BibleProject - One Creation Story or Two? – Ancient Cosmology E4

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Are there two creation stories in Genesis? How do Genesis 1 and 2 fit together and into the rest of the biblical story? In this episode, Tim and Jon explore these questions and the theme of water in the opening chapters of the Bible. Yahweh’s transformation of the chaos waters into waters of life set the stage for his calling upon his people and an important theme that will carry us from Genesis to Revelation.View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Part one (0:00-9:20)Part two (9:20-13:45)Part three (13:45-26:50)Part four (26:50-end)Referenced ResourcesInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of the Book of LeviticusL. Michael Morales, Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and ExodusShow Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTS“Canary Forest” by Middle School, Aso, AviinoShow produced by Dan Gummel, Zach McKinley, and Cooper Peltz. Show notes by Lindsey Ponder. Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Hey, this is John at Bible Project, and welcome to the fourth episode in our series on Ancient Cosmology. In this series, we looked at the creation stories of Babylonia, Sumeria, and Egypt. We saw the ideas and images that all of these creation stories had in common. And with that in mind, we looked at Genesis chapter one versus one and two. And we saw how the creation story in Genesis

is in debate with these other ancient cosmologies. God does not emerge from the chaos, nor does God need to battle the chaos. The God of the Bible hovers over the dark abyss, using it as a canvas to bring life and order simply with his word. In this next part of the conversation, we're going to look at the second creation story in Genesis. The first narrative and the second narrative in Genesis aren't coordinated and juxtaposed in a nice linear sequence in terms of the events that they describe. They're actually describing the similar type of story but from a different angle of perspective.

Now when you get to Genesis chapter 2, you might expect that the story of creation just continues. The world has been made, it's been populated, but instead Genesis chapter 2 begins again, this time with the creation of humanity from a different perspective. Here, it's just one long bay. There's no time markers in Genesis 2 and the chaos is not a ocean water, but it's a desert. People have noticed this for thousands of years. The humans come last in Genesis 1. Humans come first in Genesis 2. So today on the show, while Genesis 1 begins with too much chaotic water that God needs to tame with His word, Genesis 2 begins with a dry land and desperate need of water.

Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Okay, we're talking about Genesis 1 and 2. Yes, we are. Creation stories. We spend a lot of time talking about aging cosmologies, and we look at Genesis 1, versus 1 and 2 in depth. And how the pre-created state is waters, and darkness is covering the waters,

and then God shows up hovering, and now the waters are full of potential. That's right. So the same waters, basically, verse 2 of Genesis chapter 1, the waters are first described with the Hebrew word to home, which is their terrifying life-preventing aspect. To home is like when waters are deadly.

When they either prevent life or they destroy life, they're talked about as to home. And in Genesis one verse two, it's when darkness is over the waters, the realm of darkness, and nothingness is over the waters, the realm of darkness, and nothingness is over the waters, there to home. But then the next line says, but the spirit of God is on the face of the waters, and then they're called by a different Hebrew word, hamaiam, which is the word used to describe waters in their neutral or positive life-giving context, rivers and streams and irrigation canals. That kind of thing. Water can have two different results, have two different meanings depending on who's over

the face of them. Darkness versus the Spirit of God. The rest of Genesis 1 is going to be about how the breath of God, when God speaks, His breath goes out. Which is the same word as spirit. Breath, that's right. It's about God's breath, spoken through his word, going out and separating those waters

and ordering them into a life-giving environment for humans. So that's just in verse two. So what's interesting, this was a scholar named Michael Morales, he's a Hebrew Bible scholar. He wrote one, the most thrilling biblical theology of Leviticus that you'll ever read. But he's got a lot of great stuff on topic here.

