Seven days hold the entire Genesis creation story. Why make everything in a week? If this is the All-Powerful God, why not an instant? Why not a month? What could be the significance of a week? Or, to ask a more provocative question, is this really about time or something more? To find the answer, we will enter the foreign world of ancient man.
In previous posts, we established that Genesis is not speaking to us, but ancient Near-East people. And we have looked at how the day structure is not chronological. Instead, it answers ancient man’s question: “What ended the chaos and emptiness and birthed an ordered world?” Now, we must delve further into these people’s thoughts. These ideas will probably feel more alien and unfamiliar to us than what we have already considered.
One of the most conspicuous elements of ancient Near-East religion is that their religious rituals mimicked the deeds or actions of their gods. These divine mimics were rituals performed explicitly to mimic a god. Rituals were scheduled at certain dates and times, matching the supposed time or season that their god did a great deed. For example, the moon was a commonly worshipped god in this region. So, it is no accident that the Sumerians, Hebrews and others in this region predominantly used a lunar calendar.[1] At each new moon they held sacred rituals celebrating the rebirth of their god.[2] In their minds, their goddess, the moon, was born, died and reborn every month.
While this all sounds very strange, we must recognize how these parts of ancient culture influenced their thinking. They celebrated and partook in the deeds of their gods by copying them. In fact, we see a mimic explicitly commanded in the Bible itself:
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”[3]
Here we see the practice of Sabbath, a day of rest, being connected to the creation story. The passage is saying you get to work six days, just like God did when he made everything, then you take a day to rest. Why? Because God rested after He made everything. It may seem like odd reasoning to us that these two things are linked. Couldn’t Exodus have just said: “take a break every week”? What feels odd about this to us probably didn’t to the ancient Near-Easterner. They would have recognized they are looking at a divine mimic. Perhaps what is happening here is that God is revealing something about himself by using an existing religious structure familiar to these ancient people – something they could relate to. He is speaking their language. So, what are the implications that this mimic is encapsulated in a week?
In the creation narrative, every day God is doing something – then he takes a break on the seventh day. Whereas other gods have occasional celebrations relegated to a special day or once-a-month ritual, this God imposes himself on your every day. Something as mundane as a day suddenly becomes the moment and place where god is working. The narrative is telling us that this is a god that is part of one’s daily life. This god is near and intimately involved in our humdrum daily living. This must have been such an alien idea to a culture whose gods were so far away into the sky that they could not be touched.
And what is it that this god is doing that one could even mimic?
Many of the ancient Near-East religions were filled with stories about gods that sound very human. They tell of marriages, adultery, murder, hatred, discord, adventures, and war.[4] However, the Genesis creation narrative is absent of the typical actions of men. Instead, this god is creating every day. The word “create” in the Bible is “bara”.[5] It is a special word meaning to “create out of nothing” and was only used with God. Man; however, does not bara. It is not something man can do. However, man can rest, which seems like such an odd thing to build a religion on.
Yet, the bible puts incredible emphasis on first resting and enjoying the world that God has made. It first petitions ancient man to spend time weekly remembering the good things God has done. Instructing them to center their lives and psyche not around their work, productivity, or labor, but around trusting a good God that made a good world. Secondly, God invites ancient man to mimic himself, instead of playing out the drama of other gods, which merely mimicked the folly of humans. Incredibly, God welcomes them to partner with Him in daily creating new good things. Things that cannot be done by their own power. We will explore what this means in the next post.
What does this mean for modern man? For us today? Do we celebrate a God that is relegated to Sunday or Saturday rituals, or is He a part of our every day? That depends on us. Today, we are invited to join with a narrative that ends each day with God exclaiming, “this is good.” Instead of creating what we want, demanding what we feel we deserve, or dominating over others, we can let our creator guide us into His peace and rest. We can join with Him in creating something new and beautiful in a world that is good but has gone amiss because it forgets Him.
To ancient man, Genesis starts with a startling message: the moon, stars, and sun are not really gods. Equally startling is it claims that there is one big god that has made everything. But Genesis goes beyond explaining what makes everything go. It is a blueprint for how to live life. So, the creation story has to take place within a week. Not because it happened that way, but because it is telling us that God wants to be an intimate part of our daily life.
[1] Months included 29 or 30 days. Further details can be found here: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/History_of_calendars
[2] For a phenomenal read and further detail on Ancient Sumerian religious practices, check out “The Gifts of the Jews” by Thomas Cahill.
[3] Exodus 20:8-11
[4] For example, compare this narrative to the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish.
[5] This is a Hebrew word; the language the bible was originally written in.
