Of Both Worlds

And YHWH God fashioned the dust-man from the dust and blew into his nostrils the breath of life  Genesis 2:7

Fashioned – Everything important happens in the first three chapters of Genesis.  That is no joke.  If you want to understand life, your place in it, God’s design for it and how to live it, you could not find a better source book than Genesis one to three.  The study of these eighty verses could take you a life time.  Why?  Because they are very, very deep.  Let’s look at just one tiny example.  I owe this illustration to Dr. Ismael Gonzales-Silva of Puerto Rico, a member of our community and a careful reader of the text.  He shared some work by Dr. Gerald Schroeder in The Science of God.  I will quote it to you as I believe it is very important.

“The Bible explicitly states that the body of mankind was formed from the dust of the ground.  The Hebrew word for man, adam, derives directly from the Hebrew word adamah, meaning ground or soil: “and the Lord God formed the adam dust from the adamah . . .” (Gen. 2:19).  The Bible also explicitly states that the bodies of animals were formed from the same material as Adam, the ground: “And the Lord God formed from the adamah all the animals  . . .” (Gen. 2:19).  There is, however, a crucial difference in the original Hebrew between these two verses.  The Hebrew word for formed, ya-tsar, when used for the forming of mankind, is spelled with two Hebrew letters yud.  Although the structure and grammar are the same in verses 7 and 19, when used for the formation of the animals, ya-tsar is spelled with one yud.  Every Torah scroll, whether from Yemen, Jerusalem, or Venice, California, is written this way.

Yud is the abbreviation of God’s explicit name, best translated as the Eternal.  As the ancient commentors, Rashi, Maimonides, and Nahmanides explain this verse, by doubling the yud for mankind, the Bible is telling us that although mankind and animals may share a common physical origin, there is an extra spiritual input in humanity.  The neshama, the spiritual soul of humankind, is the factor distinguishing man from beast.”

Don’t you find this fascinating?  There is no grammatical or linguistic reason to spell ya-tsar with a double consonant, but the Hebrew text does.  The rabbis believe that every letter is inspired.  That means that this mis-spelled word is no mistake.  And so, we have a purposeful change in the similarity in creation language that puts to rest any notion of evolution, centuries before Darwin ever came up with the theory.

Oh, this doesn’t mean that you will be able to use this interesting piece of linguistics to combat Darwinians.  They have their religion and sacred texts too.  This is not ammunition for debate.  It is simply confirmation that God knows what He is doing.  Those of us who have embraced the truth of Scripture will find it confirming.  Those who have not encountered the living God may dismiss it as scribal error.  I just thought you might like to see how deep these words really are.  If you want to know a lot more, maybe I’ll see you in the Genesis class.

Topical Index:  Genesis 2:7, Genesis 2:17, ya-tsar, double yud, yod, adam, adamah