It's called, Who Can Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? And then he's got a more technical academic study called the Tabernacle Prefigured, how Genesis 1 and 2 presents the world and then the Garden of Eden as the archetypal Tabernacle prefigured how Genesis 1 and 2 presents the world and then the Garden of Eden as the archetypal Tabernacle. So we'll talk about them more in a later series. He was the first one who put it this way. It's a capture my attention. He says essentially, how is it that you get

from the dark waters of Tahum to Genesis 2 with the river springing up out of Eden giving life to the Garden and then spreading out to give life to the rest of the world. And for him, there's a narrative arc between those two appearances of the waters, so to speak. The transformation of the water. Yeah, they begin in the realm of darkness as to home. But then immediately the Spirit of God is there that neutralizes that negativity, creates potential out of it. And then that's Genesis 1. And you end up Genesis 1 with a garden land with humans ruling over creation. You're like, yes, awesome.

After the waters are separated on day two, waters above, waters below, you don't really hear about the waters anymore in Genesis 1. The next time you hear about them is in this rather odd digression in the description of the Garden of Eden about all these rivers.

That river in Eden is really important and keeps reoccurring throughout the whole bit. So this is the river in Eden that it's in Genesis chapter 2 and first is a spring, right? Yes, so here's the concept. In Genesis 1, the dry land emerges out of those waters that God has separated and... Out of the town.

Out of the town. So you get this concept of the land coming out of the waters, that's day three of Genesis. And in the conception in Genesis 1, and throughout the Bible, the land is conceived of as a floating, gigantic, floating disc, a bounded disc that's bounded by the seas. I mean, the concept sea to sea, in our minds, we think of a continent. Yeah. In these authors minds, thought of the cosmos. It's bounded from C to C.

And it's floating on those dark waters that are beneath. Or held up by pillars. Well, the reason it doesn't sink is because the pillars got put there. Yeah, that's right. So here I pointed out some of these passages. The opening lines of Psalm 24. The land is Yahweh's, and all it contains. The world, and all who dwell in it.

For he has founded it, its architectural language, established it upon the seas, and he has founded it upon the rivers. The word in the NIV is waters. In Psalm 24? Yeah, founded it on the seas, he established it on the waters. Yeah. Founded it on the sea, established it on waters. Yeah.

He founded it upon the Yamim, which is a word for a large collected pool or body of Mayim, the neutral waters of Genesis 1, verse 2. But then the second word here is the word river, Niharot, rivers. He established it on the rivers. It was just a weird thing to say. It's a weird thing to say in our cosmology. But the idea here is those dark waters that were no rival to Yahweh, like they were

a rival to Marduk. So putting the land on top of the waters is the kind of taming or containing. So what are rivers in that kind of cosmology? Rivers are fountains of the deep that channel their way up, reverse gravity, and are leaking out of the land. And it's very natural if you dig it well down. You're like, yeah, there's water down there. But sometimes that water like shoots up through the earth, but comes through in these controlled ways and you can build a whole village around one of these.

And the water never stops. So there's a sense that there's a bunch of them down there and the land's on top of them. That's right. Or the waters are below and then it's founded on these subterranean rivers that channel those deep waters underneath the land. But it's as if the land is a form of control. It's Yahweh's control over the waters.

Founding the earth is a way of Yahweh becoming the water wheeler is what Michael Morales calls it the controller of waters The same way God contained the darkness with light. Yeah, he contains the waters with land and set to boundary Says you don't cross here. Yeah, which is the shore and then he only allows little bits of the dark waters Then he needs to leak out in a controlled way so that they don't destroy Now in the flood narrative, those things burst open. It's open just like the windows of the heavens let out the chaos waters above. And so you're always seen as the controller of the chaos waters, and when it's rain, she's just letting a little bit out to give you life, and when it's the spring, he's

letting a little bit out to give life. This is the conception. Land founded on the seas. There's rivers under there that would destroy you if Yahweh didn't hold them back. So that's your conception of springs and rivers in this cosmology. 1.5% 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc

