In the beginning (or so ancient Near East literature reads), a god rose from primeval waters and birthed the universe. Who it was and how that was possible didn’t matter. It just happened. Then, that god faded mostly into obscurity, uncaring and uninvolved.
This cosmos was not a pleasant place. It was formless and void, unordered, birthed in the chaotic conflict of the Darkness and the Deep (if it had a beginning at all). Finally, the gods fought a long battle with the forces of chaos. Marduk and Baal battled with the monstrous Tiamat and Yam. Fortunately, the gods won. These gods began to ‘name’ things – which in the Ancient Near East was associated with creation. To them, something began to exist when it had an identity (captured in a name), not merely a form.
These early civilizations explained this cosmic battle with important imagery. Darkness, the Deep, the Sea, the desert wasteland - these were the homes of chaos, the places of Leviathin, Behemoth, Rahab, sea monsters, dragons, serpents, the wandering souls of the dead - even owls (!?)Important boundaries kept this disorder from overrunning order. Order was a sign that a god was near: the sun had an ordered schedule, for example, so there must be a god behind it - or maybe it was actually a god itself.
Well, the gods got tired and needy. They created humanity begrudgingly so people could serve the gods as slaves. Somebody had to feed and take care of the gods while they kept order. However, the gods only kept order in their realm – the sky above. They expected the humans to bring order to earthly chaos. So people built cities with walls to separate civilization from the wastelands; they channeled water; they used light to keep back the night.
They formed governments. They built sacred spaces with temples and gardens so the gods could come near and be fed and pampered. Their gods ‘inhabited’ the idols they made – which is why the people washed, fed, and even put the idols to bed. They tried court cases in front of idols that were literally enthroned. (The priests had to pull off some trickery with the food and the speech, but that, too, was, proper service to their god.)
These gods were not better than people, by the way. They were just stronger. They raised no moral bar. They made mistakes; they committed crimes. Any ideas of goodness, justice, love or mercy were, in the end, no greater than the people who thought about them. The people had to figure out what they thought those words even meant – and then they applied that standard to the gods. History records a sense of despair among the ancients: they hoped the gods would be just, wise, good, gracious and faithful; they hoped they would act in those ways. They often didn’t.
GOD’S REVELATION TO THE HEBREWS
The writers of the Bible grew up in this world. They used the images and ideas that formed their world to tell a new kind of story - a true story of the world - that changed everything.
The general consensus is that Moses was either the writer or editor/compiler of the first 5 books of the Old Testament (perhaps he was a little of both). Moses was raised and trained by the Egyptians, and the children of Israel had been thoroughly immersed in the Ancient Near East worldview. They had a history that both overlapped and diverged geographically and spiritually from a shared beginning; it should be no surprise that they shared stories of similar events, but had very different things to say about them. Moses is the first of many biblical writers who will use the language, images and themes of shared stories and cultures to unveil the True History and True God of the world.
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At the beginning of cosmic history , God began to create. When God identified himself to Moses as I AM, He was saying (among other things) that He is the one who causes things to be. He separated things in the void (established boundaries – see the first three days of creation in Genesis 1); his spirit “fluttered over the water like a dove” (or so the rabbis translated it).
He did not arise from the Darkness and the Deep; He made them and then ordered them. This God did not do battle with monstrous Titans of Chaos who threatened to overwhelm them. They weren’t a challenge. They were his servants. They were nothing compared to him. He named things that were formless (he established their identity and purpose – see the last three days of the creation account).
He raised humanity from the dirt (adam-‘earth’) and yet he designed them to co-create with him (eve – ‘to give life’). People had value because God created them to carry the image of God. In the ancient world it was rulers, emperors, and pharaohs who were thought to be in the image of God; Genesis claimed we are all royalty. God created humanity to enjoy this creation and their Creator, not feed and pamper a needy god. This God, Yahweh, was the one true God – he didn’t need any help.
