Tag-Archive for » Genesis 2:7 «

What’s the Difference?

Sunday, June 17th, 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

From the ground – Why does the text use the word ha-adamah (the ground)?  Once more we are confronted with the first occurrence of a word.  We might have expected erets (earth) to be used here.  After all, erets has been part of the creation story since the opening verse.  Why does the account now shift to adamah?  The first answer is the obvious word play.  Adam comes from the adamah.  The Man is intimately connected to the ground.  Just like adam, adamah is a derivative of ‘dm.  There is no scholarly consensus on the origin of the root word.  Similar words in other ancient languages seemed to be connected to the idea of blood (red) and soil.  Ancient cosmologies portray men created from the blood of a dead god or the blood of a god mixed with clay.  In these pagan cosmologies, “blood” is the source of life, not the “breath of God.”  If adamah has connections of these other ancient myths, then its use in the Hebrew account offers another polemic.  In Hebrew, blood is not the source.  It might be the carrier of life, but the source of life is God.  Blood is just one more created thing.

Now we need to investigate why the text uses adamah rather than erets.  While the words show a wide variety of uses and sometimes even synonymous application in The Tanakh, in the creation account and the Genesis context there seems to be a distinction.  Erets is a word that covers geographic applications.  “The heavens and the earth” is a phrase used to designate the entire cosmos.  The “land” of Canaan or the “holy land” are uses of erets that describe geographical physical boundaries.  Even the use of erets for the “underworld” still designates a “place.”  In this regard, the biblical account describes erets in ways that oppose the other ancient mythologies, for example, the “earth” is not the result of a divine war, it is not evil, it is under God’s total control and it arises by the divine word, not by some conflict or sexual action.

Adamah appears to be related to productivity, not necessarily geography.  When the Genesis account uses the word adamah, it is often associated with what comes from the ground.  The initial use of adamah is about the production of Man and the animals.  Subsequently, adamah is the fruitful soil or the soil that no longer responds to men because of sin.  This distinction suggests that while men occupy the erets (which belongs to God), they work and serve the adamah as the source of their being and the partner in their fruitfulness.  Only men and animals (animate life) have this relationship to adamah.

What conclusions can we draw from this brief examination?  First, we recognize that our purpose as men and women is not the same as the Greek idea of destiny.  Destiny is what I make of myself.  Purpose is what I do with the relationships God gives me.  Secondly, we see that even my fruitfulness and the source of my being is within the context of relationship.  The fact that adamah can be both cooperative or uncooperative means that there are no fixed and determined factors in my existence.  I am all relationship.  We are quick to recognize this when it comes to the “breath of life,” but now we see that even our physical being is a relationship concept.  It is just as impermanent as God’s animating breath.  The earth (erets) is the permanent territory of God’s creative expression, but the adamah depends on the interaction between God-granted life and purpose.  In other words, in this context adamah contains the idea of partnership.

Why is this so important?  Because once again we learn that the biblical view of what it means to be human is thoroughly dynamic.  To be human is to become in partnership, in relationship, with even the physical source of my being.  Animation (the breath of life) is a partnership with God.  So is my physical existence.  And furthermore, my purpose of being is the extension of both of these partnership relations.  I am to work/worship/serve the relationship that constitutes who I am.  In the biblical worldview, I am not a “what.”  I am a “who.”  And who I am depends entirely on how I am related to God’s actions.

Topical Index: man, adamah, ground, erets, earth, apar, dust, Genesis 2:7

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Nothing Much

Saturday, June 16th, 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

Dust – Now we come to the remarkable phrase, “dust of the ground.”  The Hebrew is apar min ha’adamah.  Apar is the common noun for dust, loose dirt or debris.  It occurs in many passages in the Tanakh describing everything from the substance used to fill Abraham’s wells to the dust and ashes thrown on the head as a sign of mourning.  It is an entirely common noun.  So, why is it so special here?

Ronald Allen (in TWOT) provides two important insights.  First, dust is a reminder of God’s sovereignty.  Man is nothing but dust except for God.  He is divinely-fashioned-nothing-special stuff.  Dust demonstrates Man’s essential insignificance apart from God.