1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc So, when you get to the Garden of Eden, Genesis chapter 2, so here's the basic order. The narrative proper begins in Genesis 2, verse 5, verse 4 is a transition between the

two, the first and second cosmology narratives. So verse 5 goes on and tells you, now listen, there was no shrub in any field of the land, and no plant in any farming field had sprouted, because first of all it hadn't rained, and second of all, there's no humans. Do you remember when we read that one? I think it was a Sumerian cosmology, and the pre-creation state, so to speak, focused in on just the absence of civilization, since civilization is generated by the gods. It's this primeval state in the past. So here, we're kind of back to the land being wild and waste,

except here the conception is not chaos waters. It's just of an uncultivated desert land. And can we back up really quick, I think, for the sake of people following along. I don't know if we've mentioned this, but there's two creation stories. I don't know if we've talked about that. Yeah, there's two narratives. Two narratives at the head of Genesis. And we haven't talked through the first one. We just got to the second verse in it, and then now we're into the second one.

That's a good point. So the first narrative, seven day structure, and by the end of the seven day structure, you've got the whole cosmology. Yeah. And you've got humans on the land, seven day structure, and by the end of the seven day structure, you've got the whole cosmology. And you've got humans on the land, surrounded by water, water around it, water above, and then humans ruling, and then on the seventh day, God rests, and you're like, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah.

And that narrative unit comes to a really clear conclusion in its concluding notes in Genesis 2, verse 3, God rested from all the work that He created to make. It's the key words from the opening line, and then you get this little transition note in verse 4. This is the account of the skies in the land, heavens and earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord made the heaven and the earth. Curtains, scene two. Yeah. Intermission. Yeah, that's right. And then curtains open up again.

And when the curtains open up again, my expectation is like, let's pick up what we left off. Which means humans. Yeah. On the land cultivating, making farms, with animals all around. But in the seventh day, we're resting, and there's nothing's off them.

But it picks up and we're not there. We're back. And if you're going back to where we are in the Genesis one, we're back to when the land hadn't even had any vegetation, which was day three and day three of this vegetation. And so there's kind of like, now we're talking about the land and day three, but then also the creation of humans and animals and day six.

So this next narrative is going into details of both day three and six. Correct. In other words, the first narrative and the second narrative in Genesis aren't coordinated and juxtaposed in a nice linear sequence in terms of the events that they describe. They're actually describing the similar type of story, but from a different angle or perspective. So Genesis 1 is giving you from chaos and disorder to order and cosmos in the seven day time frame. And it begins with pre-creation chaos waters. Here, it's just one long day. There's no time markers in Genesis 2. And the chaos is not a ocean

water, but it's a desert. People have noticed this for thousands of years. The humans come last in Genesis 1. Humans come first in Genesis 2. Before the animals. Animals come before the humans in Genesis 1. Animals come after the humans in Genesis 2. The garden and vegetation comes before the humans. It comes after the humans.

So all that to say, these narratives are more giving you two distinct perspectives on similar realities. And gems is too, really wants to focus in on the dry land. Here. 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc

1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc So we began with no vegetation, no farms, and no humans. But God was the water-weilder. We're told of a little flow of water in the next genesis 2 verse 6, but a flow used to rise up from the earth and water the surface of the ground.

So it's the image of potential. There's potential here. It's not the Mojave Desert. There's a spring here. And that spring is connected to the thing that God is going to do. Most of our English translations say a mist used to rise up from the ground. We've talked about this before. Stream.

NIV says streams. And then translations that say mist have a footnote, ESV, NASB that means spring or flow. So you're just told about a spring. You're like, what? Okay, I guess there's a spring. That's cool. That's the waters of the deep, seeping up through the land. And watered the whole surface of the ground. Yeah, it's saturated the ground. Yeah. Which makes mud. And the next thing may, it is a creature through the land. And watered the whole surface of the ground. Yeah, it's saturated. Saturated the ground. Yeah, which makes mud.

