Tag-Archive for » fashion «

The Human God

Friday, June 15th, 2012 | Author:

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.  Genesis 2:7  NASB

Formed – The three verbs of creation each have unique features.  Bara’ is exclusively a verb of divine action, a verb used of creative acts only God can perform.  Asah’ is a completely common verb for making or forming.  It is used hundreds of times to describe all kinds of actions.  There is nothing particularly exceptional about this verb.  Its only importance lies in who performs the act, not how the act was done.  But yatsar is somewhat out of place in the creation account.  Why?  Because it is much too anthropomorphic to be attributed to God.  Yatsar is a verb usually associated with making clay pots or sketching drawings.  It is not the sort of verb you would expect to be used to describe the actions of God.  It’s too pedestrian.  It makes God look like a human being.

Ah, but isn’t that precisely the point?  This same verb, yatsar, is used over and over to describe God’s fashioning of Israel!  Otzen points out that this verb connects human craftsmanship with divine activity.[1]  Yatsar is the verb of partnership with God.  The clay isn’t inert.  It responds to the potter.  For Man to be Man, there must be a response to the divine action.  For Israel to be Israel, there must be a response to the electing God.  Yatsar is a relationship verb.  When God “forms” the dust, He doesn’t just pile up whatever can be gathered with the sweep of a hand.  He establishes a relationship with this “stuff,” and it is the relationship that identifies the uniqueness of this creative act.  Yatsar is the God-human verb of the story.

If we think of the Genesis account as a tribal explanation of origins, then we can understand why yatsar is the verb for both the creation of Man and the creation of Israel.  God’s relationship – His choice, purpose and selection – is the essential factor in formation.  Without the relationship, nothing exists.  From a tribal perspective, God’s fashioning activity and His infusion of the breath of life is the reason human beings are what they are.  Removing  the relationship inherent in the forming or withdrawing the infusion of the breath of life means that Man returns to what he was before these actions occurred.  He returns to the dust.  He ceases to be.  In other words, there is no inherent quality, no spark of the divine, no ontological substance residing in Man so that he lives independently of the action of yatsar and the infusion of the breath of life.  Man exists in relationship with His creation, always!  His breath and his body are entirely dependent on God.  Perhaps Paul captures this Genesis thought when he wrote, “in Him we live and move and have our being.”

From the perspective of the tribe, you do not exist without dependence on God.  If you think or act in ways that deny this dependence, you are simply deluded – and a fool.

Topical Index:  yatsar, form, fashion, Genesis 2:7, relationship


[1] B. Otzen, yasar, in TDOT, Vol. 6, p. 260.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , ,  | 27 Comments

Slowly and Carefully

Thursday, June 14th, 2012 | Author:

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.  Genesis 2:7  NASB

Formed – You don’t know what you are supposed to do until you know who you are made to be.  That’s why the opening passages of the Bible are so important.  That is also why we must not rush through them, assuming we know what they say simply because we have heard the story before.  We must proceed very slowly and with great consideration of each of the words and their implications.

So far we’ve learned there are two verbs in play in the creation account.  The first is bara’, a verb that describes initial creative activity, almost exclusively relegated to God’s handiwork (cf. Genesis 1:1 and 1:21).  Bara’ signals a uniquely creative action that brings into being something that did not exist before.  This is obvious in Genesis 1:1, but not so obvious (and therefore all the more important) in Genesis 1:21.  We discovered that animate life is of a different order than the rest of the created world.  That’s why bara’ is used in Genesis 1:21.  In the biblical account, all original “stuff” is created, not formed.  Then everything is formed, not created, until we get to living things.  These are created (something brand new is added).*  Two verbs.  Two actions.  But there is still another division in the creation story.

The statements of Genesis 1:26-27 use both of these verbs.  Genesis 1:26 says that God made (‘asah) Man.  Does this mean that Man is no different than the animals (look at verse 25 and you will see that the same verb, ‘asah, is used to describe the construction of the “beasts of the earth”)?  We might think so except for the next verse.  Genesis 1:27 uses bara’ when it describes the creation of Man in God’s own image.  Just as God creates animate life in Genesis 1:21, and then forms the living creatures from this new “stuff” called animate life, so God creates human life, formed from the same stuff as other animate life – but with a significant change.  This difference is marked by two changes in the Hebrew text.  The first change is the use of a new verb, the first time the verb is used in the story.  That verb is yatsar.  It means, “to form, to fashion, to shape,” implying intentional and purposeful design.  It comes from the idea of cutting and framing.  In ordinary life, this is the verb used to describe the actions of a potter or an artist.  Yatsar describes fashioning something for a purpose.  What God does He does deliberately, with intentional forethought.  Nothing about this is haphazard or accidental.