Allen also points out that the ubiquity of dust reminds us of the ubiquity of God’s grace and covenant.  In fact, the deliberate connection between “dust of the ground” and “sands of the seashore/ stars in the sky” shows us that God’s promise involves innumerable descendents from the beginning.  God has all humanity in mind in the creation of the first Man.

Finally, employing a substance as common (and annoying) as dust serves a polemic purpose.  Man comes from what is otherwise quite useless.  He does not arise from something spiritually special or physically unique.  He is not the encapsulation of a divine essence housed in a physical body.  Nor is he simply the further development of physical reorganization.  He is nothing special – and at the same time – everything unique.  He is himself a bridge between the ordinary and the extraordinary, between the created universe and the animating breath of God.  Unlike the competing mythologies of origin, the Hebrew view does not put Man on a divine pedestal nor does it relegate him to slave-slime.  Man is not made to be slave to the gods.  He is not an after-thought.  Yet He is not a god himself, nor even a demi-god.  He is the intersection of divine purpose, divine breath, divine design and the most common, most abundant, most profane “stuff” of the world.  In this position, both humility and thankfulness are his appropriate responses.  Man has no worth apart from God, but God values him immensely – and that is more than enough for Man to desire to be all that his Creator intended him to be.

Who would have imagined that such a common material like dust would carry such important theological significance?  This insight emphasizes once more how crucial it is to read the text in its own background, in this case, in the background of a tribe coming out of pagan Egypt.  Genesis is a story that answers the questions, “Who are we and where did we come from?”  Since we believers are grafted into this history, these questions are our questions.  Set aside your Greek science and enter into tribal history.  Know your beginnings – and your purposes – in the story of beginnings.

Topical Index:  dust, apar, Genesis 2:7

 

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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.

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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.

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Human Dualism

Friday, September 23rd, 2011 | 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

Living Being – Will we ever get past Genesis?  Probably not.  The depth of this account of creation can hardly be plumbed.  Once more we return to the source of our existence to discover additional insights into the Hebrew view of humanity.  God created us with inherent duality.

That might not seem like a big deal until you realize how completely this essential dualism opposes our Western view of human being.  The Greek view of humanity is reduced to a unitary principle – the principle of reason.  In the Greek view, the power of reason reigns supreme.  Man is man because he is able to reason.  His unitary being is derived from this fundamental.  Reason is what makes us human.

This assumption permeates the West.  It is the basis of our penchant for scientific exploration and explanation.  It is the bedrock of our view of government and law.  It is the source of our economic policy and our desire for worldwide agreement.  But it is not the biblical point-of-view.  In the Hebraic world, reason is a tool to be used for control of choice.  Reason is an instrument, not the source.  In the Hebraic view, the fundamental constituent of human being is the duality of the yetzer ha’ra (inclination toward evil) and the yetzer ha’tov (inclination toward good).  In other words, we are conscious beings precisely because we are in tension between these two elements.  We were created with both of these elements.  In fact, without both of them, we would cease to be human.  Being human cannot be reduced to a single unity because being human means making choices between two competing directions.  Being human consists of being the creature with two natures.  “Choice itself is not an act of the being, but an act of being.”[1]  We are the choices we make.  That’s what makes us human, choosing between yetzer ha’ra and yetzer ha’tov.

What this means is that efforts to remove the yetzer ha’ra are doomed to failure.  A being without yetzer ha’ra is no longer human but rather a lobotomized, instinctual creature much more like an animal.  Prayers asking God to remove my tendency toward evil might as well be prayers asking God to make me a robot.  The issue is not the removal of the evil inclination but rather the strength to choose otherwise and the wisdom to improve and accelerate the choices for good.  I do not ask God to rescue me out of my humanity.  I ask Him to rescue me in my humanity.  Choice is who I am.  What I need is strength to make the right choice.  Reason is one of the tools at my disposal to direct my choices, but reason is also under the influence of the yetzer ha’ra and therefore cannot be the only tool I use.  Reasonable men can still make evil choices.  Reason will not save me.  Only the application of God’s Spirit at the crossroads of choice can save me.  And that process will never cease as long as I am nephesh hayah (living person).