And the next thing, may it is a creature of the mud. God forms the human from that wet ground. For us, dust in English, it means dry here. That's not necessarily so on Tebrou. So from the dust. Oh, and this is that word play. The stream in verse six is called ed. The Hebrew letters, olive, dole,

and then the Lord God formed Adam. it's all of Dalat men. So you have an Ed making mud so that an Adam can be made from the Adamah, which is the word for ground. So the Ed? The Ed makes Adamah from which the Adam comes. That's good. And you would never notice that unless you read it in Hebrew. I've actually tried to think

of ways because we have the word humus which is a very uncommon English word for soil. Oh yeah. So then I've tried to think of words that could rhyme like a river stream. Yeah, but I can't think of one. What's the English word for flowing water that has HUM anyway. And then God breathes you am anyway. And then God breathes the breath of life into the dirt, the mud, and it becomes a living creature. We could spend a lot of time there, but we're not. Next thing. God plants a garden in Eden. The next phrase could be translated two ways. One is in the Eastern region, or this is the Hebrew phrase,eketim, which is a standard Hebrew phrase for a long, long, long, long time ago, from ancient times.

There are some phrases that are conceptions of time of before and behind, and so what's behind you is east, and to say from the east is a phrase that can mean from the time that's passed, and people debate, I wouldn't put a pass this author to actually mean, bro, yeah, how about be a double on Tondra here. And there he put the human he had formed. Oh, so notice this. It'll be important for the Eden as a temple video. So think of the map being drawn. He's drawn a very precise map. You have all the land, but then within the land there's

now a smaller region that's called the land of Eden. And then a smaller region within Eden is the Garden. Oh, it's not the Garden of Eden. It's the Garden in Eden. There's a Land of Delight. Eden means Delight. And within the Land of Delight, there is a Garden. You got the Land. Somewhere in the Land, you've got the Land of Delight.

And then in the Land of Delight is the Garden. And then the next thing, verse 9, is the Two Trees. Verse 10, the next thing. So you've got real nice progression in the narrative here. It makes great sense. Didn't have any humans, didn't have any vegetation. The narrative gets put on pause. The form of the grammar of the Hebrew here

in Genesis 2, verse 10, just shifts. And this whole thing is set even in Hebrew in parentheses as a background comment. Where's the Hebrew of parentheses? Oh, it can mark information in a sentence as being background information or flashback information. So you can't tell it in English, but in Hebrew, it's when you put the word

and plus a finite verb or a noun and then a finite verb, because in Hebrew, the standard narrative progression is the word and, and then the verb and then the noun. It's switching the word order. When you get a noun first and then a verb, that's the Hebrew author telling you, pause the narrative, let me tell you something that's really important,

but that's not the next thing that happened. If that's the case, why don't we have translations with parentheses? Uh, sometimes these things are marked in parentheses. This is a long, long parentheses, because all the way there's verse 14. Yeah. translations with parentheses. Uh, sometimes these things are marked in parentheses. This is a long, long parentheses. Because all the way to verse 14. Yeah. All of a sudden, we're just fixated on this river flowing out of Eden.

Yeah, let's talk about this river. A river flows out of Eden to water the garden. Is this a separate one than the one that he... So the differing opinions here. Okay. I think the reason why we're told about the first stream was that it makes the mud Yeah, and it rhymes with the word human. So the question is is this the same one? Yeah, it doesn't matter I don't know I kind of like the coordination of the idea that there used to be a spring that became the source of the mud from which the humans

Thank God planted a garden It'd be nice if that flow of water becomes the river of Eden Because it was the flow of water from which humanity itself emerged, so to speak. And it's a different word because at first it was a stream. Correct. The Ed. And that's for the word play probably. And then here it's called the river. This is a river. This is like we read at the beginning of Psalm 24. Okay. The land is founded upon the seas. Yeah. Established upon the rivers. Okay. So here is one little outflow of the Tahum beneath the land. But God has tamed it and channels it now to become a source of life.

Flowing out of Eden, it first waters the garden, but then we're told a little detail after it leaves Eden. From Eden, it divides. So it's one river in Eden, but then it leaves Eden and then divides. Turns into four rivers. Turns into four heads. It's the word head, sources. Okay. Yeah. And then we're given the names and short little descriptions of each of the four rivers. The name of the first is Pichon. It flows around the land of Chavila,

so much gold in Havela. And the gold of the land is good, aromatic, resin. That's right. Now that we're talking about that gold there, you know what? It's good, it's tov. Mm. Oh yeah, the Bidelium and Onyx stone. I love this, the Bible. So obviously that must be important.

