wild plants appeared on the earth, and before any field crops grew, because the Lord God hadn’t yet sent rain on the earth and there was still no human being to farm the fertile land (Gen 2:5).

The world is imagined as a dry, empty plain: potentially fertile, but at the moment, barren. Then, the Lord acts. This barren field, never yet touched by rain, is moistened by a stream that bubbles up from under the ground.

Remember the ancient Near Eastern world view held that the world floated on the waters below, with the waters above held back by the solid bowl of the sky.

Now, the LORD God permits the waters below the earth to bubble up and moisten the ground, making mud.  With this mud the LORD performs the first explicitly described act of creation in this account: 

the LORD God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life (Gen 2:7).

The verb here translated “formed” is the Hebrew word yatsar. Yatsar is what potters do.

The LORD fashions the human the way a potter fashions a pot on the wheel, the way a sculptor fashions a statue from a bit of clay.  In this story, we are formed by the LORD’s fingers, intimately and personally.

The Hebrew word for “human” is ‘adam, from which we get the proper name, “Adam.”  The word the CEB translates as “fertile land” is ‘adamah.  Our story plays with these similar-sounding words.  Adam is the mud man, fashioned from the fertile land: the human made from the humus, the earthling made from the earth.

The phrase rendered “came to life” in the CEB of Gen 2:7 is more familiarly rendered in the KJV “became a living soul.”  The expression is in Hebrew nephesh khayah:  that is, a living nephesh. Though nephesh is sometimes translated as “soul,” it never means some separate, supernatural part of the self.  Its basic meaning has to do with breath; in fact, it can sometimes mean something as narrow and specific as “throat.”  Most commonly, nephesh means “self.”  So ‘adam becomes, as the NRSV reads here, “a living being.”  

Having formed Adam, the Lord then begins to make everything else for Adam.  Unlike Genesis 1, where plants were created before humanity, at the end of Day 3, in this account the first expressly described creative act of God is the creation of the human. There are no plants until the LORD God plants a garden as the human’s home (Gen 2:8). 

Eden was not only a place for Adam to live, providing shelter and food. Genesis 2:9 says that “every beautiful tree” grew there.  The LORD God has provided food for Adam’s body, and beauty to enrich Adam’s life.  Further, our text declares,

The LORD God took the human and settled him in the garden of Eden to farm it and to take care of it (Gen 2:15).

Adam is given fruitful and fulfilling work to do: his life in the garden has a purpose.  What more could Adam possibly need or want?

Genesis 1:1–2:4a is not really a narrative.  It is a carefully structured list.  Narrative after all is not just one thing after another!  Narrative presupposes a plot, and plots are driven by conflict: problems to be solved, obstacles to be overcome.  Up to this point in Genesis (reading the two accounts in sequence, as they appear in our Bibles), God has declared everything good: no conflict has appeared.  But now, in this second account, a problem emerges:

Then the Lord God said, “It’s not good that the human is alone (Gen 2:18).

For the first time, something is “not good.”  Adam is not truly alone, of course: the Lord is there too in the garden.  But there is no being like Adam. The LORD decides, “I will make him a helper that is perfect for him” (Gen 2:18).  The Hebrew is ‘ezer kenegedo, a difficult and ambiguous phrase.  The word ‘ezer means “helper,” which we could misunderstand to mean something like “assistant.”  But if we flip through the Hebrew Bible to find out how this word is used, we discover that the one most commonly referred to as ‘ezer is God.  So this isn’t a term of subordination!

The expression kenegedo can be taken apart, piece by piece. In Hebrew, ke means “as” or “like.”  Neged means “next to,” “alongside of,” or sometimes “opposite.” The o at the end means “him.”   So: kenegedo means “like and yet unlike him,” or “corresponding to him.” The King James Version famously renders this phrase as “an help meet [that is, “fitting” or “suitable”] for him.” The CEB has “a helper that is perfect for him.”   I really like what the NRSV does here: “a helper as his partner.”  This is not a quest to find an assistant or a subordinate, someone less than  Adam.  Adam is alone: the quest is to find a being that will be like and yet unlike Adam, with whom Adam can be in relationship.

So the LORD goes back to the drawing board–or more accurately, back to the mud pile.

So the Lord God formed from the fertile land all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky and brought them to the human to see what he would name them. The human gave each living being its name (Gen 2:19)

We have heard the key Hebrew words in this verse before. Like Adam, the human, the animals are formed (Hebrew yatsar) as a potter forms the clay: fashioned by the LORD with an artist’s hands. Also like Adam, the animals are made from “the fertile land”: Hebrew ‘adamah.  Just as Adam is called nephesh khayah, a “living being,” so are the animals.

Something fascinating is going on in this narrative of creation. While in Genesis 1, humanity is set apart from the rest of creation in multiple ways, in Genesis 2 we are joined to the earth from which we are made.  This does not mean that Genesis 2:4b-25 devalues or demeans humanity–far from it!  The human is the first thing made and everything else is made for Adam or because of Adam. Further, human dignity is clear in Adam being given the responsibility of naming the animals.

