Thursday, September 16, 2010
To be read Friday, Sept. 17
20 And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ 21So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ 23And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
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8 comments:
Here again I must protest the changing of the text from creeping things to an all inclusive living creatures. What they have done is put the serpent on equal ground with all the other creatures that walk on the earth, thus again eliminating the underlying spiritual meaning of the text and merely focusing on a physical one with absolutely no spiritual lesson to be learned from it at all.
In hebrew, creeping is translated to serpent(seraph(saw-rawf')
) who's root meaning is burning, i.e. (figuratively) poisonous (serpent); specifically, a saraph or symbolical creature (from their copper color) -- fiery (serpent), seraph.
follow-up comment:
In this passage, God only brings forth the creatures belonging to the water, not those that walk on the soil that were made from the soil of the earth. This is critical to future passages & lessons therein.
20 Afterward God said, Let the waters bring forth in abundance every creeping thing that hath
life: and let the fowl fly upon the earth in the open firmament of the heaven.
21 Then God created the great whales, and everything living and moving, which the waters brought forth in abundance according to their kind, and every feathered fowl according to his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 Then God blessed them, saying, Bring forth fruit and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the fowl multiply in the earth.
23 So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
FYI - great website for reference to hebrew & greek to english for your readers. Would make for a great permanent side reference link.
http://biblelexicon.org/
oops, instructions, use the lexicon tab for definitions alongside the translations.
Thanks for your insights Linda. When and why was the change made from serpents to living creatures?
Gabriel, I'm not sure when & why. Maybe Pastor Jerry can shed some light on this for us. There are many changes already and many more to come down the road that I will point out. If you haven't, go back & read my comments to the earlier posts in this new journey through Genesis.
Well....everyone beat me to the blog today...once again....anything in today's reading that you've read before? There's some phrases that have been part of each day's readings......seen them?
Regarding the Hebrew...I'm not an expert, but those who translated the NRSV are. As with all translations across languages, it is more of an art than a science.
Some interpreters look for "spiritual" meanings in almost every text, an adventure that is open to wide variances. I am not so sure that "spiritual" meanings are always the intent of the writers. From my rather uninformed perspective, it seems to me that what is being talked about here is the creation of everything above (the dome) and everything below (the waters).
Well....another day!
Pastor, you said that you are not sure that there is always a spiritual meaing in every text. I would say there is not a spiritual one in every word, but the texts (passages) as a whole do have meaning in the repetition of certain words throughout the scriptures.
If we go back to Monday's text where I pointed out the term light & darkness, day & night & the Hebrew translation, this is clearly visible in 1 Thess 5: 4-8
(4)But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
(5) Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
(6) Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
(7) For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.
(8) But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation
God is not just giving us an account of his creation through Moses, he is proclaiming the inner substance of his creation to come. This is why he only called the light good & why he did not procliam the darkness to be good.
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