Topical Index:  man, choice, yetzer ha’ra, nephesh hayah, living being, Genesis 2:7


[1] Ira Stone, Mesillat Yesharim, p. 88.

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The Bloods of Your Brother

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011 | Author:

And YHWH Elohim formed Man out of dry, loose earth dirt, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living person. Genesis 2:7 (my translation)

Breath – Once we realize that this word, hayim is plural, we are forced to ask why, especially since the preceding word, nishmat, is singular.  It’s like saying “he breathe” rather than “he breathes.”  But it’s no mistake.  We suggested that there must be a connection between the unity of God, manifest in His animating power, and the diversity of His creation in all the forms that His outpouring word takes.  But maybe there is something else here, something unique to the dry, dust earth-to-heaven bridge God forms called nephesh haya.

Heschel puts his finger on this nuance.  “There can be no nature without spirit, no world without Torah, no brotherhood without a father, no humanity without attachment to God.”[1] When God tells Israel that they are His witnesses, He is not talking about their superior theological understanding.  He is talking about their legacy.  Just as God decries the spilling of the bloods of Havel (Genesis 4:10 – the word is plural), so we see that we are never individuals standing apart from humanity.  “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not principles to be comprehended but lives to be continued.  The life of him who joins the covenant of Abraham continues the life of Abraham.  For the present is not apart from the past.  ‘Abraham is still standing before God’ (Genesis 18:22).  Abraham endures forever.  We are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.”[2]

When YHWH Elohim breathed hayim (lives) into the ha-adam, He brought about the existence of a legacy; a legacy that stretches forward to each and every one who is in covenant with YHWH, who is coming to nishmat haya – a legacy that stretches back to the first ha-adam, the one who began the red blood transformation covenant with El Shaddai.  To be human is to be connected to this transforming becoming.  In once sense, no one of us will be truly human until we all reach the end of the process.  And that end has been revealed to us in Yeshua HaMashiach, the one who is fully human, fully nephesh haya because He is the completed nishmat hayim.   Perhaps Paul had something far more profound in mind when he spoke about the Body.

Now the question:  Who is your blood legacy?  Who has been your covenant connection?  Who carries your nephesh haya back to the ha-adam and who are you equipping to carry it on after you?  Succession planning is a big deal in the corporate world, but it is insignificant when compared to God’s succession plan.  You are human insofar as you take the nishmat hayim and pass it to the next one becoming a person.  Will you rob God by ignoring the plural hayim?  Will you steal from those who are waiting for your gift?

Today’s Word: hayim, life, Genesis 2:7, Heschel, legacy

[1] Abraham Heschel, I Asked For Wonder, p. 128.

[2] Ibid., p. 136.

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Poetic Justice

Saturday, May 21st, 2011 | Author:

And YHWH Elohim formed Man out of dry, loose earth dirt, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living person. Genesis 2:7 (my translation)

Breath / living – If you read this verse in Hebrew, you will be impressed at its internal elegance.  There is alliteration (adam – afar – adamah) (nishmat chayim – nephesh chaya) (va-yipach be-apav) and structural parallelism (both yitser and chaya are spelled with double yod’s).  Read without the usual substitution of Adonai or Ha-Shem, the opening of the verse contains another alliteration (va-yitser YHWH and Elohim et – although the et is completely hidden in translation).  It would take a genius to produce just this single verse even on the structural components, but when you add the depth of meaning, then you are in the realm of divine authorship.  In thirteen words, everything we need to know about the nature of Man is revealed.

Man is formed deliberately.  There is not a hint of accident or evolution.  He is formed for a purpose.  Inherent in that purpose is his ability to choose – and he is capable of choosing both good and evil.  The potential to choose is neither accidental nor punitive.  It is essential to being human and an endowment of the Creator.  Therefore, Man is responsible.