Super important. Bidelium is some kind of fragrant sticky gum substance. Oh, onyx resin. Yeah, resin, that's what my translation says. And then Onyx. So here's what's interesting. Both of those substances are very rare, just vocabulary in the Hebrew Bible. That resin, the aromatic resin, or the bidellium occurs only one other time in the Hebrew Bible. And it's what the man out looks like. Oh, that way. Very interesting. Yeah, it's the bread of Eden.

Oh, it's Eden bread Very interesting. We think it's sticky. Yeah, it's the bread of Eden. Oh. It's Eden bread given to those in the desert. Well, it's Havala bread. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so Havala is on the way to Egypt. Havala has mentioned multiple times in the Bible. And it's always one of the last stops you get before getting to Egypt. So this river is associated.

The word Pishon means gusher. Dupus means to gush. And so the Pishon is the gusher that goes down to Egypt. So this river is associated. The word Pishon means gusher, Dupouj means to gush. And so the Pishon is the gusher that goes down to Egypt and the gold. The goodness of that land is in its golden jewels. Okay. The name of the second river is also gusher. It's a different Hebrew word for gush. It's called the Gikun. And it goes around all the land of kush. This one is stumped people for long time. The word Gikhan is Only mentioned one other time in the Hebrew Bible. And it's the spring that's the water source of Jerusalem.

And specifically it became of the water source to recondru it for the temple. So that's interesting. But the land of Kush is the normal name for Ethiopia, south of Egypt. And the name of the third river is the Tigris. That one's familiar. That's Mesopotamia. And it goes through all the land of Assyria. The land of the fourth river is the Euphrates, which goes through Babylon. So Tigris and Euphrates are rivers that we can locate on the map. Correct.

Pishon and Geehon, we have no idea what they're referring to. Yeah, so there's been two types of hunts for these rivers. One has been ancient Near Eastern nerds who are working in the framework of an ancient cosmology. And so within Biblical cosmology, if the land is like a bounded disk, then it has a center. There's actually an ancient Babylonian map of the cosmos that's given from looking above from the top of the snow globe down into it.

And guess what's at the center of the world? – Babylon. – It's a Babylonian. – Yeah, and it has the rivers. It shows the two rivers. – You phrase tigers? – Yeah. So idea, this is the center of the world

and the centers, the things that give life to the center of the world are these two rivers. So there's a thing here for rivers. So for scholars who think this whole thing is we're supposed to be thinking Mesopotamia, then what they do is find ways to match the Gighon and the Peshon to things going on in Mesopotamia. It's been one approach. A guy named Ephraim Spicer wrote a really significant work just nerding out on the four rivers. In the modern era, there have been people who hold to maybe a young earth position.

And so for them, this is a preservation of like pre-flood geography, which of course would be all different now. And so it's preserving a geography that it doesn't exist anymore. That would be another approach. Right. I think another approach is that this is like almost all geography in the Bible, a form of theological geography, meaning that just like when you're reading in biblical poetry and Isaiah says the Jerusalem will be elevated as the tallest mountain in all of the earth. What he's describing is its theological significance among the nations, not that there's going to be an earthquake and a cream uplift and so on.

We did a whole video on settings in the Bible. Places are charged with theological meaning based on what has happened there or what is going to happen in a place. And so lo and behold, isn't it interesting that the Pishon is connected with Egypt and that the Tigris new phrase are connected with Babylon? Are these places that are going to be significant in the biblical story? Well, the Gihon. And the Gihon is the name of the water spring in Jerusalem. And once through the land of Kusch, which is also where Israel is going to go,

because it's south of Egypt, going down to the region of Egypt. That's where they're going to go, because it's south of Egypt. They're going down to the region of Egypt. That's where they're going to go when they... When they go into exile, to go into Egypt. And each of those lands, Egypt, when it's presented when Joseph and his brothers go there, it's presented as like the Garden of Eden. It totally is.