People were icons and representatives of God and royal, priestly stewards of His creation - honored positions in any Ancient Near East culture. I AM means more than just ‘the one who caused things to be’; it suggests he is a God who enters into relationships. Relationships, too, are a thing he creates. This was not an impersonal, aloof God who got things started and then left. Then God “rests.” His work is finished. But this was not a passive rest like we tend to think of it; this was the rest of a king moving in to rule and reign in a Kingdom that was good.
God makes his sacred space - a temple if you will - in a garden in the land of Eden. It was everything people should have wanted: an ordered and complete world in a space where God “walked and talked with them.” He did not inhabit it in the form of an idol; the Psalmist would later note that he was enthroned on (inhabited) the praises of his people (Psalm 22:3). God made a covenant with Adam: be faithful, and you will flourish in this good world. Be unfaithful, and you will reap toil and pain from the chaos you sow.
Nothing in the space was off limits except for one thing: a Tree of the Knowledge Of Good and Evil. It’s the knowledge of those who have the right to declare good order and right boundaries for the world. This tree was not inherently bad; after all, it was part of God’s good creation. Clearly God had this knowledge. God just said, “It’s not meant for you. This is my territory. If you claim ownership of that, chaos will follow, because the boundaries of good and evil are not yours to decide.”
Chaos, evil, a “beast of the field,” slithered into the garden, a crafty tester, challenging order with disorder. Eve saw (vaiyar) something beautiful (tob) but forbidden, and she and Adam welcomed it. Instead of having dominion over the animals, they gave up their dominion to the animal. It did not go well. First, they hid in shame. Then, in the first act of violence recorded in the Bible, a beast died to cover their beastly shame. The wages of chaos is death. We’ve known this since the beginning.
God unveiled the path they had chosen. They were given the image of God; they had chosen to associate with the a beast. Now all that was made good would be haunted by pain, chaos, and disorder. Humanity and the beasts - stewards of order and creatures of chaos — will painfully struggle, over an over. Soon, the Bible first uses a word we translate as “sin” to describe how Cain had chaos and disorder “crouching at the door” of his life. Adam’s legacy continues.
To Adam, God said,: “What have you done?”
Adam responded: “The woman you gave me gave me the apple.”
For Adam, the earth was cursed; he would now struggle to bring life from it.
To Cain, God said,: “ Where is Abel your brother?”
Cain said: “Am I my brother’s keeper? That’s your job.”
For Cain, the earth was also cursed; he would wander, because he wouldn’t be able to bring life from it at all.
The next several chapters of Genesis follow this pattern of wandering and struggling. People head “east of Eden,” a direction that we see over and over to represent a direction that takes people away from God. Everybody keeps making things worse. When people build cities to put walls between the dark deserts of chaos, the cities are worse than the barrens. The serpent bites their heal and causes them to stumble even as they bruise its head and chase it away. Over and over.
If the behavior of Adam and Eve is any indication of how humanity would choose to live, their descendants may well have welcomed these sin serpents before realizing what they were. But….they probably knew. Surely the story had been told. They may have found the same lies intriguing and seductive — until they didn’t. Echoes of the Deep resided in them. Chaos was still in their hearts. Sin walked over the doorway and into the house.
All of the ancients recorded a flood in which the gods judged the unboundaried people by removing boundaries around them: the people wanted to determine their own boundaries — which was none — so the gods removed boundaries and gave them a world in which they got what they thought they wanted. However, a select group was set aside to try again.
The Hebrew writers agree with the basic plot line — it was a shared historical event, after all — but they record more. Yahweh is God; he warned and waited for decades. After God washed the disorder and sin from the world (a symbolic return to the point in the creation narrative in Genesis 1:9 where there was no dry land), we read a second creation narrative: the winds blew over the earth and the waters subsided (much like the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters).
God set up a new Eden, with a new Adam (Noah) who had been saved in an ark. There was a reminder that beasts would fear them, that order (such as the seasons) would continue. They were to continue the “be fruitful and multiply” mandate given to Adam and Eve. This was all surrounded by a new covenant for all of humanity. Eden 2.0.