But nonetheless, there is also a clear relationship binding humanity to the rest of the created world. We are earthlings, made from and inseparably related to the earth–an idea consonant with the science of ecology.

Returning to our narrative, it is clear that the creation of the animals does not solve the problem!

The human named all the livestock, all the birds in the sky, and all the wild animals. But a helper perfect for him was nowhere to be found (Gen 2:20).

I love my cat, but the relationship that I can have with that wild little alien mind, looking up at me through those bright eyes, is sharply limited.

Though the animals are wonderful, none of them is an ‘ezer kenegedo.  The LORD realizes that it isn’t enough just to go back to the ‘adamah from which ‘adam had been made. An ‘ezer kenegedo will have to be fashioned, not from the soil as Adam was fashioned, but from Adam’s very being.

In Genesis 1:1–2:4a, creation is imagined as taking place in the span of a single week, with the seventh day, the Sabbath, as a day of rest. Humans are created at the end of the sixth day, making us the last creatures that God makes.  In this first creation account, we are the climax of creation.

The text sets the creation of human beings apart from the rest of creation in several ways.  First, Gen 1:26 says, “Then God said, “Let us make humanity.”  What do we do with the plural here?  To whom is God speaking? Christian readers have sometimes found in this verse a reflection of the Trinity, so that the Father here addresses the Son and the Holy Spirit.

But the ancient priests of Israel would not have thought about God in those terms.  Parallels with other stories of creation in the ancient Near East reveal that the best way to understand this text in its historical context is as referring to a council of heavenly beings.

In the Enuma elish, creation is an act of committee.  The gods elected Marduk as their king and champion, to defeat the chaos monster Tiamat.  But once she was dead, the other gods joined with Marduk in the creation of the world.

Ea, the god of wisdom, counseled Marduk on a special aspect of this work: the creation of people.  According to the Babylonian creation story, “savage-man” was fashioned as a slave race, to serve the gods.

While the view of human being and of God is very different in Genesis 1 than in the Enuma elish, the simplest way to understand the plural in Genesis 1:26 is that here too the Creator is addressing a council of heavenly beings.  Still, faith in the incomparable God once again causes Israel to take a different stance than its neighbors. In Genesis, the council is decidedly in the background: God neither asks the council’s permission, nor seeks its aid. Indeed, God has not said “let us” before; only the creation of human being involves the council at all. Perhaps the council is mentioned here primarily to set human beings apart from the rest of creation.

Rather than the traditional KJV reading, “Let us make man,” the CEB has ““Let us make humanity” (Gen 1:26).   This is not political correctness: it is a matter of accurate translation. In Hebrew, the word for “man” is ish. But that is not the word that is used here. In Genesis 1:26, God decides to create ‘adam, which means “humanity.”

Human being, already distinguished by the mention of the divine council, is further distinguished by something not mentioned.  There are “kinds” of everything else in creation: plants, birds, fish, and animals (Gen 1:11-12, 21, 24-25).  However, there are no “kinds” of people.

This is not because the ancient Israelites were ignorant of other races and cultures: Palestine was a crossroads of ancient civilizations. The Israelites were fully aware of Africans and Asians, people of varying ethnicities, speaking a host of languages.  Yet Israel does not distinguish among these races and nations, as though some are more human than others.  Instead, there is just ‘adam: one single human family. It is a remarkable confession, rejecting every form of racism and jingoistic nationalism.

It is particularly important that we translate ‘adam correctly, because Genesis 1:27 goes on very plainly to state:

God created humanity in God’s own image,
        in the divine image God created them,
            male and female God created them.

Masculinity and femininity, maleness and femaleness, are each reflections of God-likeness in this verse. There is no hierarchy of the sexes here; no basis for placing women under men.

To be sure Israel’s traditions were not always equal to this insight. Yet here it is, at the very beginning of the Bible!  Sexism, like racism, is denied any place in the priestly view of God’s ordered world.  Further, to say that maleness and femaleness are both representations of “God-likeness” is also to say that God is neither male nor female—or more accurately, that both masculinity and femininity reflect aspects of God.  While the dominant images of God in the male-centered culture of ancient Israel were masculine, one of the dominant features of Israel’s theology from early on was an absolute refusal to make an image of God: the point being that no image can adequately express God’s being.  Further, there are texts which depict God in feminine terms–specifically, as midwife (Ps 22:9-10) and as mother (Hos 11:1-4). The God of Scripture is not a big man in the sky!

Returning to Genesis 1:26, the most distinctive aspect of human being in this account is our God-likeness:

Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us” (Gen 1:26).

The more familiar language of the King James reads, “in our image, after our likeness.”  What might it mean that we are made in the likeness (Hebrew demut) and image (Hebrew tselem) of God?

Insight may come from a mid-ninth century B. C. memorial inscription found on a statue at Tell Fekheriyeh, in which these words also appear.