Man is the connection point between the earth and the divine Creator.  He shares in both and both are necessary to his being.  He is neither a spiritual entity imprisoned in a body of flesh nor a creature arising from the primeval muck striving to become divine.  He is formed as the bridge, the axis point of the world, the one called to be God’s regent.  His creation verifies the essential goodness of the world and, at the same time, recognizes that the world is not all that there is.  Man is the vehicle by which heaven and earth are united and will be united.  And his choosing is at the heart of the operation.

Man is who he is because he has been given life.  God imparted this particular form of life to Man directly from His own being.  Man is man because he is God-animated.  Man is theopneustos, to borrow a term from 2 Timothy 2:15.  He is God-breathed.  Any characterization of Man that does not rest on this ontological reality is a false characterization, a defective characterization.  Man without God is not Man at all.  It is life bequeathed on Man that makes Man what he is.

This implies that Man does not and cannot earn his way in the world.  To be is to be given.  Life itself is God’s and God gives it as a gift, but it does not come without conditions.  Man is choice wrapped in the gift of life.  Man’s choice has a direct bearing on the manifestation of this gift.  Choice either supports and enriches life or it starves and destroys life.  The gift is conditioned by the fact that it is God’s breath that animates, not Man’s.  Man is dependent and derivative.  What cannot be breathed by God is not in concert with God’s breath and what is not in concert with God’s breath will not live. Nishmat chayim produces nephesh chaya. It is not capable of producing anything else.

The nishmat chayim is also curious.  Nishmat (breath) is singular but chayim (lives) is plural.  What lies behind that idea that God’s “breath of life” is both unity and diversity at the same time?  Why is His single breath the animator of lives?  And in what way does Man embrace, absorb, retain “lives” given from God?  The text tells us that Man became a living nephesh, and we think we know what this means.  But even here the Hebrew text contains another anomaly.  The expression should be ha-adam nephesh chaya, but it isn’t.  It actually reads, ha-adam le-nephesh chaya. What is the purpose of the extraneous preposition le.  Literally, the text reads “man to person became.”  Could it be that Man transitioned from something not-a-person into a person?  Maimonides thought so.  All the more reason to recognize that being a person, being human as God intended and breathed, is not unconditional nor is it concomitant with being born homo sapiens.  Man becomes a person.

Today you and I will breathe God’s gift of the nishmat chayim.  We will choose if we will become a person.  We will embrace the lives in God’s breath and manifest those lives in some way that bespeaks our Creator.  Then we will be human.  But it will depend on what you do today.  You cannot be human tomorrow until tomorrow you breathe His breath.

Topical Index: human being, Genesis 2:7, nephesh chaya

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Sin Revisited (3)

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 | Author:

And YHWH Elohim formed Man out of dry, loose earth dirt Genesis 2:7a (my translation)

Formed – “To bring desire into existence.”  That’s yatsar.  God desired partnership in the regulation and enhancement of His creation.  That desire was manifested in the formation of Man.  Because the desire to bring into existence is the essence of the image of God, Man shares this passion with the Creator.  God created this passion good!  It is not evil by itself.  It is, in fact, an expression of who God is.  But because it is directionless, it can be misused.  The yetser ha’ra is the misuse of divinely-installed passion.  The rabbis tell us just how subtle and disguised this misuse can be.  “The evil impulse is at first like a passer-by, then like a lodger, and finally like the master of the house.”[1] They point out that the reign of the evil impulse is tantamount to idolatry within.  “There shall be no strange god in thee” (Psalm 81:9) is interpreted as a remark about the yetser ha’ra that dwells within a man.  Our job, with the help of the Lord, is to kick out the lodger and reinstall the rightful Master.  This is why life on the Way is a battle, a journey fraught with danger, a walk in the valley of the shadow of death.  And this is why the presence of His rod and staff comfort.  Both are needed if we are to persevere.  This is why initiation into His fellowship is never the end of the story.  Until the last of my desire to bring into being is submitted to the Lord of life, I will be in need of assistance, reinforcements and deliverance.