Noah did not improve on Adam’s failure. He and his children promptly brought more disorder and sin. His descendants moved even further East - to Babel (Babylon), where they soon pursued their own version of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, building a tower to “make a name for themselves” instead of allowing God to name them, identity them, and order the lives of his image bearing stewards (Genesis 11).
So God steps in again to reorder. The Table of Nations (Genesis 10) records the outcome: tribes, nations and tongues are separated like never before. Moses recorded, “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance (much like the Prodigal Son in one of Jesus’ parables), when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God (he gave them over to the gods they wanted). But the LORD’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.” (Deuteronomy 32:8-9)
In other words, Yahweh sentenced the nations and their gods to each other. If they wanted other gods to lead them, God would give them what they wanted. But unlike the Mesopotamian gods, he would not stay aloof; this God would continuously descend to His creation to serve them and create something new yet again. Then, in the very next chapter, He calls Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), effectively starting over in creating an earthly human family for Himself.” Abraham would be fruitful and multiply by being a “father many nations”. He sent him to the Jordan Valley, which was watered “like the garden of the Lord.” Eden 3.0
God made a covenant with Abraham that all of the world would be blessed through Abraham’s descendants. In a classic ANE suzerain ritual that a king made with a vassal, Abraham slaughtered animals so he, the vassal, could walk between dismembered parts as a reminder that covenant breakers would suffer the same fate. But in this case God’s spirit (a blazing torch lighting a deep darkness), not Abraham, moved through the middle of these pieces, in essence saying, “If either one of us breaks this treaty, may it be done to me and me alone what was done to these animals.”
It was unheard of for the stronger party to take upon himself the weight of the penalty. Abraham was good with that kind of unconditional promise. But while God would never break it, Abraham and his descendants could. They were tasked with some basic conditions: be inwardly blameless and outwardly circumcised (a common custom that was a mark of initiation). Being blameless was bound to be too much. A few of Abraham’s children, the children of his disobedience, head East yet again.
Fast forward to Egypt, where captivity and slavery threaten to overwhelm them in new kind of flood. The Bible uses words of chaos again: the Egyptians are “sea monsters” and “Leviathan,” (Psalm 74); when Aaron and Pharaoh’s magicians have a battle pitting their gods against each other, their staffs become tannin (dragons); the plagues, a methodical smackdown of the Egyptian gods, end with a deep darkness that threatens to visit death on every family in Egypt. But God provides another ‘ark’ for anyone who chose to use it, another way out: the blood of a precious lamb over the doorposts of the house, a lamb whose costly death and spilled blood protected them as Death passed them by.
The spirit of God moves over yet more water (the Red Sea) as Yahweh leads His people out of Egypt – a pillar of both cloud and fire, separated like the first day of creation, gives light to the Israelites and darkness to the Egyptians. He feeds them with manna, which is described as looking the same way as precious stones in the Eden (the only two references in the Old Testament). In the desert, the Creator God of Order and Life, Dispeller of Chaos, begins to re-create again.
God made another covenant with Moses, a leader God had spared in another ark when he was a baby and raised up to take his people to their Promised Land. This covenant follows the pattern of suzerain (king) covenants once again, including the calling of witnesses. In this case, instead of calling the gods as witness as a Mesopatamian king would have done, God calls “the heaven and earth” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
This covenant brought order to practically every aspect of the lives of his people, from the kinds of clothes they wore to the meals they cooked to their sex lives to how they harvested. His glory would be seen in the right ordering of the world he had made — and that included the people. This was good news. The gods of their neighbors never bothered to tell their worshipers about what offended or pleased them. Yahweh, however, made it very clear. God and God’s will could be known.
So, Moses and the people took the 10 foundational Commandments from God and wrote books about out what they would do to bring covenant justice and order to their nation and their lives to reveal His goodness to the world. These Books Of The Law were the kind of ‘law text’ found throughout the ancient world. These were wise guidelines, commentary to accompany the primary text on stone tablets — “wisdom literature” if you will, the kind that would guide Solomon as he made decisions in unexpected ways.
