47.78.04° N, 25.49.70° W
Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:9-10 NASB
Seas – The ancient fear of chaos. The sea—that enormous body over which men have virtually no control, threatening at any moment to rise up and destroy. That’s the imagery of the sea in the time of the Egyptians. “To the people of ancient Israel, the sea must generally have been perceived as a place of dread, fraught with dangers. Jonah 2:2f. gives expression to the close relation between Sheol and the seas from which Jonah was delivered. It may well be that this fear of the seas is what gives rise to John’s eschatological vision ‘the sea shall be no more’ (Rev 21:1).”[1] This is why the opening verses of Genesis describe God’s absolute sovereignty over the waters, so much so that He can prescribe their boundaries. Behind this description is an emotional connection. I don’t have to fear that the human world will collapse into primal chaos. God rules over it all.
Today I am somewhere close to 47.7804° N, 25.4970° W. Below me are mountain ranges, amazingly deep crevices, and most of the world’s animate forms of life. Yes, that’s right. Fifty percent of the world’s creatures live below my floating feet. In fact, below 1000 feet, in a world that is totally and eternally black (no surface light penetrates beyond this limit), the world is still alive with an incredible range of creatures, most of which no one actually thought existed just 100 years ago. Xenophyophores live as deep as 35,000 feet below the surface, generating their own light through bioluminescence. Sperm whales can dive to 10,000 feet at pressures that would crush a human being into the space of a soup can. We know less about the depth of the oceans than any place in outer space. It is estimated that there are more than 30 million undiscovered species in the ocean’s depths. This is truly the last frontier—right under my feet.
And God made it all!
The ancient world feared the sea. Now we’re discovering that God filled it with life, not terror—and life so abundantly that we are just beginning to catalog the vast array of species (while, at the same time, humanity is exterminating the species we know about though uncontrolled exploitation and pollution). Don’t you suppose that the prime directive (“let them rule over the fish of the sea”) means we are accountable for what we do to nourish and preserve this life far below the deck I stand on?
In a few days we will arrive in Miami. I’ll step back on the shore. But this time I’ll remember all those miles floating above God’s magnificent display in the deep.
Topical Index: sea, fear, chaos, life, Genesis 1:26, Genesis 1:9-10
[1] Gilchrist, P. R. (1999). 871 ימם. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., pp. 381–382). Chicago: Moody Press.