This old Aramaic text describes the statue as the “likeness” and “image” of Hadad-yis’i, governor of Guzan in the Assyrian empire.  This could simply mean that the statue looks like him (as the CEB “to resemble us” in Gen 1:26 suggests).  But since this is a funerary inscription, it more likely means that this image represents Hadad-yis’i: it calls the governor to mind, even though he is no longer physically present.

The Hebrew words demut, (“likeness”) and tselem (“image, statue”) found in Genesis 1 could also relate to the idea of representation.  Just as his memorial statue preserves the memory of Hadad-yis’i, calling him to our minds even today, millennia after his death, so looking into the face of another human being calls God to mind.

By saying that humans bear God’s image, the priests are saying something about God, as well as something about humanity.  Our passage understands God in personal terms. This is another a remarkable step out of the mythic background of the ancient Near East.  The gods of the nations were embodiments of natural forces or powers.  Baal was the thunderstorm,

Asherah was motherhood,

and Ishtar was raw sensuality.

But in Genesis 1:26, the priests of Israel say that God’s likeness is seen in humanity, and implicitly (since that likeness is shown in “male and female”), in relationships.

The rest of the Bible, it could be said, pursues the question, “How can we be in relationship with God?”  Right at the start, we have a clue in our very humanity.  Our own longing for relationship, for connection with one another, tells us something of God’s love for us.

Genesis 1:26 goes on to define what being created in the image of God means in greater detail:

Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.”

Presumably, the image and likeness of God in human being is related to “taking charge” (Hebrew radah) over the rest of creation. In sharp contrast to the Enuma elish, in which humans are a slave race, in Genesis 1 we are honored as the lords and ladies of creation! Under God’s divine lordship as the ruler of the cosmos, we are appointed as regents, governing in God’s stead.  Humans stand in for God in material reality, concretely representing God’s rule.

Our passage goes on to affirm,

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it. Take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, and everything crawling on the ground.” (Gen 1:28).

Unfortunately, in the history of our faith, believers often have understood mastering the earth to mean abusing the earth: we are free to use the world, and even to use it up, as we see fit.

But it is apparent that this is not the intention of Genesis 1.  Consider God’s continual assessment of the world God is making: “God saw how good it was” (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). Finally, when the work of creation was done, “God saw everything he had made: it was supremely good.” (Gen 1:31).

The goodness of creation does not depend on its utility for human beings: God calls the world good before we show up at the end of Day Six! The creation is good because God calls it good, quite apart from whether or not we can use it.  As in Psalm 104, where God’s presence is affirmed in all the world, even down in the depths with Leviathan where no human can live, Genesis 1:1—2:4a affirms God’s valuation of the world in and for itself.  If we exercise our dominion properly, we too will recognize the wonder, beauty and inherent goodness of the world that God has made, and exercise our responsibility as proper stewards of the earth.

The absence of conflict and the emphasis upon order in Genesis 1 leads to a rather intriguing conclusion.  In Genesis 1:29-30, God says,

“I now give to you [that is, humanity] the plants on the earth that yield seeds and all the trees whose fruit produces its seeds within it. These will be your food.  To all wildlife, to all the birds in the sky, and to everything crawling on the ground—to everything that breathes—I give all the green grasses for food.”  

According to this text, God’s original will was for all creatures, humans and animals alike, to be vegetarian!  Permission to eat meat is not given, in the priests’ understanding, until after the great flood (see Gen 9:1-7).  As the priests imagine it, God’s dream is that the world be, like Hicks’ “Peaceable Kingdom,” a place of peace and beauty, where nothing has to die for something else to live.

This harmonious order extends past the actual work of creation. In Genesis 2:1-2, we read,

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done. (NRSV)

What a marvelous image! God rests, trusting the world that God has made enough to let it go.  God not only rests, but sanctifies the day of rest: “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all the work of creation.” (Gen 2:3). Through Sabbath rest, human beings are given another way to be like God.

As we have seen, the six days of creation stand in parallel to one another: the light on day one to the lights on day four; the sky dome separating the waters on day two to the birds in the air and the fish in the water on day five; the creation of dry land and plants on day three to the creation of animals and humans, to live on the land and eat the plants, on day six.   The seventh day alone stands apart, without parallel, as the climax of creation. In this priestly depiction of reality, Sabbath is part of the structure of the universe. The sacredness of the seventh day is woven into the warp and woof of creation.

The structure of reality in Genesis 1:1—2:4a is very like architecture, with the six days arranged in parallel, like the columns of a building:

Day 1: Light                            Day 4: Lights

Day 2: Sky dome                    Day 5: Birds and fish

Day 3: Dry land                      Day 6: Land animals

Plants                                      Humanity

Day 7: Sabbath

In ancient Palestine and Syria, temples were built on a long room design: an entrance with a vestibule opened into a long main room with pillars.  At the back of the temple would often be a separate room, the Most Holy Place.  In Phoenician and Canaanite temples, that room held the image of the god. In the temple of Israel in Jerusalem, the inner room held God’s footstool, the Ark of the Covenant, above which God was invisibly enthroned.