In ordinary life, the activity of yatsar not only describes the familiar role of the potter, it also announces purpose.  Ten occurrences of the noun yetser in the Tanakh all should be translated “purpose.”  When God forms Man, it is the mark of exquisite craftsmanship.  When God forms Man, a special verb is used, a verb that is not applied to any other part of creation.  The NASB tries to capture this nuance by translating the word “formed” rather than “made,” but I suspect that an English reader would not recognize the significant difference.

In order to grasp the implications of the use of yatsar, we must recognize its etymological connections to other ancient languages.  In Phoenician and Akkadian, the verb is associated with competing cosmological stories about the creation (e.g. the Babylonian Emunah Elish).  These parallels show us that this verb would have been connected to the actions of pagan gods in their creation of men.  If you read this story in the 16th century BC, you would realize that using this verb, yatsar, deliberately confronts the other creation myths found in the surrounding cultures.  This verb acts like a communications line, telling you that what God does replaces your prior information about the roles of the gods.  The same action is given a new context.  Men do not arise from a war between the gods or from sexual activity among the gods or from some other pagan explanation.  Men are the deliberate, purposeful result of God’s own design.  Yatsar makes it so.

The second important distinction is the introduction of the word adamah, translated “dust.”  Once again, this is the first occurrence of the word.  No other part of creation is formed (yatsar) from the dust of the ground (adamah).  It is true that adamah is used in other places in the Tanakh to signify earth, clay, dirt and ground, but in the elaboration of this action in  Genesis 2:7, the word adamah in combination with apar (dust) plays a particular role not found in its other occurrences.  This will be the next point of examination.

Are you wondering why we are taking so much time to inspect these details?  Let’s draw out some implications.  First, the Hebrew text is written within the context of other ancient mythological explanations of the origin of everything.  In that context, the words chosen to describe the acts of God act in opposition to these myths.  The meanings of the terms come from this background, not from a physics textbook.  Secondly, the Scriptures make hard and fast distinctions between life and non-life and between human life and all other life.  These distinctions are fundamental for understanding the purpose of Man and his relationship to the rest of creation.  Dogs might be best friends, but they do not share the same “life” status as human beings.  Nor is the planet on the same plane as human life.  This difference has enormous ethical implications.  Today’s culture completely blurs these distinctions with resulting ethical confusion.  And finally, for now, something entirely unique and absolutely new is happening in the fashioning of human life.  Understanding what this difference is becomes crucial for fulfilling the purposes God has in mind.  As we shall see.

Topical Index:  ‘asah, make, yatsar, form, fashion, potter, adamah, dust, dirt, Genesis 1:27, Genesis 2:7

* This does not ignore the fact that Genesis 1:25 uses the verb ‘asah instead of bara’ in the same context.  There are many passages where ‘asah and bara are used indiscriminately to describe God’s actions (cf. Isaiah 41:20; 43:7 and 45:7 or Psalm 33:6).  The context of the passages determines if the act is initial and unique rather than formation of something already present.  In the case of Genesis 1:25, the initial creation of animated life is now formed into all the beasts of the earth.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,  | 15 Comments

Back to bara

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 | Author:

o God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds  . . .  Genesis 1:21 ESV

Created – There are demarcations in the Hebrew text that provide important insights about our relationship to God and to the rest of His cosmos.  Unfortunately, some of these significant markers are lost in translation.  The verb bara’, used in this text, is one of the victims of translation concealment.  Why?  Because this is the first time this particular verb is used after the opening verse of Scripture.  In other words, up to the events of the fifth day, God does not create in the way that Genesis 1:1 reports.  Until this day, God “forms” (‘asah) what He has already created.  But on this day, something new is added.*

Genesis 1:1 opens the Hebraic view of cosmogony with a statement that everything is created (bara’) by God.  But this doesn’t mean that on the first day God instantaneously made each and every piece and part of the cosmos.  In fact, what this verse implies (as we see from the subsequent report) is that God made the “stuff” out of which all the rest of creation up to day five is “formed.”  In other words, on Day 1 God makes all the necessary material.  On days 2 through 4 He shapes this raw material into the various objects that populate the cosmos, e.g. light; the sun, moon and stars; the waters and the earth, vegetation.  These He “forms” from the original “stuff.”

Why is this differentiation important?  Because the Genesis account is not a textbook in a physics or astronomy lab.  It is, among other things, a polemic against the competing mythologies of the cultures surrounding Israel in the 16th Century BC.  And common to those mythologies was the idea of other celestial entities who played a role in the creation saga.  Tanin, the dragon embodiment of chaos, fought a war with Marduk in Babylonian mythology.  Yam and Baal were Canaanite gods who battled over creation.  The sun, moon and stars were not objects fashioned by a Supreme God but were gods themselves, vying for power and holding mere mortals captive.  The briefest glance at a history of tribal cultures will convince you that the world is populated by all kinds of gods in all kinds of forms.  When the Hebrew view came on the scene, it set aside all of this pagan explanation, relegating everything to the forming design of the one true God.  That’s why Genesis 1:2-19 uses the verb ‘asah, not bara’.  Everything except God Himself is constructed from His original material.  None of it has any life or power on its own.