Pharaoh comes down, he's like, here's the good land, it's rich, and it becomes this respite, a little temporary Eden that turns into a Babylon, once's the good land. It's rich. And it becomes this respite, a little temporary Eden that turns into a Babylon, once they're enslaved there. In the same way, in the narratives about Babylon, Babylon is presented as a temporary kind of Eden. Jeremiah, hey, it's not so bad here.

Build houses, plant gardens, plant gardens in Babylon. That's Eden language. So do here in Babylon what Yahweh did in Eden in Genesis 2. That's what Jeremiah's, the part of what Jeremiah is doing. And then Jerusalem is of course an Eden type of place with the temple that has the cherubim. That's interesting. I mean, it makes sense that Jerusalem and the Holy Land would be described as an Eden. And I've heard you describe that as other people. The prophets call the New Jerusalem a new Eden. As Eekil does this.

Joel despise on the way up. They find Megafrew. Megafrew. It's already eaten like. But it's interesting that the biblical authors would refer to Egypt and Babylon in those terms. That's right. It doesn't seem to help their theological kind of case. No, it totally does.

The whole thing about the story of Abraham's family is, Hey, listen, Abraham, I'm gonna bless you with the blessings of Eden, fruitful and multiply, and those who bless you. Will we bless? I will bless. The family of Abraham becomes this conduit of the blessing of Eden to everybody it meets.

Sometimes the family of Abraham is lying and treacherous, and so they become a curse to the nations, bringing death and destruction. Other times, the nations bless the family of Abraham, and when they do, get little explosions of Eden. And so the portrait of Pharaoh at the end of Genesis, accepting the family of Abraham, hosting them, giving them the best of the land,

and that Pharaoh gets hooked up. The family of Abraham saves Egypt from a famine. Blessing. But then the next Pharaoh, or you know, fails later, he didn't know Joseph then, and slaves them. And so those who curse you, I will curse. 1.5% 1.5% 1.5%

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1.5% 1.5% 1.5% So the family of Abraham, there's an interesting corollary between them and the river. Oh totally. Yeah, the river of Eden becomes the image of God wanting to bring the life of Eden out to the rest of the world. And the family of Abraham is supposed to be like a water of life to the nations. And when they are faithful, that happens. And when the nations accept and bless the family of Abraham, you get little explosions of Eden.

But they usually are temporary. That's why I said a temporary Eden. They're called to be a river of life. Oh, I'm working the metaphor right now. Okay. There's no verses as you are the river of life. No, but it's an image that Eden is like this epicenter of God's creative life.

He tamed the waters. He makes them fulfill his purpose by turning them into waters of life. Waters of chaos become water of life through that river in Eden. And that river can go out and bring blessing and richness and fertility to the nations. And the regions that they water were told here in Genesis

to are precisely the regions where Israel are going to end up in exile. And they can become a source of life of blessing our curse there in those other places. We're being prepared to see Egypt and Babylon and Assyria here as places where the showdown of blessing our curse is going to happen here. That's what's happening in this paragraph. It's almost like a foreshadowing of like a preview. Correct. Here's where the story is going to go. And so here's a fascinating.

Now that I've been programmed with this, anytime I've got a spring or a bubbling of water coming up out of the ground, the desert, that's a gift, a little gift of Eden popping up out of the ground. And those are moments when God wants to turn chaos into order and dry land into garden and curse into blessing. And you just follow the logic, man, study, just get a concordance out and go look at all the stories that happen near wells and springs.