Yatsar is God’s verb of formation.  And God makes good.  Therefore, yatsar in my life and in yours is good.  God made it so.  The issue we face is not the corrupt character we inherit.  It is the problem of the choice we make with the power to bring desire into being.  In other words, the significant difference between Judaism and some Christian theology (but not all, of course) is that Judaism expresses the conviction that Man is “unfettered” is his will.  “The nature of his life is molded by his desires.  He can misuse life’s opportunities if he so wishes, but in no circumstances would it be agreed that he must misuse them.  The evil impulse constantly tempts him; but if he fall, the responsibility is his and his alone.”[2]

With this in mind, we can easily see why the Bible places so much emphasis on continuing in the faith and, frankly, so little on the initial act of acceptance.  Everywhere in Scripture we encounter encouragement and instruction to keep on track.  Everywhere we find exhortation to abide in the commandments.  The contemporary emphasis on a single act of dedication or a moment’s declaration of belief is absent from Scripture.  What matters is what we do in the long run, one day at a time.  And nothing except our own misused passionate desire can prohibit us from becoming what God formed.

Topical Index:  yatsar, formed, desire, passion, Genesis 2:7

[1] Abraham Cohen, Everyman’s Talmud, p. 91.

[2] Ibid., p. 95.

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Sin Revisited (2)

Monday, May 16th, 2011 | Author:

And YHWH Elohim formed Man out of dry, loose earth dirt Genesis 2:7a (my translation)

Formed – We’ve learned that this occurrence of yatsar contains a double Yod.  The rabbis tell us that this indicates the two impulses of Man, the yetser ha-tov and the yester ha’ra.  It’s pretty clear that tov (good) and ra (evil) fit our experience, but what else can we learn about the word yatsar?  What does this verb tell us about the passion behind these two impulses?

Twenty times in Scripture the word is translated as “potter.”  Ten more times is it translated as “purpose” or “form.”  This word is connected with God’s creative work, the formation of a child in the womb, the molding of clay or metal, the crafting of weapons, the making of plans and God’s election.  The primary idea behind yatsar is cutting and framing.  Yatsar is purposeful effort.  The pictograph shows us the image of “making a person’s desire.”  Yatsar brings desire into being.  When God’s actions are yatsar actions, they accomplish deliberate purposes.  The same it true of us.  We express the image of God in our purposeful actions.  We make.  We create.  We engage.  We plan.  We select.  All of these acts are expressions of the image of God.  The image of God in Man is not some kind of static quality or quantity like your blood type or your gender.  The image of God in Man is what you do.  When you do what God does, you express God’s image and become human.  Every human being is capable of bringing desire into being.  That’s what makes us human.

But there is more than one way to make my desires a reality.  When we express what God does not do, we still engage yatsar but we do it in ways that undermine or subvert God’s purposes.  We don’t express the image of God.  We become something other than human.  To sin is simply to engage yatsar in ways that do not express the purpose of God in the formation of His image.  To sin is to use yatsar for our own purposes, independent of God’s intended desire.  In other words, yatsar, that power that drives us, arrives without direction.  What results from that passion to create depends on the direction we give it.  It’s not without consequence that the homophone of yatsar means “to be in distress, to be frustrated, to be in a state of anxiety” (Job 18:7 and 20:22).  Yatsar in the wrong direction has unexpected consequences.

When Havvah expresses her revenge toward “the man” who would not forgive her, she exercises yatsar in the wrong direction.  She knows that this creative power to produce another “man” is tied to the productive purposes of God.  She believes that she is partnering with YHWH in this ultimate act of creation.  She thinks she is expressing something akin to divine energy.  But her motivation is clouded and her method is deficient.  She barters her way into a substitution for Adam rather than domesticating her creative power to the will of YHWH.  We need only reflect on the enormous difference between Havvah and Miriam (Mary) to see the two directions in action.

