Patterns in the week of creation form the basis for understanding life in the created world, and help us a great deal in understanding the meaning of weeks and sevens in prophesy. The closer we look, the more correspondences we find. This isn’t the place for an exhaustive study on the subject, but let’s take a deeper look.
The Genesis account is our primary source, but there is much we can add to it from the Book of Job, the Psalms, and New Testament writers. Some of them quote or refer to extra-biblical sources that were either part of the accepted cannon but removed before our era, or were readily available to the writers as related historical reading. Keep in mind that Moses wrote Genesis 2,500 years after the fall – long after the patriarchs lived – and there were older accounts from them that predate Genesis.
I’m not suggesting that Genesis isn’t God’s official version. Every word of it is exactly so. I’m just saying that God has spoken to others before and after Moses on the subject, and we can benefit from these sources also.
The events of creation week are painted as if upon a canvas on which YHVH was free to add whatever he wanted to the picture in any order desired. The Lord transcends time and space because he created it, so his existence is independent of them, even if he chooses to inhabit it. This means he was free to paint things in the foreground as if they were lit, and add the sources of light later in the background if he so desired. We do not know at which moment time started. It may have been on day one, but possibly did not begin until day four when the sun, moon, and stars were set in the heavens to rule over the cycles of night and day, seasons, signs, and years.
The basic pattern is this:
- Three worlds or stages for the play of life are created in three days
- These stages are populated with actors in the following three days
- The seventh day is separated for rest before another week begins
The method of creation is sometimes depicted as words from the lips of God, and sometimes compared to a sharp two-edged sword emanating from the mouth of God. The sword is an apt metaphor, because each time the Lord spoke, he separated one thing from something else. Separation is a primary lesson in the life of believers. We were separated from what we were before to become something else, a new creation of God. As we walk through creation week, pay attention to number and kind of separations – because not all are specifically mentioned as such. Another word for separation is sanctification, an act of God or his representative that makes the new creation holy, or as the Lord says in Genesis, “good.”
Beyond the basic pattern, there are parts of creation that are unseen to man. Again using the analogy of a painting, there are parts of the picture that are outside of the picture frame, just as when we look out a window we view only a portion of the entire surroundings.
For example, there is a place below the earth called Sheol, but it was wasn’t mentioned in creation week, for at that time it was uninhabited. Because it is not separated from earth as an act of God in the narrative, is is neither sanctified nor holy – it’s just there later on, when the dead enter it. Holy Spirit is just as careful in what he did not say, as in what he did say here.
In 2 Cor. 12:2 Paul writes about a man (probably himself) who was “caught up” to the third heaven, but in verse 4 he calls it Paradise. This means that there is a third heaven above the sky and beyond the stars shown to us in Genesis. It also implies that there is more than one firmament separating them, although only one is expressly mentioned in Genesis.
A third example left out of Genesis 1-2 is the creation of angels, who are first mentioned in the LXX version of Genesis in Chapter 6. We do know that God made them, and in the LXX (the oldest existing version) of Job 38:7 they praised God in a loud voice when the stars were made, so they were already present by day four.
In Creation Week, Part Two, we’ll move through the contents of each day in the week to see some of the types that are built upon them. The further we go down this road, the wilder it gets.