It's got Eden written all over it, little Eden echoes. And on the big arch where this is gonna go is precisely how the gospel authors present Galgotha. It's a hill and from it flows Blood and specifically in the gospel of John. He's working this motif like nobody's business Because he portrays Jesus as having a river of life flowing out of him as he hangs on the cross That's when he gets speared and the water comes out. That's right And then culminating in the New Jerusalem

with the new river of life, flowing out of a throne of God. So this is the river of life. This is the river of life, flowing out from the throne of God, Eden. Which is the reason we meet. When we go to the last page of the Bible, literally the last chapter of the Bible,

and there's the throne of God in the Lamb, the tree of life is there for the healing of the nations, and the river of life is flowing from beneath the throne. That is a Garden of Eden. Image of this river that was introduced right here in Genesis 2. But the rivers don't just appear at the beginning and end. That river of Eden actually punctuates the biblical storyline, and it pops up in surprising places.

Just like people have visions or meet God's presence in surprising places. So it would be a great example of one. Um, perfect example is the story of Hegar, Genesis 16. Abraham's concubine. Yeah, so Genesis 16 begins with Abraham and Sarah, and you're told first off, Sarah had born no children to Abraham. Which is a bummer. Which is bummer.

And God just said in the previous chapter, you're gonna have your own kid. But not yet, hasn't happened. No. But you know what I do have. I have a slave, Sarah thanks. She's Egyptian. And her name is the immigrant. Oh well.

It's the Hebrew word for the immigrant. Which where did they pick up an Egyptian slave? I was just thinking that. Yeah, remember that time the Abraham lied. Oh right. Abraham fled to Egypt. Yeah, and the Pharaoh wanted his wife. And then he lied and put his own wife's safety at risk to save his own neck.

And Pharaoh was so excited to get this guy's sister because he thought it was his sister that he gave Abraham gold and camels and all of this, and male and female slaves. So this slave, the immigrant, Hegar, is in their possession because of his treachery and deceit. So already she has this foreboding sense to her. Reminds you of Abraham's conniving. So Sarah says, look, the Lord's prevented me from bearing children, sleep with my slave. And I will be built up through her.

And Abraham, just like Adam, listened to the voice of his wife. The same phrases, Adam and Eve in the garden. And how did that go? Here. So after Abraham had been back in the land 10 years, Abraham's wife Sarah took Hegar the Egyptian, gave her to her husband as a wife.

So he went into Hegar, she conceived, and when Hegar saw that she had gotten pregnant, then Sarah was cursed in her sight. It's very interesting. I just see how much she's here. It's verse four, which is the story. She knew she was pregnant. She began to despise her mistress.

So Hegar gets pregnant, and all of a sudden she's like, well, I'm the fertile one around here. Hmm. The seeds coming from me. And in terms of honor, shame, cultures, this is her chance to gain status in this household. It can be back up on this like, um, maybe we shouldn't spend a lot of time here. Yeah, you know, really, I'm just trying to get to the spring. Yeah, let's get to the spring. When we read through the whole Bible

slowly, together, then we'll come back here. All right. Anyhow, so she dishonors Sarah. Now everybody's hurting each other, basically. They take advantage of this slave that they shouldn't have anyway. And then she begins to dishonor Sarah, it's just a cluster, as they say. So Abram said to Sarah, do what is good in your eyes? Again, it's language from Genesis three.

The man says, do what is good in your eyes. And so she oppressed the immigrant. The immigrant. This is exactly the verb used of what Pharaoh does what is good in your eyes and so she oppressed the immigrant. The immigrant. This is exactly the verb used of what Pharaoh does to the Israelites when they are immigrants. They are becoming Pharaohs right now, enslaving the Egyptian. Israelite Pharaohs enslaving the Egyptian slaves to reversal of the Exodus. But it happens before the Exodus.

It's pre-Exodus, yes. Hegar fled from her presence. She takes off. Yeah. Now, the angel of Yahweh found her by a spring. Aigar. Yeah. Of water. By the spring that's on the way to shore. And if you follow the network of geography, shore is on the way to Havala. Sure is on the way to Havala, which is on the way to Egypt. Yeah. So she's at home. And if you've got the Genesis 2 rivers in your mind, you're just like,

wait a minute, she's on her way to shore. Sure is on the way to Havala, Havala is on the way to Egypt. I think one of those rivers ran right through there, a little respite of Eden, meets her. And who does she meet there? She meets Yahweh. The Angel of the Lord. Yeah, totally. And so, this becomes a place where Yahweh acknowledges like, yeah, this is screwed up, but go back, submit yourself to your oppressor,

