Blessing and Generations: Connections among Gen. 1-2, Matt 1, and Ps 1

I love reading the Bible. I really do. Both when it lifts me up and exhilarates me as well as when it frustrates and falls flat. I've read this passage for the second time in the last month. The fist time I read it, I couldn't stop pacing back and forth in my room I was so overcome with exhilaration. I had to call me brother just to get some of that enthusiasm released a bit or I would have burst. This time, not the same. I feel like I've been cheated. Like it didn't deliver how I felt it should. My expectation was that it would have the same effect, and I really wanted it to. But it didn't. And although this can bring to disappointment for some, I am laughing at myself. Laughing at how God will use even these details to thwart the restrictions and rules that I would bound him with. Not in a mocking way, but rather in an ironic way. There, he did it again. I thought I could predict, understand, and explain God's ways. Good luck. So much for that. So, I am glad that this happened. This shows me again how little and feeble I am. It shows me not to rely and depend on my own figuring out of things, but simply trust. I like that.

Now, to the text. I few things that I noticed, that struck me, when I read it a month ago or so and that I also observed today.

Genesis 1-2

• God creates for a purpose. Repeatedly, we see that God created for a reason. There was a goal, a telos, for his creation. While some of it, like the fish and the birds, doesn't have an explicit purpose in the text, I was struck by the emphasis on the things that did. Like the sun and moon. Repeatedly, it says, "to govern," "to give light," etc. All, purpose phrases. This is also very obvious when the text mentions the creation of man: "Let them rule."
• God creates consistently. Here, I'm simply referring to the phrases, "After their kind." They're everywhere. You can't miss them. And the emphasis is obvious. Everything was made according to a certain design, and there was a pattern to it. It wasn't haphazard. Simple, but striking.
• The language is chapter 1 is simple, but rhythmic. There's a certain rhythm to "And God said" and "And it was good" and "There was evening and there was morning". You can't miss that. So while the description is very simple, almost plain, it gets the point across rather vividly.
• The break between chapter 1 and chapter 2 I still don't get. I accept it. It doesn't undermine historicity and authorship for me. In fact, I think it's bogus to even think in those terms. But I don't get it. What's happening here? Why? Not too sure yet. For a second, the JPED theory sounds believable. But only for a second. But I do like to notice the human factor in the writing. This is definitely not some esoteric, mystical, religious document. It has real time and place, and most people miss it. They are too busy worrying about its timeless truths, which have their place, that they forget that this was written by a real man in a real place at a real time. And all of that shapes and flavors what was written. The Bible is very much a local, cultural, ethnic document; not universal.

I'm still figuring out how to comment on what I read. It's not very easy without having to quote everything, and especially when my thoughts are approaching something I can't quite explain. But before this gets too long and tedious, let me just comment on the two major features that I noticed across the texts. Whoever put together this reading schedule was brilliant. Although I'm mostly sure that it was just coincidence. It makes sense to begin and Genesis and Matthew and Psalms. But the connections between those three texts are extraordinary.

"These are the generations . . ."

As most Bible students know, Genesis is organized by the narrative marker: "These are the generations." I can't remember at this point how many there are, but each time the narrative transitions to another character, we see this phrase. We see it with Seth, with Noah, with Abraham, and with others. And we see it in the beginning. Chapter 2, verse 4 literally reads, "These are the generations of the heavens and earth." Very fitting. I love that as it is. And I think Genesis 1:1 can also be seen in this light, although the phrasing is a bit different. I love structure. I love language. So this, for me, is cool to see. But what blew my mind the first time I read this is when I turned to Matthew 1, since that was the next assigned text, and read in verse one, essentially: "These are the generations of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham." I couldn't just sit there when I read that. I had to get up, I have to move around, I had to tell someone that I just saw. That connection, to me, is just out of this world. Why? Most people just see the beginning of Matthew as another boring genealogy. I see Matthew connecting with his Hebrew readers and redefining their world. They all had memorized Genesis. They were all aware of the structural dimensions of that book. And now they see another character in the story of heaven and earth. But not just another, the character. Because, unlike Genesis, where we move from one character to the next, here we have the entire story about just this one character. And also in the first verse, we see the connection to Genesis, through Abraham, and David, the greatest Israelite king. So, in a nutshell, the history of the old testament and of all creation is summarized in the simple phrase: "The generations of Jesus the Messiah." And the genealogy, then, serves to show just that, that all of these generations had as their purpose, their telos, this one that would come 42 generations after Abraham (still not sure why the number is significant). And just one note about the genealogy itself, since most people will simply skip it. Only four mothers are mentioned, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, who has the longest commentary of them all. Interesting bunch, I would say. More can be said on this issue, my thoughts just don't quit, but I will move on.

"And He blessed them . . ."

The other phrase that jumped out at me in Genesis 1 is this reference to blessing. Three times God blesses in the opening chapters. First he blesses the animals, then man, and finally the seventh day. While I am not a thorough expert on this issue, I have been told and am convinced that blessing in the Bible, when God blesses, is very unlike our notion of blessing someone when they sneeze. That blessing, our blessing, really does nothing. At best, it is a wish for someone's well-being, which is a nice thing, but not much more. With God, blessing actually does something. And this is a theme that I would like to trace and will try to track through the reading, but even here, we see that blessing has consequences. When He blesses, stuff happens, the world moves, things change. He blesses the animals by saying: "Be fruitful and multiply." So, blessing in this sense is the real, tangible result of more animals in their kind. It's not a vague benediction. When He blesses man, he includes the line, "and subdue [the earth]." So, man, too, is to multiply but also rule over creation. Now that's some real stuff there. Finally, He blesses the seventh day. Here, it's a bit more vague, but obviously it must have to do with something more than simply, "Let's not work today."

While these references are poignant and stand out in stark contrast to the rest of the narrative, what blew my mind was when I turned to Psalm 1, the other assigned text for the day. And it begins, as everyone knows, "Blessed is the man." That was literally like a punch in the face. It's obvious from Genesis that blessing is a big deal for God. And we see that more readily in his dealings with Abraham and others. It's obvious that blessing brings real results. It produces something. And now, blessed is the man. We should not only assume that blessed means happy, as many like to argue, but something greater than that. Having the OT contest in mind, when the Psalmist says that the righteous man is blessed, it's a big deal. And it's obvious from the text, because if we read on, it says, "And in everything he does he prospers." That's a real effect. Something happens. So blessing can't just mean being happy or cheerful, but your whole life changes if you are blessed by God. What a concept!

I will have to save a few personal implications and reflections for another time. What I like about reading the Bible this way is what I've been talking about, the connections across the book. It really puts things in place for me, contextualizes it, and again reinforces the fact that it is one book. And I think that's cool.