The Most Holy Place, where the Ark was kept, became the place of the LORD’s special, particular presence.  If the six days of creation correspond to the main room, then Sabbath, the day apart without parallel, would be the Most Holy Place, where the Divine can be encountered.  Keep in mind, though, that in the priestly worldview God’s image is found in human beings. It is when we look in the eyes of another human being that we come closest to understanding who God is.

In Genesis 1:1—2:4a, the priests describe the world as a carefully and intricately ordered place: a temple built in time.  The symmetry and elegance of this world invite us to contemplate the wisdom and majesty of its creator, who imposes order upon chaos.  Does the world make sense?  The priests of ancient Israel affirm that it does.  Our God gives meaning to our world, and to our lives.

Last week, we saw how the priestly account of creation in Genesis 1:1–2:4a proceeds in a careful, orderly fashion, with the first three days each paralleled by one of the second three days, in sequence.  So, the creation of light on Day One (Gen 1:1-5) is paralleled on Day Four by the creation of the lights in the sky: the sun, moon, and stars (Gen 1:14-19).

On Day Two, God created the dome of the heavens, separating the waters above from the waters below and creating within the dome an open space. On Day Five, which parallels Day Two, God populates the air with birds, and the waters with fish and other creatures that live in the water (Gen 1:20-23).

Again, as on Day Three, the world is invited by God to take part in its own coming into being: “God said, ‘Let the waters swarm with living things, and let birds fly above the earth up in the dome of the sky’” (Gen 1:20).

God invites the water to bring forth living creatures, much as the plants had emerged from the earth.  Since biologists theorize that life on earth began in the oceans, some have suggested that the Genesis account is, after all, scientifically accurate.  Indeed, since according to 2 Peter 3:8 “with the Lord a single day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a single day”(see also Ps 90:4), it is sometimes suggested that each day in Genesis 1 may actually represent thousands or millions of years in our time.

This approach doesn’t work, however.  The sequence described for the emergence of life in this chapter doesn’t fit the fossil record: for example, birds did not actually appear before land animals, but rather are descended from dinosaurs.

Further, the text says, again and again, “There was evening and there was morning”: the priests are imagining ordinary, twenty-four-hour days.  This is important, as the sabbatical focus of Genesis 1:1–2:4a only works if we are talking about a sequence of seven days.

This means that we cannot shoehorn this story into our scientific world view –which is only a problem if believe that the Bible must be factual in order to be true.  But since Genesis presents two different accounts in its opening chapters, it is already clear that the text will not permit us to read it as a literal, factual account of beginnings.  This is not a scientific account, but a confession about God, and God’s relationship to our world.

Still,  the idea that God calls upon the waters to bring forth fish is consistent with the theory of evolution: the fundamental concept in modern biology.  For Israel’s ancient priests, as we saw in our discussion of Day Three, God creates in part by empowering the world to participate in its own creation, and enables the world to sustain itself.  This line of thought is consonant with the attempts by biologists to understand the emergence of life in natural terms, while still recognizing God as creator.

Among the living creatures now swarming the seas, Genesis 1:21 tells us, are “the great sea animals” (CEB; the NRSV reads “the great sea monsters”).  In Hebrew, the word is tanninim, which means dragons: the monsters of the abyss.

In the Babylonian creation epic the Enuma Elish, the sea monster Tiamat is the enemy that the creator god Marduk must defeat in order to make the world.  But according to Israel’s priests, if there is a dragon in the sea, then God must have made it!

In Psalm 104, a beautiful psalm of creation, the sea monster (here called Leviathan) is marvelously and whimsically described:

And then there’s the sea, wide and deep,
    with its countless creatures—
    living things both small and large.
There go the ships on it,
    and Leviathan, which you made, plays in it! (Ps 104:35-26).

The dragon delights in its watery world, just as God delights in all that God creates.  Rather than the uncreated adversary of the Divine, the sea monster is one of the living things with which the waters swarm–just another fish, if a whopping big one!

This brings us to Day Six.  Just as on Day Three God performed two creative acts (the land emerged from the water, and God invited the earth to bring forth plants), so Day Six features two creative acts of God.  First, the animals are made, to live on the land and eat the plants:

 God said, “Let the earth produce every kind of living thing: livestock, crawling things, and wildlife.” And that’s what happened (Gen 1:24). 

Once more, the world is invited to participate in its own creation. Just as on Day Three the earth brought forth plants, and as on Day Four the waters brought forth living creatures, so now at God’s invitation the earth brings forth living creatures.

In keeping with the ordered priestly worldview, the land animals are divided into three classes. First are the behemah, or domestic animals: the sheep, goats, and cattle that share the human world.

Last are the chayyat ha’arets (more usually called chayyat hassadeh, which the King James translates literally as “the beasts of the field”): that is, the wild animals, belonging to the wilderness.