and let me tell you, and then he gives her the blessing of Eden. I will multiply your seed, so there'll be too many to count, and so on. So she inherits this Eden blessing by an Eden-fed spring way out in the middle of the wilderness. This is what I mean, these are little narrative hints, but they keep happening. So then all of a sudden, springs and wells, this one is connected to the one in Eden. But then, just springs and wells in general become places where life and blessing and fertility happens. Jacob is going to meet his wife at a well. Abraham Servant finds Rebecca as a wife for Isaac at a well. There's a lot of finding wives at wells. And all that is Eden imagery of the life of

the man and women coming together. Yeah. Eden. Yeah, marriages near springs and wells is the Eden image. Israel being out in the wilderness and crying out for water. And then God will open up a rock and provide water for his people, which is right next to a story about Israel being hungry and then he gives them mana from heaven.

And what does that mana look like? It looks just like that. The sticky resin. What was that stuff called again? Bidelion. Bidelion. Is the English translation. Yeah.

So now God's giving water from Eden and bread from Eden, so to speak. Water in the desert. Yeah, that's Exodus 15 and 16. So this stuff keeps happening. It's like the surprising, gracious benefits of Eden that meet God's people in surprising ways. So those are ways throughout the biblical narrative that it appears. Let's go to the next step.

So Israel is sustained by the life of Eden on the way into the Promised Land. The Promised Land in Jerusalem is a kind of Eden 2.0. Let's try this again. They replay this in of Adam and Eve. Jerusalem is up high on a mountain like Eden was described. It has a temple mount on top. The guy who builds the temple is a guy named Solomon, son of David, who, when he's presented by God with a chance for whatever he wants to rule as first kings three. What he says is, you know, I'm just a little child.

I don't know good and evil, so give me wisdom. It's the reversal of Genesis 3. Instead of Adam and Eve took wisdom, and he's asking for it. Yeah, he says, I'm not going to take wisdom to know good and evil, I want you to teach it to me. The founder of this Eden 2.0. We're like stoked. We're like, wow, finally a human who will submit to God's wisdom. And God stoked. Totally. And so dude, the next chapter is beginning to paint a complex portrait of Jerusalem. Because in one sense, I mean dude, he's built in the city. Gold was as common as dust in those days. You know, we're told.

But do you remember when we worked through this in the day of the Lord's series? Slowly Solomon starts to do all the stuff he's not supposed to do. Go get like stallions from Egypt. Yeah. And then y'all of a sudden creates a huge slave labor force to build his palace.

Like he fills his temple with like all sorts of, oh yeah, the stone lions carved lions. Yeah. Yeah, and you're like, wait a minute, this blessing of Eden's going to his guy's head. And he starts to look like Pharaoh, building store cities. Flipery little humans.

Yeah, dude. So he ends up starting his real down road of being exiled out of Eden 2.0. We're really abbreviating here. Because what I really want to get to is when the prophets look forward on the other side of Babylonian exile to a new Jerusalem, what they keep talking about is a new Eden, new Jerusalem with a new river of life.

Coming out, that's the next step that kind of launches us into the next set of biblical texts. Thank you for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week we finish off this conversation on ancient cosmology and then we're going to have two scholar interviews and then after that we're going to do a question and response. If you'd like to submit a question we'd love to hear from you. Record yourself asking your question, keep it to about 20, 30 seconds. Let us know your name and where you're from, and then email it to info at BibleProject.com and please, it would be really helpful if you also transcribed your question in your

email. It saves us a lot of time. Today's show was produced by Zach McKinley and Dan Gummel. The show notes are done by Lindsay Ponder and our theme music from the band Tense. Bible project is a non-profit, and our mission is to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. All of this taming of darkness, it comes to its fulfillment in the life of Jesus. We're not going to make a video about ancient cosmology, but we do have lots of videos on other topics,

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