Let’s apply these insights to the idea of sin.  James tells us that temptation is not sin.  He says that each man is tempted by his own lusts (epithumias).  Once tempted, a man is “drawn out” (James 1:14) by these lusts and seduced.  After this seductive conception sin comes forth.  In other words, temptation is a directional signal. It seeks to divert you from the path.  If you follow the arrow of the temptation, it will produce sin.  You will miss the mark.  But you don’t need to!  You don’t have to follow the arrow in a new direction.  You don’t have to get off course.  The same passion that can lead to a different direction can be harnessed to push us along the Way.  The same energy, the same desire, the same creativity can be put into action to go straight rather than get sidetracked.  The key is to see the direction, to look ahead and notice that this small turn leads away from God’s purposeful image.

Today you will get up in God’s grace.  You will open your eyes to His world.  You will breathe.  That fulfills His purpose.  Each moment of the day that you are doing what you were designed to do, you are drawing closer to Him.  Eating, talking, walking, working, enjoying, engaging – they can all be harnessed to follow the Way.  The only actions you must eliminate are the ones that take you in the wrong direction.  And you can eliminate them with passion!

Topical Index: sin, passion, yatsar, Genesis 2:7, James 1:14

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Sin Revisited (1)

Sunday, May 15th, 2011 | Author:

And YHWH Elohim formed Man out of dry, loose earth dirt Genesis 2:7a (my translation)

Formed – Something very odd occurs in this verse.  In fact, there are two rather unusual linguistic events here.  The first is about how we were made.  Normally, the verb yatsar (to form, to fashion, to shape) is spelled Yod-Tsadde-Resh.  In fact, in every occurrence in Scripture except this one, yatsar is always spelled this way.  But here yatsar is spelled with two Yod’s.  Instead of Y-Ts-R we have Y-Y-Ts-R.  Naturally, the rabbis noticed this.  Why did God spell yatsar in this unusual way just here, at the forming of Man?  They explained that “The Holy One, blessed be He, created two impulses, one good and the other evil.”[1]

Pull back from the Augustinian-Lutheran doctrine of sin and ask yourself what the rabbis imply with this explanation.  Jewish thought suggests that Man was created with both good and evil tendencies.  Before the Fall, at the moment of formation, Man had the yetser ha’ra in his very being.  This implication gives rise to an immediate question:  Why?  Why would God create us with this evil impulse?  The rabbis answer:  “The urge, although it eventuates in wrongdoing, is an essential equipment of man, and, indeed, grants him the opportunity of becoming a moral being; because without it there would be no possibility of his doing evil and, as a consequence, goodness also would be meaningless.”[2] Isn’t this exactly what we require for the concept of free choice?  Don’t we have to have the possibility of disobedience in order to justify rewarding obedience?  If Man before the Fall has no potential and no tendency toward evil, then why are Havvah and Adam tempted?  And if Man is created with both tendencies, doesn’t that mean that any man, even a man who does not yet serve YHWH, can do what is right?

The Augustinian-Luther idea of sin implies that no man is capable of right action until after that man is redeemed and given a new heart.  This implies that all my acts prior to redemption are morally evil, even if those acts appear to be righteous.  Jewish thought rejects this assumption.  Men can and do perform acts of righteousness before they embrace YHWH’s fellowship.  Those acts of righteousness come about because men follow the yetser ha-tov (the good impulse), built into them from creation.  Of course, the yester ha’ra often overrides the desires of the yetser ha-tov, and men disobey and commit sin.  Therefore, all men need a redeemer, but not because they are constituted sinful; rather because they willfully chose to act on promptings of the yetser ha’ra.  The issue with sin is not ontological (how we are made).  It is volitional (how we choose).

But here’s the important shift.  Without the yester ha’ra, there would be no passion in life.  It is the drive to possess, to succeed, to create, to propagate that makes Man different than an animal guided by instinct.  Men desire to be more than they are – and in that desire they learn to become obedient to the will of the Father.  Without that inner push, we are nothing more than robots, following a pre-programmed script.  The yetser ha’ra makes life go – and is the most dangerous element of the life we know.  Our task is not to rid ourselves of passion but rather to domesticate it in the service of the King.

Topical Index:  yetser ha’ra, sin, evil impulse, Genesis 2:7

[1] Ber. 61a

[2] Abraham Cohen, Everyman’s Talmud, p. 90.

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