In between these two major classes of animals are the remes: the creeping things—creatures with either too many legs or not enough, which seem to pop up everywhere. 

Now, the entire world is inhabited, with lights on the sky dome, fish in the seas, birds in the air, and animals filling every niche of the dry land.

But only with God’s second act on this sixth day is the population of the world complete.  Last of all, as the climax and pinnacle of creation, God creates humanity:

Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth” (Gen 1:26).

This is a difficult and complex verse, worth taking some time to umpack.  We will consider the creation of humanity, and finish our discussion of Genesis 1:1–2:4a, next week.

AFTERWORD:

All season long, it has been a joy to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates play baseball.   Now, with their decisive victory over the Cincinnati Reds, the Bible Guy is foolishly pleased to report that the Pirates are in contention for the National League pennant, and the World Series.  After 20 years without a winning season, let alone a playoff shot, it is most definitely time!  LET’S GO BUCS!!!

In Matthew’s gospel, two names are applied to the Christ before he is even born: Jesus and Emmanuel.  Both names figure prominently in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension.  

With many students of Scripture, I believe that the best explanation of both the similarities and the differences among the first three gospels (commonly called the Synoptic Gospels due to their parallel structures) is that Mark was the earliest gospel, and was used as a source in both Matthew and Luke.  This makes the differences between Mark and Matthew’s versions particularly significant for understanding Matthew’s particular emphases.

In Matthew, as in Mark, Jesus eats a Passover meal with his disciples, breaking the bread and sharing the cup.  Matthew’s version follows Mark’s, with one important addition.  In Matthew as in Mark, Jesus blesses the bread, and breaking it shares it with his disciples, saying, “Take, eat; this is my body” (26:26).  He then takes the cup, gives thanks, and shares it with them:  “Drink from this, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, (just what Mark says) which is poured out for many so that their sins may be forgiven” (26:27-28).  That last phrase, only Matthew has.  Remember that the angel had said, “you will call him Jesus [that is, Yeshua, or “Savior”], because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).  But, how?  Only now do we begin to see.  Somehow, in his death, Jesus takes upon himself the ugliness and horror of human life, human evil, human sin.  

Now we come to the cross.  In Matthew, the death of Jesus is described in more detail than in Mark’s gospel.  In particular, Matthew has a sequence of three groups of people who mock Jesus as he is hanging on the cross.  Their words are important (look particularly at the words in italics).  First there were the passers-by (27:39-40), who said,  “So you were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, were you? Save yourself!”  (Remember the name Yeshua, “the Savior”)  “If you are God’s Son, come down from the cross.”  (Remember the name Immanuel, “God with us”).

Next the religious leaders, the chief priests, the scribes, the elders   mock him, too:  “He saved others, but he can’t save himself. He’s the king of Israel, so let him come down from the cross now. Then we’ll believe in him. He trusts in God, so let God deliver him now if he wants to. He said, ‘I’m God’s Son’” (27:42-43).

Finally, the bandits crucified on either side of Jesus “insulted him in the same way” (27:44).  Of course, the powerful irony is  that he is on the cross because he is Yeshua.  He will not save himself because he is the savior,  enduring in full the ugliness of human evil and sin.  “Come down from the cross if you are the son of God?”  It is because he is the son of God that he remains on the cross.  That is why he, Immanuel, is here.  He is God with us–God with us even here, even at death’s door, even in the depths of human ugliness and depravity.

As in Mark, so in Matthew, Jesus cries out, “Eli, Eli lema sabachthani?” (27:46)–combined Hebrew and Aramaic (see the May 28th blog) for “My God! My God, why have you left me all alone?” (Psalm 22:1).  But the mocking crowd misunderstands him (Matt 27:47-49).  Someone says, “He’s calling Elijah;” someone else says  “Let’s see if Elijah will come and save him.”  But no one will save him, because he is determined to save everyone.  It is by his death that he brings salvation.

Matthew has one more scene to set before us. After his resurrection from the dead, Jesus addresses the disciples one last time:

I’ve received all authority in heaven and on earth.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age  (Matt 28:18-20).

From the very beginning of his life, Jesus is the son of God, born of a virgin and given the name Immanuel:  God with us.  Jesus is the obedient son of his Father in all things.  In Matthew’s gospel, the cross is the ultimate act of Christ’s obedience.   At the cross, Jesus is still Immanuel, God with us, the obedient son of God.  Yet in Matthew, the cross is also the means of our salvation; at the cross, he is Yeshua, Jesus, Savior.  Somehow, his death and resurrection takes up our death and our disobedience, and does away with it.

The apostle Paul puts it this way:

If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life? And not only that: we even take pride in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one through whom we now have a restored relationship with God (Romans 5:6-11).

In Christ’s death, the gap between humanity and divinity is bridged: we are reconciled (Greek katalasso) to God.  In Christ’s resurrection, we are given the hope and the promise of our own deliverance from death.  By entering into our life, and even into our death, Jesus draws God near to us, and us near to God.  He brings God’s divinity down to where we are, and lifts our humanity up to where God is.