But it was more than that. Unlike their neighbors, the Jewish people did not have to guess what guidelines would please the gods. Yahweh told them. These wise laws texts set the standard for covenant life and set the limits of lex taliones punishment (the punishments showed the limits of retributive justice). These laws also practiced provisions of mercy, which typically took the form of a substitutionary atonement for sin, such as a fine.
In other words, the people knew what a crime deserved, but they also knew that their just God - who was also compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love — desired that they do justice while loving mercy. They built a tabernacle (a mobile temple) with imagery that re-created Eden, down to an entrance facing toward the east and armed priests guarding the door (like the cherubim in Eden), perhaps as a reminder that those who enter the tabernacle are leaving the land of the lost and entering the garden of life. In the middle was yet another ark.
Once again, animals died to cover the shame and guilt of their sin. This was not a frivolous or blood-thirsty act. It was the deepest act of penance. An animal was life. It was wealth. It was status and power. This was an act of humility that reminded them that the wages of sin is death. In another act that paved the way for what God will provide through Jesus, there were times a scapegoat, heaped symbolically with their sins, was sent away from the people so that they could begin anew without the weight of their sins haunting them.
But the law and order meant to bring life brought judgment and sorrow. These covenant people kept doing non-covenant things, and if they wanted to live under the blessing and protection of God, there was a covenant. On their way to the new Eden of the Promised Land, the serpent stayed at their heel literally and spiritually. When fiery serpents ravaged the people after a particularly bad act of rebellion, surely they remembered their history and understood this message. Moses made an image of this curse that he “lifted up” on a pole so that those who turned their eyes toward it could be healed. Think of that as foreshadowing.
The entire generation of people set free from Egypt never made it to the Promised Land. Moses himself never made it to the Promised Land because he broke God’s boundaries. Chaos is a hard habit to break. It took new people, with a new honor of God and appreciation of covenant, to be entrusted with the care of the new land of promise – Eden 4.0.
That went bad, too. God had warned Moses, "You are about to lie down with your fathers; and this people will arise and play the harlot with the strange gods of the land, into the midst of which they are going, and will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them.” (Deuteronomy 31:16)
In their now chaotic new Eden, God gave them judges, heroes that would lead them – but the people still ended up ‘doing what was right in their own eyes’, language that echoes what happened in Eden and at Babel. The book of Judges is a series of episodes that just play on repeat: worship other gods, do terrible sins, welcome chaos into your land, get ruled by other kings who serve other gods… but God in his mercy would send his Spirit to move over the troubled chaos of his people and raise up a new judge, a deliverer. Repeat.
The people eventually begged for a king, one with flesh like everybody else had. Maybe that was their problem. So, God gave them kings. He established boundaries for them and their kingdom, because He is a god of order. He sent His Spirit to aid them.
Their first king broke the boundaries quickly. It wasn’t that Saul didn’t know. He ‘did what was right in his own eyes’ to ‘make a name for himself’ by deciding right and wrong on his terms. God’s prophet, Samuel, said to Saul, “You are not a man after God’s own heart.” Saul still loved chaos and rejected order, and God does not.
The second king, David, was “a man after God’s own heart” — at least when he was installed as king. He talked about arrogant men who were like “beasts.” Yet he, too, gave into the sin and broke the boundaries around his life. Like Eve, he saw (vaiyar) something beautiful (tob) but forbidden - Bathsheba - and took her. His legacy left a trail of chaos.
David thought some men were beasts; his son Solomon wrote, “Concerning the sons of men, ‘God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts.’” Solomon even built a new sacred space, a new Eden with a new Temple. But he sold his soul to pagan nations for a yearly 666 talents of silver, the bribe seductive enough to cause the wisest man on earth to abuse his power, love the wealth of the world, and turn from God.