But something happens in verse 20.  Swarms of animate creatures are created, not fashioned.  These are described as having nephesh hayyah.  In other words, there is a significant, essential difference between the inanimate creation (which includes all plant life) and the animate creation.  Animate beings are not of the same order nor are they ontologically connected to inanimate beings.  In the biblical narrative, life does not evolve from non-life.  Life must be added to the equation by the action of God.  The “stuff” might be the same, but the result is entirely different because now God engages in the renewal of the original creative process.  Genesis 1:1 creates.  Genesis 1:2-19 forms.  Genesis 1:20-21 creates.

And now the stage is set for another linguistic demarcation in Genesis 2:7, for when Man comes on the scene, he is created (bara’), but there is yet another distinction.

Why should we care about these nuances?  Isn’t it all still God’s handiwork?  We care because in a world where men are reduced to higher rungs of the same molecular composition as carbon and mold, we must assert and demonstrate the uniqueness of our design.  Not only are we not related to primordial slime, we are designed in such a way that the awesome power of God’s image is expressed in our purpose.  To reduce that power to nothing more than random collections of DNA is to strip all men of their dignity, responsibility and destiny.  The Hebrew text will have nothing to do with such base paganism.  In this view it stands alone.  Apart.  Unique.  Just like its author.

Topical Index:  create, fashion, bara’, ‘asah, animate, Genesis 1:21

For a reminder of the unusual characteristics of Genesis 2:7, see May 15 and 16, 2011.

*NASB attempts to capture this difference by using “create” and “made,” but without the Hebrew original, I am afraid the point of differentiation might be lost to the English reader.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , ,  | 25 Comments

Pattern Recognition

Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | Author:

and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2

Conformed – Let’s go to visit the blacksmith. Of course, today you might have to travel a long way to find one. Most of the operations of a blacksmith have been given to machines. But we all know what a blacksmith does. He takes metal and shapes it into something useable. He heats, bends and pounds on the metal until he produces a sword, a plow or a horseshoe. That takes real effort and a lot of beating. And that’s what Paul has in mind with the Greek word suschematizo. Literally, it means to shape according to a pattern. It is “to fashion with.” The verb implies a schematic. This is constructing by blueprint.

Paul instructs us not to be shaped with the pattern of this age. But we wont’ be able to identify the pattern without adopting Paul’s worldview. Why didn’t Paul spell out the pattern to avoid? Why isn’t the next verse something like this: “Don’t smoke, drink or go to wild parties?” Why did Paul feel confident that his readers would know what he meant without mentioning the details?

The answer is built into the culture of the early church. When I became a Messianic believer in the first century, I entered into the commonwealth of Israel. As James points out in Acts 15, I heard Moses taught every week. My culture was the culture of Torah. The people of my congregation were practicing Torah. I prayed, learned and lived Torah. And Torah was radically different from the patterns of behavior in the surrounding world. My conversion brought me in touch with an entirely different way of living, a way that challenged my previous patterns at home, at work and at worship. Paul doesn’t have to spell it out because the ways of the “new” man were an obvious part of the community.

But things changed. The “church” adopted a Greek worldview. In the process, it moved from a Torah-oriented culture of radical difference to a culture that embraced, accommodated and, in some cases, even promoted patterns that would have been considered anathema in previous centuries. That syncretization is still going on today. Now we are so far removed from the culture of Torah that we no longer know the difference between the patterns of this age and God’s point of view. Because the “church” has adopted the world’s ways a little at a time over nineteen centuries, we have moved away from God’s worldview in incremental steps. We are like the proverbial frog in the heated pot. Since the change is only one degree at a time, we don’t notice the difference until it kills us.

You can get your cold slap in the face by reading Deuteronomy seriously. Any reading shows us the dramatic contrast between Paul’s view of godly patterns and our view of syncretism. It is impossible to read the exhortations in the New Testament for godly living if we remove those exhortations from the culture of Torah. That is why the church today has nothing really radical to say to the world. The church is the world, wrapped in God-language. It is not radically different. It does not compete with the culture of the world. It does not offer a completely different way of life. No wonder we are so confused and impotent. We can’t be transformed because we are trying to tweak the world’s blueprints instead of throwing them in the trash.

So, what can we do? Well, we can start by changing what we are able to change, right now. We can stop trying to accommodate to the world’s timetable, expectations and attitudes. We can start with one step from Deuteronomy today, and add another tomorrow. We can be willing to be different. The patterns of this age are no friends to the righteous no matter how well they have been shaped to fit the pew.

Topical Index: syncretism, suschematizo, fashion, conform, Romans 12:2, worldview

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , ,  | 13 Comments