St. Gregory of Nazianzus expressed this idea quite well: “That which was not assumed is not healed; but that which is united to God is saved” (to gar aproslepton, atherapeuton ho de henotai totheu, touto kai sozetai).  By his life, Christ as Immanuel brings God to us and us to God.  By his death, Christ as Yeshua enters our death and evil and abolishes its power forever.  By his resurrection and ascension, Christ completes the meaning of both his names.  He is Jesus, our Savior, who destroys our death.  He is Immanuel, God with us, who makes us fully “at one” with God.  He is our atonement.

AFTERWORD:

I owe the insight into the names in Matthew’s gospel that I have shared here to my colleague John Blumenstein, who completed his Ph. D. in New Testament while I was working on mine in Hebrew Bible.  The Blumensteins were our neighbors in campus housing, and our dear friends–in fact, it was John who prompted me to apply for my first teaching job, and started me down this trajectory that my ministry has followed for going on 25 years.  Wherever you are today, John, and whatever you are up to–thank you!

For the last few weeks, we have been thinking about the Jesus’ death on the cross, and what his death means for us.  As a young Christian, the only way of understanding the cross I knew was penal substitution: that Jesus had taken on himself God’s wrath, and the deserved punishment for my sin, so that I could be forgiven.  I grew up singing “There Is a Fountain Filled With Blood,” and “Jesus Paid It All.”  However, like many believers, I have come to be dissatisfied with that model.  I am disturbed by what it says about God, that God’s wrath can only be assuaged by blood, even the blood of his innocent Son.   I am concerned that this approach, focused solely on the death of Jesus, seems to make his life and teaching irrelevant.  In my August 6 blog, I wrote:

There are other biblical models for understanding the cross–most powerfully, I propose, the notion of Jesus as Immanuel (God with us) who expresses God’s presence with us even in the midst of pain, abandonment, and death itself.

This week and next, I am going to unpack that statement.  Today, we will pursue the origin and meaning of the name “Immanuel.”  Next week, we will consider how identifying Jesus as God With Us constitutes a way of understanding the atonement.

Matthew 1:18-24 provides the background for a Child ballad (no. 54) still sung in Appalachia, a Christmas carol called “The Cherry Tree.”   This strange little story never makes it into the Christmas pageants–probably because of its mature language and themes!

Mary, Joseph’s fiancee, is pregnant.  Joseph reaches the obvious, natural conclusion: Mary must have been unfaithful to him.  Certainly, the engagement was off, but in that culture, at that time, more could have–indeed many would have thought, should have–happened.  Mary’s actions had brought shame upon Joseph, as well as upon her own family.  At the least, she should have been exposed to public shame.  At the worst, with the evidence of her pregnancy to confirm her faithlessness, Mary could have been stoned to death (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:13-28, especially 20-21 and 23-27). In some parts of the world, such “honor killings” still occur today.

But Joseph wanted nothing to do with any of this:

Joseph her husband was a righteous man. Because he didn’t want to humiliate her, he decided to call off their engagement quietly (Matt 1:19, CEB).

Before Joseph could act on his decision, however, an angel appeared in a dream, to assure him of Mary’s faithfulness.  Her pregnancy was a miracle; her child “was conceived by the Holy Spirit” (Matt 1:20, CEB)!  Further, the angel gave Joseph instructions concerning this child: “you will call him Jesus” (Matt 1:21, CEB).

The name Jesus (Greek Iesous; Aramaic Yeshua) is a form of the name “Joshua,” derived like that name from the Semitic word for “salvation,” yeshuah.  He is to be named this because of his life’s work: “he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21, CEB).

A second name is also given to the child, however–not by Joseph, but by the writer of this gospel, for the eyes and ears of its readers and hearers (Matt 1:22-23, CEB):

Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled:

(Emmanuel means “God with us.”) 

One characteristic feature of Matthew’s gospel is the quotation of Scriptures that foreshadow Jesus’ life and ministry.  Here, he is quoting from Isaiah 7:10-16.

Before we think about how Matthew reads this passage, we need to see it in its context.  In the middle of the eighth century BC, Jerusalem was under siege: the king of the northern kingdom of Israel, Pekah, and the king of Syria, Rezin, had forged an alliance against the superpower of their day, Assyria.  When Ahaz of Judah refused to join their alliance, they decided to take from him by force the resources he would not yield voluntarily.  Bible scholars call this the Syro-Ephraimite War.

Ahaz is faced with a serious dilemma.  So far as he can see, he has only two choices: he can surrender to the Syro-Ephraimite alliance, or he can surrender to the advancing Assyrian armies.  The prophet Isaiah presents a third option: wait, and trust in God to deliver God’s city.