Under Solomon, the temple would be defiled throughout its existence before it was destroyed by invaders when God took the kingdom from yet another who followed his own heart instead of God’s. Still, God, who is rich in mercy, had made yet another covenant. He had told David that it was through David and his descendants that a Messiah would come and establish a kingdom that would endure forever — an Eden that would never end. Yes, sin has its consequences, but it does not control the plans of God.
Bad years followed. Yahweh, whose “name was to be made great in all the earth” by his covenant people, had his name smeared and dishonored over and over again. The kingdom divided. Eventually God’s people were sent east into nations whose gods they had followed. The “formless and void” of Genesis 1 (tohu wahobu) — is repeated only once in the Old Testament, and it is here. When Babylon destroyed Judah, Jeremiah wrote, “I looked on the earth, and it was tohu wahobu” (Jeremiah 4).
God did not send the chaos of the Deep to destroy them; what hit them was the Leviathan of Assyria, the behemoth of Babylon, the tannin (dragon) of Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 51). They would take them to the home of kings and gods (such as the Princes of Persia and Greece mentioned in the book of Daniel) that they had chosen over their God and King. Treason has never been treated lightly. Yet Daniel is at peace among the beasts, both literal and figurative. His friends are not forsaken in the fire. God is near.
The prophets had warned them.
Daniel saw beast after beast, chaos creatures arising out of watery darkness, coming after God’s people (Daniel 7)
Ezekiel had warned of “four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence… Those who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces.” (14:21; 34:18)
Jeremiah wrote, ”They have turned back to the iniquities of their ancestors who refused to hear My words, and they have gone after other gods to serve them; the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken My covenant which I made with their fathers." (Jeremiah 9:26; 11:10)
“The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they transgressed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant.” (Isaiah 24:5)
That is not good news. But, as we have seen over and over, the human cycle of sin and rebellion was not matched by God’s withdrawal. Since Yahweh was faithful, the prophets — the speakers for Yahweh - had always promised hope.
As God’s Spirit moved the prophets, they said that — shockingly - God’s glory was still with those exiles in the East, and that when it returned there would be a new revelation — greater than God’s appearance to Moses – on another holy mountain. A redeemer was coming, a Savior, one in whom chaos would be defeated and order would once again return. This messiah would bring freedom, life, blessing, joy, and peace as a result of a new covenant He offered.
“Before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven…an anointed one, a prince… shall make a strong covenant with many… and he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.” (Daniel 9; Daniel 7)
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” (Jeremiah 31: 31)
He will “bring good news to the poor… bind up the brokenhearted…proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound… proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…” (Isaiah 61:1-2)
The beasts, dragons and owls will honor him. (Isaiah 43:20)
He would bear our grief and carried our sorrows as he would be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities; through his chastisement we would gain peace, and with his wounds we would healed. (Isaiah 53)
“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace… He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.” (Isaiah 9:2-7)
This person arrives to offer a new and final covenant that fixes everything that was broken, fulfills the Law and the Prophets, and takes all the threads of the story and weaves them together into one unified picture: Jesus the Christ, the perfect God and perfect man; the Creator manifesting in His creation; the Lawgiver become the Lawkeeper; the Covenant Keeper taking the place of the Covenant Breaker; the Lord in whom there is no Chaos, Darkness, Death or Sin taking all of them upon himself and displaying His triumphant power so that we know, once and for all, that we do not have to fear them.
Going back to Genesis…
In language taking us back to Genesis 1, the Spirit of God moves over Mary, bringing life where there was no life, making her womb a temporary sacred space, a garden from which a River of Life will flow to water the world.
He is the God of the First Creation who now brings the New Creation.
He walked on water and commanded the Deep.
God’s spirit fluttered like a dove in the beginning of all things; God’s spirit descends like a dove on Jesus.