As we can imagine, the prophet’s option doesn’t hold much attraction for a realistic-minded politician like Ahaz!  So, speaking in the name of the Lord, the prophet makes an offer:

Ask a sign from the Lord your God. Make it as deep as the grave [Hebrew Sheol: the underworld,  or the place of the dead] or as high as heaven (Isa 7:10).

The king responds, with pompous piety: “I won’t ask; I won’t test the Lord” (Isa 7:12; compare Deuteronomy 6:16).  Of course, since it is God who is offering a sign to the king, Ahaz is just blowing smoke.  The exasperated prophet responds:

Isn’t it enough for you to be tiresome for people that you are also tiresome before my God?  Therefore, the Lord will give you a sign. The young woman is pregnant and is about to give birth to a son, and she will name him Immanuel (Isa 7:13-14).

Isaiah does not say to whom this child will be born.  Since elsewhere in Isaiah 7-8, Isaiah gives his own children symbolic names, this may refer to Isaiah’s own child.  Immanuel is mentioned elsewhere in this book, however (see Isa 8:8, NRSV), in a way that sounds as though this is a royal name: perhaps referring to Ahaz’ own son, Hezekiah.

The significance of the sign, however, lies not in who the child is, but in the meaning of his symbolic name, and in the timing of his birth.  In Hebrew, ‘immanu ‘El means “God is with us.”  Ahaz does not need to fear Pekah and Rezin: Judah has a more powerful ally than any earthly army!  The child Immanuel, whose birth is imminent, will by the time that he is weaned (early toddlerhood, when he begins to be able to “reject evil and choose good”) be able to eat “butter and honey” (CEB; perhaps the NRSV “curds and honey” is better): products of the countryside, not available in a city under siege.  In other words, the siege will not last much more than a year or two: “Before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned” (Isa 7:16).

To understand Matthew’s use of this passage, we need to remember, first, that Matthew believes that the Scriptures of Israel point toward Christ–how could they not?  Reading the Scriptures through Christian lenses, alert for passages that prefigure Jesus’ coming, Matthew would of course have hit upon this passage in Isaiah.  His own experience of God through Christ had taught him that all that God is was present, powerfully, in the person of Jesus.  Jesus is God–God in our midst, God with us!  Who else could “Immanuel” possibly be?

Second, we need to remember that Matthew was probably reading Isaiah, not in Hebrew, but in the Greek of the Septuagint (see the Bible Guy blog for May 28, 2013).  Isaiah says that “The young woman is pregnant” (Isa 7:14); in Hebrew, the word he uses for “young woman” is ‘almah: a term for a young woman of marriageable age, implying nothing about her virginity or lack thereof.  In the Septuagint, this word is translated by the Greek parthenos.  Probably in the second century BC when that translation was done, parthenos could have the same implications as the Hebrew ‘almah.  But it could also mean–and certainly by Matthew’s time primarily meant–virgin.  For example, the famous temple in Athens to Athena, the virgin goddess, was called the Parthenon.

Matthew’s tradition told him (as Luke’s told him; cf. Luke 1:26-38) that Jesus’ birth was a miracle, as his mother was a virgin.  This detail would, in his mind, have clinched the identification: Jesus was Immanuel!

Later in Matthew’s gospel, these two names–Jesus and Emmanuel–will recur, specifically in connection with Jesus’ passion, resurrection, and ascension.  Between them, they express briefly and powerfully what it means for Matthew to acclaim Jesus as the Christ.

AFTERWORD:

The Bible Guy is off this weekend to The Gathering, a festival of folk, traditional, and old-time music in Mineral Wells, West Virginia, hosted and organized by my brother-in-law Steve Parker and my sister Tammy.  I will be preaching at the worship service on Sunday.  This is always a highlight of my year–I invite you all to come, if you can!

I have heard more responses, both in the form of comments and in the form of Facebook posts and conversation, on my blog from the first week of August, “‘The wrath of God was satisfied’?” than from any other post since I began this blog in February!  For those just joining us, this post dealt in part with the decision not to include “In Christ Alone” in the new PCUSA hymnal, after the authors insisted on keeping the line

Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied.

In a blog at Patheos’ Evangelical Portal, called “Christianity Without the Atonement” Gene Edward Veith concludes that, for the hymnal committee, “What was objectionable is the doctrine of the atonement.”

I don’t understand Mr. Veith’s conclusion at all.  Indeed, knowing people involved in this decision, and having team-taught a course with one of them (called, ironically, “Models of the Atonement”!), I know that the committee did not object to the Christian doctrine of the atonement.  Mr. Veith rightly asks,

What is the point of Christianity without the atonement?  It becomes turned into another religion.  I suppose the attraction is that it gives us another religion of law, which people somehow prefer to a religion that says they are sinners in need of forgiveness and, yes, atonement.

The question, however, is not, and has never been, whether we believe in the atonement or not.  The cross is not at issue.  The love of Jesus, and his suffering for us; the grace of God; the realization that God’s power, love, and grace are communicated by the cross; the fact that we are sinners who cannot save ourselves–none of this is at issue.  The only question is, what happens on the cross?  What does it mean to say, as Christians have said from the very first, that Jesus died for us?