His Holy Spirit would descend at Pentecost, showing it was possible for every tribe, nation and tongue to be united by the gospel and under the lordship of Christ (lest there be any confusion, the list of nations in Acts 2 matches the Table of Nations in Genesis 10).
Going back to ADAM…
Jesus is the new and better Adam.
Fallen humanity headed “east’” over and over; Jesus draws wise men back from the “east” from the moment he was born.
In his temptation in the desert, He is “cast out” (like Adam and like Cain) into the wilderness with the “wild beasts,” and he takes dominion – not just over the beasts of the field, but the Beasts of John’s upcoming apocalypse.
Eventually, he will make a new heaven and new earth, turning the entire world into his sacred space. The curse from Eden will be reversed: “They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity.” (Isaiah 65)
Going back to Noah…
He is the Ark that preserves us when the Deep threatens to overwhelm us. In fact, Paul calls the death of Jesus hilasterion - the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant.
The command to be fruitful and multiply in the covenants with Adam and Noah is now a spiritual one: “Go and make disciples; bear the fruit of the Spirit.”
Going back to Abraham….
He is the God who becomes the torn penalty for Abraham’s (and our) broken covenant.
He is the blessing for the world promised through Abraham.
Going back to Moses….
He is the eternal Passover Lamb, under whose blood eternal death has no power.
He is the final and perfect sacrifice that silences the altars of the Mosaic Law.
He is the substitutionary atonement not just for most sins, but for all sins. Like God said in Deuteronomy, the heavens and earth bore witness to the price he paid on behalf of the covenant breakers, with darkness covering the land (Matthew 27:45) and the earth shaking (Matthew 27:51-52).1313
He is “lifted up” on the cross like the bronze serpent in the desert to bring healing and life.
He met with his people on a holy mountain in power and glorious majesty on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17), the dawning of the day hinted at by the prophetic lamp in the darkness.
To those who overcome, he will give a new kind of manna (Revelation 2:17).
Going back to David and Solomon….
He is the king who literally has God’s heart.
He is the True Temple – who makes his dwelling place in us so that we become the temple of God.
Going back to the Old Testament prophets…
He was the Messiah who could offer a lasting deliverance not from bondage to people but from chaos and destruction of sin and death.
He brought order into a disordered and broken world: healing the sick, casting out demons, bringing the dead to life, trading beauty for ashes.
He is not merely a light in the darkness; He is the Day Star, the Light Bringer, rising to make us covenant keepers in our new covenant hearts.
ON THE CROSS
Christ the Victorious One established his domination over the power of sin and death. Through the power of agape love, God’s full glory is revealed. Satan and his evil chaos are defeated; even death itself does not have the last word. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and there is nothing that can stop him. He ‘disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them,’ delivering us from the power of “this present evil age.”
Jesus the Lamb makes the final sacrifice to pay the cost for our sin by giving his life as a ransom for those held hostage by sin, paying the penalty for the covenant-breaking spiritual descendants of Abraham. Jesus, the final scapegoat and sacrifice under the covenant with Moses, has borne our sins far away from us, inaugurated a New Covenant, and spiritually ‘sprinkled us with his blood’ as a means of sealing us into this new covenant. Through the cross, God cleanses us and prepares us for holy fellowship with God.
Jesus, the Perfect Human, not only offered all of humanity a reconciliation with God by demonstrating how to ‘walk with God’ in ways that Adam could not sustain, but also demonstrated the model by which we are to live: laying down our lives, motivated by agape love, for God’s glory and for the good of those around us. From the death of the Second Adam, a new humanity emerges, one shown by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live as the kind of image bearers God intends. Now, we get to live out what has been accomplished by Jesus in this ministry of reconciliation.
Jesus showed that God identifies with and understands all the abused, the powerless, the ones who suffer injustice, those for who feel shamed, despised and rejected. His humiliation and suffering on the cross was the means by which the shamed and suffering can be led from their captivity in spiritual Egypt and into the Promised Land of the Kingdom of God, a place flowing with the milk and honey of peace, dignity, and restoration.