The verb “atone” and the noun “atonement” are  only about 500 years old.  The Oxford Dictionary dates them to the early 16th century, when they were coined out of  the phrase “at one”–influenced by the Latin word adunamentum (“unity”), and an older word, “onement” (from an obsolete verb form, “to one,” meaning “to unite”).  The word was used particularly in Christian circles to talk about the unification of God and humanity accomplished by Christ.

In particular, “make atonement” was used in the KJV to translate the Hebrew verb kipper, particularly as it is used in Leviticus 16 in connection with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  While this word apparently had the original meaning “cover,” it came to be used specifically for rites of cleansing and purification.  In ancient Israel, Yom Kippur was the day when all lingering defilement from the previous year, either accidental or deliberate, was expunged, making full access to and communion with God possible in the new year.

The CEB appropriately translates Yom Kippur as “Day of Reconciliation.”  In modern Judaism, Yom Kippur is a day of fasting, self-examination and repentance that concludes the ten Days of Awe with which the Jewish year begins.

The centerpiece of the ancient ritual for this day involved two goats.  One was selected by lot as the goat to be offered as the sin offering (the most familiar translation of the Hebrew khatat; the CEB reads “purification offering,” which better catches the significance of this sacrifice in ancient Israel).  The second goat is Azazel’s.  We have no idea what this means; perhaps Azazel was a monster or demon believed to live in waste places, or perhaps Azazel is an old word for “wilderness.”  The KJV read “scapegoat,” which has entered our language as a person or group who are blamed for wrongs done by others.

In Leviticus, the goat for Azazel is not a sacrifice, nor is it killed.  It is driven out into the wilderness, symbolically carrying away the sins of the people.  The other goat, selected by lot as belonging to the Lord, is sacrificed.  Its blood is taken by the high priest into the inner room of the shrine, called the Most Holy Place, where God was believed to be specially present.

In the shrines of neighboring people, built on a similar plan to Israel’s shrine, this inner room contained the image of the god.  But in Israel’s temple, this inner chamber held not an image, but a golden box, usually called the Ark (though the Hebrew word for the Ark, ‘aron, simply means “box,” or “chest”).  The lid of the Ark was a slab of gold, molded in the image of two cherubim: terrible semi-divine heavenly beings like winged sphinxes.

The cherubim‘s inner wings overlapped to form a seat–a cherub throne, as the divine title “the LORD, who is enthroned on the cherubim” indicates (for example, 1 Sam 4:4; Ps 80:1).  The Ark served as the Lord’s footstool, the place where the divine feet touch the earth.  Hence, the ark was the intersection of divine and human worlds, and the place of the Lord’s special presence.  In the days of Israel’s wilderness wandering, the Ark was where Moses and Aaron encountered the Lord (for example, Exod 25:22).

On Yom Kippur, the blood from the people’s purification offerings was applied to the lid of the Ark (kapporet in Hebrew; sometimes translated as “mercy seat,” but best rendered, as the CEB has it, simply as “cover” or “lid”).  This meant that, once a year, the blood of the purification offering was brought to the very feet of God.

What does this have to do with the cross?  In several places in the New Testament, sacrificial language is used for the cross.  In Romans 3:23-25 (NRSV), Paul writes:

since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.

The Greek word translated “sacrifice of atonement” in the NRSV (the KJV has “propitiation”) is hilasterion.  This same Greek word is used in Leviticus 16, not for the sacrifice, but for the kapporet.  Better, then, is the CEB translation, “place of sacrifice,” though even that may be misleading.  Paul’s point is that the cross is where atonement happens: just as, in the ancient rites on Yom Kippur, the lid of the Ark was the place where the damage done by a year of uncleanness was undone.

Scripture provides numerous models for thinking about what happens on the cross: indeed, in these three short verses, Paul offers two: an economic model (our freedom is purchased, that is, we are redeemed, by Christ’s death), and a ritual model (Jesus as our hilasterion).  The point of his ritual metaphor is that the cross is where the gap between God and humanity is undone.

Later Christian thinkers offered still more models, including John Calvin’s proposal that Jesus took on himself the punishment due us for our sin–a model called “penal substitution.”  This is the model reflected in the statement that God’s wrath was satisfied by Jesus’ death.  Atonement does not mean “penal substitution,” however.  That model has nothing to do with Yom Kippur: Leviticus does not say that the sacrifices take the place of the people who offer them, and neither does Paul.

There is more to say, of course.  My only point, in this blog, is that atonement is a bigger idea than any single model.  We can have questions and reservations about Calvin’s explanation of the atonement without denying the reality of the atonement.  However we wrap our heads around this truth, we can confess unwaveringly what the very earliest church discovered: that in the person of Jesus, and particularly in his suffering and death, the gap between humanity and divinity has been overcome.  Through Jesus, we are made “at one” with God.